Heading Out

Theo and Serena

I hit the road Saturday morning, driving to Kansas this time. Not sure about blog frequency for the next week or so, but chances are I'll post some pictures of my mother's pug, Jake. Clay is staying home and I've got someone coming in to stay with the dogs during the days.

I walked up to take a picture of the iris and
Serena put one in her mouth. She puts
everything new in her mouth. I hope she will
outgrow this.

Here are some pictures from this afternoon's walks, two miles with Theo and Serena, followed by another two miles with Maya, Trooper, and Lily.

Trooper, Maya, and Lily

Maya and Trooper

Lily is really enjoying the walks.

The blooms on our horse chestnut
have just opened.

I don't think there's a flowering tree with
flowers as showy as this one.

Lily, building stamina

Maya and Serena and I took Lily on a good stamina-building hike this afternoon. Four miles of mostly hilly terrain, of course there was downhill as well as uphill, but it always seems like there's more of the latter.

Lily was bringing up the rear for most of today's hike, but she kept up. Her legs are the shortest by far so it takes her more steps and more effort to cover the amount of ground that Serena can in far fewer steps. But she's fairly young and energetic and she's happy and excited to be out.

She facility to avoiding entanglements with the leash makes me believe she had been chained. She's low to the ground so the leash attached to her collar would often get under her legs, but she would lift her leg and get the leash out from under her on her own. I never had to stop and fix it like I sometimes do for Maya and Serena.

We kept coming back to this stream today for a nice cool
drink and a welcome break.

Lily's short legs had to work extra hard to
keep up, but she did.

If you look closely you can see a fairly large black snake
on that log. Harmless, but we kept our distance.

Serena was in the lead all day.

My little girl is getting grey.

She may have been behind us much of the
time, but whenever I stopped and looked back
Lily's tail was wagging.

Dogwoods are still in bloom.

Today's four mile route

Walking the Girls

Maya and Serena and I took Lily on her first walk today. Lily really enjoyed it. You could tell that she hadn't had a walk in a long time, maybe never. I suspect they kept her penned or chained and used for breeding. She really enjoyed the walk but I don't have a lot of pictures to show it. Most of my pictures were of her butt because she was out front all the time with the sole purpose of moving forward.

Lily is smaller than I had been thinking. Here she is
next to Maya who is about 65 pounds. Lily is probably
about 35 pounds, sweet and petite.

She really wasn't bad for a first walk. She hasn't quite accepted or acknowledged that six feet is as far as she can go from me. She didn't pull that hard though, I just used a martingale collar on her and she didn't pull hard enough to choke herself.

Serena and Maya were fine with her. Lily has been in the house with us all day. She comes upstairs and goes back down without any trouble. She has not figured out that the AC yard is the place to pee. Lily spent her first night here in the crate in the kitchen and I expect she will do the same tonight. She had no problems with the crate. She's eating normally too. She's still just as sweet and friendly as she can be. Nice dog, good girl.

Everyone wanted to sniff this very important spot.

This is where we saw the Easter Bunny yesterday. Serena
remembered the spot and stopped to look again, but no luck.

Here she is next to Serena.

Not exactly a smiley face, but she did have a good time.

It was hard for me to ever get ahead of her
so I could get a picture of her face.

This is a new harness on Serena I just ordered
on Sunday. I've got a new leather one coming
too. She and Theo had been sharing a single
harness. Now we will have more options.

Maya has broken in a lot of new dogs to the
walking routine. She will teach Lily too.

My two girls.