July 2, 2009

Book Ends

ollie and friendThe day started with Ollie and ended with Wilson. In between? No one but me and my moms. I love my doggie pals and I had fun with both Ollie and Wilson today, but it was really fun to just hangs with my moms.

Ollie was our first bookend of the day and we took him to Luther Burbank Off-leash Park for a frolic and a swim. Yes, he did both, but he did a lot of visiting as well.  Ollie likes to visit. Me? I like to swim! And swim I did.

Ann threw the ball for me again and again while Gretchen watched Ollie make his way swimmingaround the park sniffing and smiling, sniffing and smiling.  He is one friendly fellow that Ollie and I am one swimming guy.

Ollie didn’t do much swimming, but he loved to wade in and out of the water grabbing toys, licking up the lake, and just standing there watching Ann throw the ball for me.

There were a lot of people and an equally large number of dogs all swimming and running and visiting.  Ollie was a little distracted, not sure which way he should run, but eventually settled on playing with a 4 month old puppy named Ella.

At one point, Ann decided to get Ollie swimming more so she grabbed a ball, waded into the water, and tempted Ollie. Here’s the action caught in sequence…

want it?go get itgood boy

And then it was time to run and run little Ollie did!

running manrunning man2

boundingrunning man3

Occasionally he cooled himself off in the lake though or rested on the shore, and since today was really warm, I’ll admit it was necessary to take a break or plunge in again!

restingrefreshing

But mostly Ollie ran with a big fat smile on his face!

happy man...

Next up? Wilson, but not till the end of the day. At first, I got left at home because it’s true, I ran and swam myself silly in the morning. I needed the rest. So Gretchen got Wilson, walked down to the lake, and he plunged right in almost before the ball was even thrown!

plungehappy boy

As I’ve mentioned, once Wilson gets wet he shoes his true skinniness (is that a word?).  But he is persistent begging Gretchen to keep throwing the ball into the water with those pleading eyes and then batting the ball in Gretchen’s direction every chance he got!

please?oops

Like Ollie, Wilson likes to visit so when he saw someone floating in the water he just had to go visit, much to the person’s surprise…

hellohello back

But then it was back to playing fetch and making sure Gretchen saw that he had the ball!

see it?are you sure?

The nice thing about the bookends today — they are both very happy fellows.

I'm happy

Once they were done swimming, Gretchen hiked Wilson up over the hill and tried to get him to pose on the dreaded grate overlooking the city. Knowing how much I hate the grate, it was good to see that Wilson was equally fearful. He actually stopped, froze, and would not budge until Gretchen headed back to the sidewalk and showed Wilson his ball.  He was difficult to pose because he wanted that ball more than anything, but he was very glad not to be sitting on the grate (which you can see behind him!).

grate

They headed down the other side of the hill toward our house where Wilson and I got to play a little before he headed back home. At first we played with our separate toys…

separate

Then Gretchen played some tug with Wilson…

tug timetug time2

And then Wilson found the ball and well, the game became much more complicated because I wanted the ball and Wilson did too…

he's got itI've got it

And once I got it, Wilson did whatever he could to get it back…

please?

Eventually, Wilson had to go back to his house, I had to eat dinner, and all of us are now preparing for bedtime.  It’s still hot outside, but I feel all warm and fuzzy inside bookended by two good friends.

Until tomorrow,

Rubin

Leave a Reply