We’re back in Bend again….and thus have a little more time to do things like create posts. The day after Nix and I got here, my little brother Russy (who has cancer) had enough energy to go sit by the water and take the dogs out. I got a few great action shots of Nix with my dad throwing a water toy (and using an iphone — yeah for iphones).
Well, the Nix and I have returned from Bend. Nix did a number of fabulous things:
She was in her first parade ever (see previous post)
She weathered the fourth of July fireworks with no fuss at all, even after my silly little brother let off a firecracker near here.
She snuggled up with Russ at night from time to time, which is very soothing. Good for her. Maybe she knows he needs soothing (he is mid-stream in chemotherapy).
She swam in the waters of Lake Cultus.
She saw her boyfriend Buddy on the way back.
Sometimes, being a dog seems attractive.
Well, here we are in Bend. The two goldens are together again (Nixie and Odin, my brother’s dog). Dad and mom and me and Russy and the dogs walking in the Pets on Parade parade through town. That’s Nix on the left with Dad, Russy with Odin, and Mom on the right. The streets were full both of dogs and other assorted and sundry examples of the animal kindgdom and of people lining the sides of the road. Now, we do a similar parade in Kirkland, WA, where I work, but there is a regular parade with officials and bands and fire trucks and all that afterward. In Bend? The pets were enough to draw out thousands of people.
It felt a lot like the fourth of July here. Like middle-America, un-bothered America, an America where there weren’t necessarily a lot of politics on parade with us. Just a quiet celebration of animals, community, and the America of all the cliche’s and dreams, of simple people getting along and having fun and celebrating together.
But still, ingenious America. One of the more interesting parade entries was the flying dog. Really. Here he is:
Cricket was off in training and Toni was off with family, leaving just me, the Sasha, and the Nix. That meant walking two at a time (for who can leave one dog home alone? Oh – the faces!). This should be easy enough. We’ve even been to class on walking two dogs at once. But no – Sasha is afraid of a lot, and she seems to be more afraid when she’s yoked to Nix. So after two long walks when I thought I might get my arm pulled from my socket, we settled for trips to the dog park.
They developed a new trick. Sasha focuses on the ball. Of course she does – she’s a border collie. So when I say focus, I mean FOCUS. Well, it’s a dog park. It’s acres and acres, but there are literally hundreds of dogs some times. Dogs like balls. So this week, whenever a dog dove for Sasha, Nixie blocked them. Every time. It was hysterical. Nixie – of note – does not care about the ball. But she does care about Sasha.
But now Cricket is back (as of yesterday) and Toni is back (as of today) so Nix and I snuck out and walked all the way to Redmond Town Center and Toni picked us up so we didn’t have to walk back.
Pretty good life, all in all.
There’s something quite special about walking with a dog. Nix needs to go out, so that gets me out of the house whether I think I need it or not (I do need to be outside, of course). She’s always happy to be out. In fact she’s always happy, no matter what. But she’s definitely always happy to be outside, walking by my side, tail up and swinging side to side gently, head up. She doesn’t want much. Just my company. I’m her person and she’s my dog and the relationship is simple and easy and happy. For her, almost all things are interesting. Of course – she lives inside the walls of the house almost all the time. That’s 23 hours day inside of about a 500 square foot place (with occasional access to the rest of the house when we’re home), with occasional visits to the back yard all day, but seldom for long. Unlike me, the busy and harassed and needed and questioned and dead-lined and worried and hurried. So me the walk is a chance to relax, for her it may be a chance to get some stimulation. However it works, it’s magic.
Today, we walked up part of Bridle Crest Trial and along 140th to Grass Lawn Park and back up 148th – this picture is along the gravel trail in Grass Lawn Park.
In spite of the gray clouds, we decided to have an adventure walk today to celebrate getting a bunch of housework down and to challenge the new toy – the fitbit. So we went down to Kirkland and parked at Juanita Bay park (which you can see behind Nixie’s head) and walked through Juanita Bay and then then over to Juanita Beach. This is a picture taken from the walkway that surrounds the swimming area at Juanita Beach.
Nix had a blast.
The fitbit said we walked almost two hours. It agreed with my watch. Good fitbit. Good Nixie. Good Brenda. Bad clouds.
It turns out Nixie is quite an aggressive 5K dog. She looks a bit like Eeyore in that picture, but don’t be fooled. She was my training buddy when I was doing half marathon walks (and hopefully will be again) but this is the first event I’ve taken her to. Now, I have to start by explaining the Turkey Trot. Trot is NOT the right word. The first half a mile is, at best, a turkey shuffle. After that, you get to walk. If you behave and stay on the sidewalk the whole time like they want you to, you walk at the speed of whoever you get behind.
Luckily, there aren’t enough course proctors to make you behave. Nix pulled and pulled and pulled. She wanted to be in FRONT. Not that she was going to get there with me, but we did pass a hundred or so people. Even in the rain there were at least two or three hundred people walking – all ages, all abilities, and maybe thirty dogs. Really. Lots of dogs. Great dogs. I think there were six goldens.
As a side comment, they should have closed the street for the whole thing. It would have been far more fun, and then people could have stretched into their normal speeds and kids could have brought bikes and all kinds of things. It’s only an hour, and there is another parallel street, so shame on us (I work for the city, although not in events) for not closing the street down all the way.
Meantime, Toni was watching agility on the computer so we came home and watched the finals. Lovely well-trained dogs and people.
We usually avoid Green Lake like the plague. It’s a very beautiful park, but I’ve actually been there when there were so many people I couldn’t walk at my normal speed. But Nix had never been, and we decided that a cloudy October day might be a good bet. You see, Nix and I talk these things things over. I hem and haw about choices, and she thinks, “Mom – if I don’t get out of this car soon, I will pee in your backseat.”
And so we come to conclusions.
Green Lake Park was, actually, still crowded. But worth it. Even with a grey sky, the trees glowed with yellows and gold and red haloes and the ground under them looked like it had been carpeted with color. Nix swam with leaves and little kids rolled in leaves and photographers used tripods and a prayer to capture leaves.
We made it all the way around. I had been braced for my foot to hurt halfway, especially since I’d walked around town enough the day before to limp for hours. We made it around surprisingly fast, and with me walking fine.
Near the parking lot – just as we were finishing – we spotted a dog playing with bubbles. Yep – that’s what I said.
This was pretty cool. The woman on the right has a bubble machine that made big bubbles (Big bubbles!) easily and predictably. The dog was fascinated, and looked every bit like a three-year-old bubble chaser.
Now, no trip would be complete without a leap into the lake, espacially for the Nix. So here is her wet moment with leaves:
We’ll hopefully post pictures of this adventure as it goes. But the run-up to it has been a funny set of logistics. Now, I’m not the flyball person. I support the household flyball tournament the way Toni supports my writing – we both believe the others hold do what makes them happy, and I do like flyball, just not enough to do all the practices and work required to train a dag for it. I’d rather write books.
But I’m along for the family trip.
First – we have an extra dog. The lovely and licky Ten. Then we have the kid along, who has a school camping trip that lets out Friday.
Plan A: Toni goes to Couer d’Alaine and gets everyone settled. I pick up the kid and drive her over after she gets out of school. We take 2 dogs. Toni takes two dogs.
Plan B: Toni goes to Couer d’Alaine and I pick up the kid and we fly to Spokane and Toni picks us up. Reverse the plan on the way back. Challenge: Spokane is 40 minutes from Couer D’Alaine. That leave 3 women and four dogs and at least some luggage in one car that long, or we Kennel the Nix by herself (she’s used to being Kenneled, but she and Sash stay side by side).
Plan C: Toni goes to Couer d’Alaine and I pick up the kid take her to the airport, and she flies to Spokane and Toni picks her up. The challenge of the car space is manageable, the Nix is home with me and not so lonely, but I don’t get to go (and I’m looking forward to going). Challenge: Flying the kid by herself is a red-tape expensive forms-filled nightmare. Now, this is a kid who has flown internationally regularly, and probably gets on planes 4 or 5 times a year. And she’s smarter than we are. This shouldn’t be so hard. But it is.
Plan D: Toni goes to Couer d’Alaine and gets everyone settled. I pick up the kid and drive her over after she gets out of school. We take 2 dogs. Toni takes two dogs.
The only real problem left with this plan is the carbon footprint, and that the kid and I will have to settle on music for 6 hours of driving.
Tonight, we execute packing.
Well, what better thing to do with what might be the last truly hot weekend of the summer than beach it?
We took the perfect advice of my friend Sally (who came along with us as well – which made it even better) and went to Magnuson Park and played in the water.
The Nix, true to form, was all excitement and jump, all happiness and wiggles, and not quite with the program. But as you can see from the picture, she did bring the ball back from time to time. Sometimes she just ran right over it.
We also had an orange boomerang thing which she liked to go get and leave behind in the deep so the handy humans had to fetch it.
But the happy look on her face made the whole trip well worth the time.
By the way, if you haven’t been there, it’s really a lovely off-leash area.