A change in plans

The weather has been warm and sunny this past week, so I put the racks on my SUV, loaded up the kayak, and was looking forward to a leisurely paddle, the first this year, at Lake Natoma. There was a bit of a breeze as I was loading up my kayak, but when I got to Willow Creek at Lake Natoma, the wind was starting to pick up even more.

I debated for a few minutes as to whether I should even go out or not, but decided to go for it. I wanted to paddle to Negro Bar to check out the dock for a friend who needs a place to practice with her dog who took dock diving lessons and who will be competing in a few weeks. Well, I did go out, I did paddle, and I did turn around after 45 minutes or so...it was so windy out there that it was hard to paddle. Plus, I try to use some sort of judgment when I go out by myself to stay safe. Today was not a day to be paddling by myself.

So I paddled back to my starting point, packed up the kayak and drove home disappointed my paddle was cut short. Oh well. As I was unloading my kayak, I thought it would be fun to take Hope out for a quick swim before it was time for me to go pick up Nick at our co-raisers house.

I think the dock will be nice for Hope's buddy to practice his dock diving. And frankly, I'm hoping if I take Hope out there with me, she will learn how to dive off the dock! As you can see, even though I was throwing sticks a few feet off the end of the dock for her, she ran back down the dock to get the stick from the water's edge rather than just jumping in from the dock itself.

Oh well, maybe she'll get the idea someday...



Here's Hope at the dock...

A quiet day at Willow Creek

I took Hope out for a quick trip to Lake Natoma's Willow Creek area this morning in between storms for a short hike on the bike trail and to let her swim for a bit.  For some reason, she couldn't seem to figure out where I was throwing the sticks today, after losing 3 of them, I gave up and we went for a hike instead.  Some days you got it, some days you don't I guess....

Here's a little video of Hope...


This place will always have a special place in my heart as this is the exact spot where I took Molly for her last swim on our last day together right before I took her to the vet to send her to the Rainbow Bridge. This is also the spot where we put in our kayaks during the summer, almost kayak time now that the weather is warming up!

It's NOT about Hope

This post has absolutely nothing to do with Hope, Nick, or any of my dogs for that matter.  Rowina is a CCI breeder who Hope and I go to Sutter Hospital with for pet therapy visits.

But, I just had to post this video.  A few weeks ago, I went over to some friends' house to help them with the traditional litter picture that most of the CCI breeder caretakers try to do for each litter that they whelp and care for.  The final pictures always turn out so cute, but I don't think people realize how much work actually goes into getting that "perfect" picture of all the puppies sitting still like they are actually posing for a picture.  

I took a ton of videos that day and this movie gives you a glimpse of the "behind the scenes" for the perfect litter picture...hope you enjoy it...

This is the "village" that it took to get this picture taken...plus, there were two photographers behind the cameras trying to capture the special moment...

And, this is the final product, now you can see what it took to get here for this one shot!...

My worlds collided...

On Saturday, I went up to Auburn for a nice hike with Hope near the Confluence (where the North/Middle fork of the American River meet...).  How this hike came together was rather funny as certain aspects of my life came together through some common bonds.  What's that saying about six degrees of separation? Here goes...

• Hope and I joined an animal-assisted therapy organization called Lend A Heart last month...
• When I was at the CCI Crab Feed last week, I saw a Lend A Heart (LAH) volunteer who was part of the team evaluating Hope and I last month. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to talk to her at the Crab Feed as I was in line to buy a drink and didn't know where she was sitting. Before she walked off to her table, I saw her talking to a guy in a kilt...
• I thought to myself, I wonder if that guy in the kilt is a geocacher?  There's a group of geocachers in the area who dress in kilts (don't ask me why, but they do...)...
• I emailed her back asking if she had been at the Crab Feed, and if she happened to be a geocacher because I saw her talking to the guy in the kilt...  
• Well, it turns out that not only is she a geocacher, but I have found several of her caches. She hid a few of the caches on Lake Natoma that I got from my kayak.  I told her Hope is probably even in some of the pictures on my logs for her caches.  She told me that she recognized my geocaching name too...

And, that's how I ended up going hiking today...she invited me to join her on a hike she was doing with other geocachers from the area.  The hike itself was pretty short, only a few miles, over a bridge and down the Western States Trail that ended at a waterfall. It was a good thing it was short as it started raining when we made it to our lunch spot, but it didn't ruin the day.  It was kind of fun to meet the other geocachers whose names I recognized and we found one cache along the trail.

The best part of all this is that Hope has a new buddy named Maggie who is a therapy dog , loves to hike, and goes geocaching - just like her.  They got along great today, even when we let them hike off leash and let them play in the water by the waterfall.

Hopefully, we can arrange some time to go caching/hiking together...and we'll be doing some therapy visits together too.  Very cool how things came together....

A picture of Maggie and Hope on the trail:

There were probably about 6-7 dogs on the hike today, this is Maggie, Hope and Pharoh (a shelter dog who's owners just adopted in October).

Hope at the waterfall:

Even though it was a short hike, it was nice to get out for a few hours before the rain really started coming down. I'm also happy that Hope and I have new friends, both human and dog! :-)

More field trips for Nick

Last week, I took Hope and Nick to Newcastle to visit a good friend of mine.  She lives on 5 acres and has a fully-fenced yard and about 10 goats.  The dogs had a blast playing with her black lab, Rosie, who is about 4 years old now and came from Lab Rescue...what a sweet dog! Of course, I couldn't pass up a training opportunity to expose Nick and Hope to the goats. Jennifer put some of the goat's feed in a bucket and shook it, and boy did they come running up to the fence!

Playtime...a pile of black dogs: Hope, Nick in the front of the pack, Rosie in the rear:

Hope and Nick wonder if Jen will give them any feed if they are polite...

Nick watches the feeding frenzy...

Nick checks out the goats in action and wonders why they make such strange noises...

During the week, I took Nick to a lot of different places, grocery store, pet store, etc. At this point, we are trying to work with him on taking him out to different places. On Friday night, our puppy class was held at a bowling alley. Nick didn't seem to be bothered by all the noise, in fact, the only thing he seemed to be interested in was laying down and just chilling out rather than performing his commands.  We were joking that Nick is perfectly content just being a people-watcher, haha. :-)

Here is a picture of Nick (and Shera) at the bowling alley:

Happy Birthday Hope!

Hard to believe, but today Hope turned 4, where does the time go? She and Nick enjoyed Frosty Paws to celebrate the occasion. In the evening, I took her on a Lend A Heart visit to an assisted living center in Sacramento. She did very well and what a great way to spend her birthday, doing something she enjoys...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOPE!

CPR and Snow Day

Nick had a busy day today...

In the morning, I took him with me to an American Red Cross CPR class in Rocklin.  I'm required to take CPR, First Aid, and Pet First Aid as part of our HOPE aacr training.  We listened to a lecture for about an hour first, then went into another room to practice CPR on dummies. There were a ton of people and Nick did great! I wish I would have had a camera with me as it would have been funny to get a picture of him with one of the CPR dummies....

After the class was over, we met Nick's buddies Gerrit and Carlo and their puppy raiser and drove together to Truckee for Snow Day, an annual event hosted by one of the our GRC Chapter's puppy raisers.  We got there late, so it was actually kind of nice as most of the dogs were worn out already so there wasn't a lot of crazy dogs out there playing.  Nick did great and loved carrying a toy in his mouth waiting for another dog to chase him.  What a good boy...

Ok, so black dogs and snow don't exactly go together very well, unfortunately this was my best shot of Nick...


And, here's a little video...

Nick is the black dog in the yellow scarf. The 3 dogs on the toy rope are Nick, Carlo and Shera. And, that's Nick's buddy Gerrit playing with the stick at the end...

A busy schedule...

Hope has had a busy few weeks.  Last Thursday, we went to Sutter Hospital for our visit to the STAR unit and visited with the patients there in the morning.  Then after work, we went to the Sutter Rehabilitation Institute to visit with the patients there.  Then immediately after that, I took her to our first Lend A Heart general meeting to start meeting some of the members in that group.  Whew....busy day.

Here's a picture of Hope and Sheeba (a 4-year old Rhodesian Ridgeback) in the gym at Sutter Rehab where we do our visits.  It was nice to let Hope jump up on this table as some of the patients could reach her easier from their wheelchairs.  I realize how short she is as some of the patients could barely reach her from their wheelchairs so we tried something different that night.  The "lap" and "visit" commands sure come in handy for visits too...

This week, we have two reading programs to do after work in the evenings.  Then depending on what is going on at work, I may do a Lend a Heart visit with her on Friday afternoon.  But, we'll see...