A full, fall Saturday

I drove up to Bristow, VA (northern VA) on Saturday for an adoption event with Promises. Summer is my only Promises dog at this point, but she's ready for a home now so I made the trip. Maya came along for the drive because I can't leave her at home without challenging her to get into something new as an expression of her displeasure about being left behind.

Summer is a great dog, about four years old, beautiful, and a great temperament, although maybe not with small dogs and/or cats. Still, she's very good with the dogs around here, and scarcely bitchy at all, which is unusual for a female shepherd. Summer is also housetrained and crate-trained. I usually crate her when I leave, but I've left her loose in the house without incident and she generally spends the night with Max, uncrated in my office. I can't remember when I've had a foster shepherd as easy and good as this one. She was in rough shape when she came in, with ear and skin infections, but those are cleared up and she re-grew a beautiful red and black shepherd coat. She will be spayed this next Wednesday.

Summer was good with all the dogs at the adoption event, most of which were young pups, under a year of age. She was good with people too, but she doesn't really work the crowd the way I've seen some fosters do. Instead, she just watches and takes it all in, rather than giving her undivided attention to just one person. At home, however, she watches everything but she watches me more than anything. This is a very smart and very devoted dog.

We met a couple who may be interested in her but they are meeting another dog with another rescue too, so we shall see. It was a good event and we stayed about 2.5 hours and then came home.

Once we got home, I took Theo, Trooper, and Maya out for a hike. It was getting dark so we did a fair amount of jogging in order to get in our five miles before it was too dark to see. It was cool and great weather for a fast paced hike.

After a shower, I grabbed Maya again and we headed down to the brewery in Scottsville. A whole new group of people thought she was adorable and remarked at how well behaved she was, laying down at my feet. Little did they know how much activity it had taken today to get her to be that calm and quiet.

Maya, Theo, and Trooper

We moved pretty fast and logged my fastest pace since last
winter. The cool weather gets us all moving faster.

I planned our route so we were out of the woods for the last couple of miles to take advantage
of the last light of the day, but it was pretty dark by the time we finished.

We don't use treats at home and don't feed our dogs from the
table, so this is the only place she hustles food. She's good
at it though, no one can resist that face looking over the bar.

Maya was tired, but she still wanted to go.