Last hike in 2009

Hope and I took a 4 mile hike today to find more geocaches (what else!) in the Rossmoor Park area where we were a few days ago. It was a great overcast day to be out there and she even got to go for a swim at the river. We found 7 caches.

Here's a picture of her (taken with my camera phone) on one of our stops along the way:

Geocaching Milestone

A little over 3 years ago, I started geocaching. Molly was the first dog that accompanied me to a lot of my geocaching adventures. Then it was Marisa, Rolie, Hope, Zuleika, and Nick soon followed. Sometimes one dog, sometimes two (although it is really hard with 2 dogs). Well, five dogs later...Hope was there to help me celebrate my 1,000th find.

We met up with our geocaching friend, Wetpaws and her dog Maggie to make this find yesterday. Here's a picture of Hope and Maggie at one of the stages...(Note, I know I'm a bad photographer, but the picture is blurry for a reason as I didn't want to give things away in case any geocachers are reading this because it would spoil all the fun!)

We had a blast and the girls had a lot of fun too. Since Hope hasn't been around other dogs much lately, she got the "yah-yah's" out there and did her funny butt-tuck run with Maggie. It was fun to watch her be a dog since we've been so busy with the holidays and doing therapy visits.

A reason for the season...

The holiday season is always a time for reflection...

This year, Hope and I attended the "Light up a Life" ceremony at Sutter Roseville Hospital where we volunteer. It is an annual fundraiser for the Sutter Hospice where people can donate money to the foundation in memory of someone who has passed away. They basically light up a tree outside in front of the hospital and have a little ceremony afterwards. I didn't get a picture of the tree, but this is a picture of Hope by the sign (the tree is to the left and not in the picture) when we went to the hospital for a visit during the day.

On Christmas Eve day, I took Hope to the STARS unit for her last visit of 2009. We've been doing so many visits lately, that I decided we are not going to do any more visits for the rest of the year, so that Hope gets to just be a dog. The patients in this unit are on respirators and will spend the rest of their lives in the hospital. I thought taking her there would be nice right before the holiday just so they knew we were thinking about them and hopefully brighten up their day, if only for a little. We had a really nice visit with the patients we've been visiting for over 2 years now. Good girl Hope! The nice thing was that on Christmas Day these patients got another dog visit as our friend Rachel and her dog Rowie visited the unit as well.

Christmas this year was nice as my family came up here for a couple of days. Hope also had some doggie company as my niece and nephew's dogs came up too. Here is a picture of Hope with Lani and Kumu....

Hope sports a new bow...

Hope and Kumu guard the Christmas tree...

It was a nice holiday!