Monday Light

It’s official Autumn now tat the equinox has passed and everything feels like it’s slowing down a bit. Not completely, mind you, but slower than August for sure. Usually Monday’s are busy days with a full slate of dogs and then Gretchen racing off to work in the afternoon at the hydrotherapy pool. She did that today again, but the full slate of dogs wasn’t so full today.

Rosie and Tyson, generally Monday clients, are away at Mystic Mountain Pet Retreat while their parents are on vacation. Gemma’s folks just returned from their own vacation and now she must go in for some minor surgery. Alice couldn’t do today so that left us with Oshi and Perrito, our first walk of the day, then Saber, our last walk of the day.

And in between it all, there was little old me. Some would say I’m very spoiled and I suppose from a certain perspective, I’d have to agree. But don’t think my life is all ground beef and recess. A lot is expected of me — writing this daily blog chief among my responsibilities — and so when I get a chance to play and just be the family dog, I rejoice and take advantage of every moment. With so few clients, Gretchen took me swimming at the lake today and that was very special because I love swimming and I love just hanging out with Gretchen when it’s not work related.

The first walk was with Oshi and Perrito. In order to photograph them, Gretchen has to put them on something so they don’t wander off. This time she chose the interesting sculptures at the viewpoint park. Luckily, she didn’t choose the viewpoint because that would mean we’d have to stand on the scary grate and frankly, the day was going so well, I didn’t want to spoil it by being scared! Of course, it was hard to get Oshi to face the right way…he can be so stubborn!

Saber was next, and last, but he didn’t seem to mind. We wandered through all the local green spaces (little forested parks that wind through the neighborhoods. If you know them all, you can walk a long way without ever walking on a street! Pretty nice!)

The hardest part of photographing Saber is that he still has a puppy’s attention span. He’ll pose for a split second, but if he’s anywhere near something interesting, he’d rather pay attention to that.

Well, as you can imagine, in the woods there is always something more interesting than posing for a photograph…and for Saber, that’s generally a stick!

Gretchen did her best to pose us in the beautiful light streaming through the trees, but Saber had other ideas. Luckily, Gretchen just kept taking photographs until she finally got one that looked the way she wanted it to…of course, followed by one that wasn’t what she wanted!

But I was glad for a Monday Light because our friend Laurie came over for brunch and brought her dog, Olive, along with her.

Olive is in the middle of a career change. After years as a service dog, she is now retired. She’s been a working dog more than she’s be a family dog so Olive is still learning to adapt to her new lifestyle.

The first time I met her, Olive wasn’t that interested in playing. She kept close to her Mom and while we could walk together, she wasn’t that interested in anything else.

Yesterday, she showed me a completely different side. She raced through the front door, greeting us all with utter glee, and then pulled out every single toy in both of my toy boxes (yes, I have two toy boxes filled with toys!). Then Gretchen offered to take us both to Doggie Disneyland (aka — Marymoor Off-leash Park).

And while Olive still didn’t play like I do…