My Monthly Diary for February, 2012

Let's see, what happened this month...

I have to say this was a much better February than we usually have because the weather wasn't constantly grey and nasty and so Mommy wasn't constantly grumpy and refusing to do things with me. In fact we went for a hike one day because the weather was so nice. We went to a lake I like a lot, but what we didn't know was that half of the trail was closed because they were doing some construction by the boat launch, so we wound up taking half a hike. We'd gotten a late start so it would have been a push to get the whole hike in in the time we had, but Mommy said she'd have taken us somewhere else if we had known there was construction.

I had some tummy troubles this month, probably because it is dead thing season. I love finding all the dead things that have been frozen at the side of the road all winter. They are extra yummy when they are totally flat and mostly unrecognizable. I grab them and Mommy yells, "SPIT! SPIT!" and I try to swallow as much of them as I can before Mommy gets to me and grabs my collar which means I have to spit it out or she will open my mouth and pull it out. It sure is yummy, but then I end up with tummy troubles and the farts and stuff. So this month I pooped in the house twice. Mommy, knowing tummy troubles come during dead thing season so she put the puppy papers down again and she did such a nice job of it that the first time I pooped in the house I pooped RIGHT NEXT TO the papers so that I wouldn't muss them up. Mommy didn't seem to appreciate it though. The second time I pooped in the house I worked really hard to squeeze myself under the upright piano next to the piano bench and poop on the ONLY carpet in the entire house. It is a small, light colored oriental-style carpet and I not only got the carpet I got its fringe too. That took great skill, but again, Mommy did not appreciate it. She didn't speak to me that whole night and now she has put stuff next to the bench so I can't fit under the piano anymore.

Mommy got sick herself this month and spent a couple days in bed. It is always nice to have her stay home and sleep with me, but when she is done being sick I always demand that we make up for our missed walks. So, a couple days after she was well I took her on a 7.5 mile morning walk. Mommy was a little grumpy about that because she thought we should take a hike that afternoon, and we can't do that if I take a long morning walk, but it ended up that I was the smart one because by afternoon the temperatures had rapidly dropped and it was hailing. Always listen to the dog.

The following Sunday morning the temperatures were in the high 40s so I took Mommy for the 8 mile morning walk to the forest preserve and back that I haven't been able to take for months. It took us 4 1/2 hours and I needed some sit-downs during the last two miles, but it was great fun. It was the day of the Great Backyard Bird Count so Mommy counted birds for the last 1 1/2 hours of our hike. She saw lots of good birds to report including a red-tailed hawk, a coopers hawk and 95 geese all hanging out on and around one pond!

We haven't had much snow this winter, but we finally had a decent 8 inch very wet snow this month and I convinced Mommy to play snowball with me. I had a great time playing, but boy was I tired afterwards. I needed a Tramadol that night and I slept through most of two days, requested a short morning walks for three and refused evening walks. For those of you who don't have snow, here is how you play snowball:

Wait for Mommy to make a snowball

Get ready for her to throw it

Catch it!

Tell Mommy to throw another one

Catch it!

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
As you can see, the fun of playing snowball is well worth the aches and pains later.

Finally this month Mommy and I were sleeping when we were woken up by what sounded like someone very big clearing his throat in our dining room. Mommy knew nobody was there so she couldn't decide if she had dreamed it or if our boiler (which is right below the dining room) had done something weird. She stayed up and listened for awhile, but the sound didn't repeat. Then the next night we woke up to CLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANK! then it went quiet. Mommy went down to check the boiler and its pump but everything seemed fine. Then the next night at 1 am CLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANK! quiet again. Mommy turned everything off and took the boiler pump apart, but the part that usually made a CLANKBANGCLANK noise when it breaks wasn't broken, but she put a replacement part in anyway and went back to bed. Then at 4 am CLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKBANGBANG
BANGCLANKCLANK! Mommy called the emergency number for the heating guys, but when the guy called back 10 minutes later all was quiet. Then at 6 am CLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKBANGBANG
BANGCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANK! So mommy called the heater guy and left a message that she needed a morning appointment with a repair guy and he should probably bring a new boiler pump. So, at 10 am we got a visit by the heating guy. Mommy put the baby gate up at the top of the stairs so I wouldn't be tempted to try to go down and help him put a new pump onto our boiler. Mommy says it cost a lot of green stuff, but at least we can sleep through the night again and Mommy kind of half wonders if maybe the pump went CLANKCLANKBANGBANGBANGCLANKCLANK! while she was at work the day I decided to poop under the piano. I'm not telling her if it did, but I will tell you that that noise was enough to scare the poop out of anyone.

Happy Valentine's Day!

On Valentine's Day in 2004 I surprised Mommy by painting this for her:

Mommy puts all the paint jars down on the ground and I choose my 3 colors and then I paint. Mommy thought it was funny when I chose purple, red and white on Valentine's Day and then she was shocked when she saw what I had created. Mommy named it "Puppy Love" and it is framed and hanging in the bedroom.

My Monthly Diary for January, 2012

Can you believe it is 2012? I've been with Mommy for 11 years now, which is a long time for a dog who was dumped as a puppy, but you can read my Gotcha Day post below if you haven't already done so.

January was a busy month for me. Besides celebrating my Gotcha Day I had to go get my annual checkup and shots and Mommy and I took a bunch of long (over 6 mile) walks and a 5.3 mile hike too because the weather was so nice. Normally around here January is very cold and snowy. Below zero temperatures are not unusual and neither are big snow storms that make Mommy stay home from work. But this year we had some days when the temperatures were in the 50s and we've hardly had any snow! Around this time last year Mommy and I were still digging out from SnOMG and today, after we took a five mile morning walk in upper 40 degree temps and I went WADING IN THE LAKE which has started Breakup already, Mommy noticed that some of her hosta and irises were sending up shoots! Crazy weather.

Anyway, I should tell you that my vet appointment went well. The vet said that I looked very good and was in very good shape even though it was obvious that I have lost almost complete sensation and movement in my left hind leg. She said that normally she would see a lot more muscle loss in a leg like mine, but I still have quite a bit of muscle there. Part of that is due to the fact that I had very powerful hind legs to begin with (after all I could take squirrels off trees when they were 12 feet off the ground in my younger days using my patented Double-Jump method), but it is also because Mommy is still taking me for long walks and hikes and stuff. We still try to do at least 3-5 miles of walking a day and when Mommy was bemoaning the fact that I couldn't do more than about 6 miles of hiking at a time anymore the vet said she should be proud that I still do 6 miles. Timber's daddy told Mommy the other day when she said I didn't do much more than 4 mile walks before I get grumpy that he would be very very grumpy if anyone made HIM walk 4 miles! He is a good ten years younger than Mommy and a hunter to boot so Mommy thought this was very funny. The vet and Mommy were going to take me off the chewable heartworm pills because the beef tallow in them started to really upset my stomach at the end of the year last year, but when Mommy tried to get my perscription for a plain tablet form filled we found out that Merial had stop making the tablets. When I start taking the pill again next month I will have to take some stomach medicine before and after I take the tablet. The alternative chewable is made with pork, which is just as hard on my stomach, and we don't know how I'd react to the medicine so I'm sticking with the ones I've been using.

Also this month I started doing stretching exercises. These are very fun exercises which involve getting cookies at the height of the stretch so it is even more fun. Mommy wishes that someone would give her treats when she exercises, but nobody is ever there with M&Ms when she is doing sit ups. That's why she rarely does them. My chiropractor had sent out a link to the stretches and I was going to share the page, but it is gone. Basically there are 6 stretches. In the first one I do Paws Up on the window seat and then stretch up with my back as long and straight as I can get it to reach the cookie. For the second one Mommy holds a cookie between my front paws and I have to tuck my head under my chest to reach it. Then Mommy holds a cookie by my butt and I have to curl in as tight a circle as possible to reach it. Then I have to step over some poles and walk backward and walk sideways and I get bits of Mommy Cookies each time! It is kind of like when I was learning all my circus tricks, but it is supposed to help my back and hind legs and balance. Mommy and I both think it helps. When I don't do them I get stuck on the couch and bed more often because I can't turn my hips or I'm just afraid to jump down without a spotter. Then I have to bark for Mommy to come help me, but when I do do them I seem to have better control over my hips.

I do sometimes feel like an old dog, especially if the weather shifts from cold to warm or warm to cold which it has done a lot of this month. One day I slept in until 12:30 in the afternoon, ate breakfast and went back to bed. Mommy would have worried about me, but I woke up again at 2:00 p.m. and asked to take a walk and when we went I led Mommy on a 6 1/2 mile long walk around town. The next morning I told Mommy I was too tired to walk the 5 feet from my kitchen bed to where she had put down my Sunday egg, so she brought it to my bed for me to eat, but that afternoon I took another, not quite as long walk.

Talking about walks reminds me of another thing about this weird weather. The coyotes are out during the daytime hunting fat winter squirrels. Mommy and I saw one not 20 feet from us on one of our morning walks. He stopped hunting and looked at us and we looked at him and Mommy said, "Okay, we've seen each other now you get deeper in the woods where you belong." and he turned around and trotted into the woods. After he was gone I barked at him and I wanted to follow him to see where he went, but Mommy said that was a no because he probably had a den in there with a lady coyote and he wouldn't want me near her. She says we are going to have to be extra careful at that spot come April in case they have puppies there.

Finally this month I discovered something that Mommy has kept secret from me for 11 years! There are these things in town called "alleys". We have passed these alleys on our walks for 11 years and Mommy has always walked me by them so I thought they were really long driveways, and you don't walk up someone's driveway if you aren't visiting, but they aren't driveways at all! They are roads that lead BEHIND the stores and they are full of wonderful things like garbage bags and dumpsters and rats' nests. There are smells of cats and rats and mice and squirrels and raccoons and possums and skunks and coyotes and foxes and rotten food and so many other things! The only reason we walked up one was that Mommy and I were heading up to see the feed store guys and up ahead there was a BAD DOG not on a leash with his human nearly a block behind him talking on his cellphone and not paying any attention. Mommy took me into the alley so we could pass them without the BAD DOG seeing us and that is when I learned how wonderful alleys were. I could spend an hour in one sniffing around and not find all the scents. Now that I know what they are I've been insisting on walking through every one of them. Today we were walking in one and a lady came into it from the side not the end and I learned that some alleys have passageways between the buildings that you can walk through. I insisted on taking the one the lady had taken and when we got to the next passageway down the road I made Mommy take it back to the alley. Walks into town have become brand new adventures with this wonderful discovery. Who'd have guessed that there was a whole secret world in town that I knew nothing about?!

Happy Gotcha Day to Me!

So a funny thing happened yesterday. Mommy came home from work with surprises for me and said, "Happy Gotcha Day!!" There was

FRENCH FRIES!!

A CHICKEN SANDWICH!!

MOMMY'S THUMB!!! um...oops.

and there was a new squeaky toy with SIX SQUEAKERS in it and then I got some ice cream too and while I was eating my ice cream Mommy happened to look at the calendar and see that it was January 18, not January 19, so it WASN'T my Gotcha Day yet! BOL!! Mommy can be awful goofy sometimes. She laughed when she realized what she had done and said that I would have a quieter, actual Gotcha Day today. She came home tonight with sweet and sour chicken and wonton soup for me! I got some chicken bits in with my food and some of the chicken broth with a couple of wonton skins in it (but none of the pork filling because I can't have pork). It is my 11 year celebration so it seems right to celebrate it twice, once for the first 1 and once for the second.

In case you wondered what I looked like when I first came to live with Mommy here is one of the first shots of me. It was taken about a week after my adoption. I could sit comfortably on Mommy's lap back without towering over her.

The pound where I'd lived for a few months and was rescued from just days before I was to take that final walk thought I was 6 months old. They told the rescue people I had just gone through my 6 month growth spurt which meant that I was almost as tall as I was going to end up being. The rescue people told Mommy I would probably end up about knee high at most, but boy were they wrong! I was probably not even 5 months old and the growth spurt I had just had was my 4 month one so, once I got to Mommy's house I grew and grew and grew. By the time I stopped growing I was three feet tall at the top of my head, which means that Mommy can pet me while standing up without even straightening her arm all the way and when I sit on her lap it looks like this:

Happy New Year!

This post is to both say "Happy New Year everyone!" AND be my December update.

December was a busy month and a fun one. First off, Mommy bought her annual bag of nuts in the shell which she thinks looks "Christmasy" and, besides the tree, is the only Christmas decoration she puts up. I love it when she sets them out in her stemmed glass bowl because it makes it so easy to help myself. Here is some proof of that:



Second, we have been having a really mild winter so far. It hasn't gotten down to below zero cold at all. I have therefore been insisting on being allowed to hang out on the porch. I don't know if I mentioned it, but a few months ago a friend of Mommy's from work gave her two old down comforters FOR ME!! Mommy put one in my second rag bed (which I had never really found comfortable) and she made a big pillowcase with a drawstring out of an old sheet and a hunk of rope for the second one. Because I had enough beds in the house I Mommy kept these two out on the porch for me to use. I REALLY liked my new feather beds and I got into the habit of insisting on being on the porch so I could sleep on them. Mommy finally drew the line when it was about 25 degrees and I insisted on being outside on my beds. She peeked out the window at me and saw I was curled in a very tight circle and shivering a bit, but I refused to come inside until she gave in and brought my feather beds in too. One is now in the kitchen where my travel bed used to be and the other is in the bedroom half on top of my regular bedroom bed. Sometimes I sleep on the feather bed and sometimes I sleep on the regular dog bed and use the feather bed as a pillow. It is very comfy.

In November I had some tummy troubles which I didn't mention in my last blog update because they are so common. So anyway, because of the tummy troubles I was sometimes pooping in the house so Mommy put the puppy papers down in the back room for me. I didn't use the papers for three weeks so Mommy picked them up one Saturday when she was cleaning the house. The following Monday I pooped in the back room. I thought it was funny, but Mommy wasn't amused.

Also in December Mommy made the fabulous Emily Cookies that Emily made for me when I had my toe amputated. They are the best cookies on earth. Mommy made two batches and I helped by picking up any spare bits that fell and taste testing when they came out of the oven. They were sitting on the counter cooling FOREVER and I only got four or five of them and then Mommy packed them up in containers and I only got four or five more of them and then she put all but one of the containers in the freezer and told me that I had to wait until Christmas to have them! I know she left one container out to give me cookies from, but that is just wrong. Then on Christmas SHE GAVE AWAY almost all the cookies!! Oscar got some and Benji and my cousin Missy and I only got one large container!! This is totally the wrong way for a Mommy to behave.

Right before Christmas Mommy had a day off and she needed to have her car serviced so I got to go along to the car place! I had been there once before when I had just gotten out of the emergency vet after my bleeding ulcer and couldn't be left alone, but I mostly slept through that. This time Mommy brought me in and I said hi to people and then Mommy took me outside and we took an hour long walk down a bike trail that wasn't far from the dealership. It wasn't a very interesting bike trail being mainly a trail for people to get to and from a train station, but it did have good sniffs. When we got back to the dealership and went inside I was greeted by a lady who said, "There's the dog!" I was not surprised by such a greeting because I KNOW I am very important, but Mommy was taken a bit aback. When she went to the service area someone called out, "The dog is here!" More proof of how important I am, and the service guy came out and told Mommy he'd been looking for us as our car was just finished and the keys were at the cashier's desk. Mommy said, "See, they were looking for you because they were asking about ME." but I know that wasn't true because when we got to the cashier's desk all they gave Mommy was our keys, but they gave ME a cookie.

Finally in December we had Christmas. We went down to Grandma and Grandpa's new house and spent the night. I wore the Merlin Cam both days and took some shots. Mommy's youngest brother was there and Grandpa's college friend and his wife came for Christmas Eve dinner. Mommy cooked the meal.

Mommy cooking.
I'm told it was good, but since it contained pork I wasn't allowed to have any.

Mommy's youngest brother and Grandpa and Grandma in the living room

The Christmas tree had gifts for me under it but I wasn't allowed to touch even though Grandma got to open a present on Christmas Eve just because Grandpa's friend's wife brought it for her. This was no fair.

The most disturbing thing about Christmas Eve was that at night when I got tired I and wanted to go to bed after my night walk (where I saw a FOX by the way!!) I couldn't find our room. We always stayed upstairs in Mommy's oldest brothers' room which later became Mommy's grandma's room. This house has NO UPSTAIRS!! I found our suitcases in Grandpa's office, but there was NO BED in the office! I therefore wandered around with Jack in my mouth whining. Mommy brought me into the office and pointed to the couch and said. We are sleeping here. This was TOTALLY wrong because I AM NOT allowed on couches at Grandma's house so how was I supposed to go to bed??!
When the guests left and Grandpa and Mommy's youngest brother were getting ready to go to church (Mommy and I don't go to church) Mommy worked some magic and made A BED appear out of the couch!! It was amazing and I climbed right on and went to sleep.

The next morning Mommy and I woke up before everyone else and Mommy hid the bed again.
Then we went for a VERY long walk. We found a nice park and walked some of the paths, but Mommy wouldn't let me walk all of them because she said they were too long and I still needed to walk back to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I was kinda mad about it, but then when we were 1/2 mile from the house I decided I was done with walking and wanted to cut through the backyards of the houses and go straight back to the house. Mommy said that was no and we had to walk the whole 1/2 mile. I was very tired when we got back and I decided to nap while Mommy and her brother played cards and dominoes and Grandma and Grandpa even played dominoes too! Then Missy and her family and her mommy's brother and his son came for Christmas and I got to open my presents! Because there were so many people in the living room Mommy and I sat under the piano.
I got a stuffed animal and a cloth ball which I tore apart within about 3 minutes, some more nuts, Mommy cookies, a big bone, and a tug toy. Grandpa and Grandma were in charge of putting the wrapping paper into a big garbage bag.
They have a gas fireplace in the living room, but it was too hot to turn it on.
After presents everyone went downstairs to look for a certain game. I'm not supposed to do stairs by myself, but I did.
I was worried about going up by myself after the game was found, but Mommy walked behind me and kept her hands on my hips just in case and I made it up without falling. They played the game and got really loud because Mommy and her brothers and her brother's wife take games very seriously. Missy and I hung out in the dining room to be safe. Then they had dinner and Missy and I couldn't have any even though it was turkey and I can have turkey because Missy CAN'T have turkey or she throws up. After dinner when everything was all cleaned up and put away Mommy and I went home and I went straight to bed on our proper bed that doesn't hide.

Finally, Mommy calculated how many miles we walked this year and it was 944.6. 867.9 were regular walks in town and 76.7 were hikes. That is less than normal, but not so bad if you consider that I was on limited walks for quite a while due to my toe amputation. You can see our Imaginary Walk to Alaska and Back if you want.

I hope you had a good holiday this year, and for those of you who don't get an actual physical copy of our Christmas card, here is what it looked like:

Happy Howlidays!

My Monthly Diary for November, 2011

This month Mommy and I took a three hikes which I wrote about earlier so you can go back and read about them if you haven't already. I earned my hiking badge. Mommy had trouble getting a photo of it, but I wanted to show you the nice tree picture on it.

Mommy sewed it onto my backpack with my other badges

Rover wearing my backpack.
Those are my Dog Scout badges, my PD badges
and my Relay for Life bronze team captain badge

All my county badges, and my TT and CGC badges

Mommy's favorite badge is the one with the skunk, but she thinks the one with the fish is the most appropriate for me, even though we aren't sure what fish have to do with hiking. We still keep all my badges on my backpack even though I can't wear it anymore since I broke those vertebrae.

Besides hiking this month we had all the leftover candy from Halloween. It was great. Mommy kept the candy out on the livingroom end table and I helped myself to some of it each night. I had trouble opening the box of Milk Duds that I took one night so I brought to Mommy to ask her to open it for me. Can you believe she opened it, but then she ate all but one of them! If I'd known she was going to be such a pig I'd have worked harder to get the box open on my own.

This month we also had a really big wind, not as big as the one that made Mommy take me on The Dumbest Vacation Ever, but it was big enough to knock a 10 foot long branch off the neighbor's tree into our yard. I helped Mommy by breaking the twiggy parts off. She appreciated the help and the branch is now in the corner of our yard making the base of our new brush pile. We had a really nice brush pile in our yard for a couple years which the birds, small mammals and reptiles liked a lot. I liked it too because it was full of bird, small animal and reptile smells, but then Mommy had some men come in and trim our trees and they took away and chipped our whole brush pile before Mommy saw what they were doing. We know they thought they were being nice, but both Mommy and I, not to mention the critters, were very sad about the loss. Mommy had been saving bush trimmings and fallen branches to make a new pile, but it was a sad little one. this new branch has really improved it.

Finally this month Thanksgiving happened. Mommy made pumpkin pie and I got to lick the mixing bowl which was wonderful. Then Mommy and I went down to Grandma and Grandpa's new house. I hadn't been in the house since they moved in and I spent about a half hour sniffing in every room. I came and got Mommy at one point and whined at her. I wanted to know where the squirrel window was. They had a great squirrel window at their old house. Mommy showed me where they had a sliding door for me to look out, but I didn't see any squirrels. Grandpa says they are there because he keeps seeing them raiding his bird feeder. Grandpa's college friend and his wife were there. He is the friend who has Alzheimers and he is more forgetful now, but he still liked it when came over to sit on his feet. Grandma forgot I was there at dinnertime and she tripped over me while I was lying down nice and quiet next to Mommy. Mommy had to catch her to keep her from falling and I decided it would be safer to spend dinner under the table if people were going to try to stand on me. I didn't get any turkey because of my tummy, but I did get some mashed potatoes, a bit of roll, and pie crust. I wore my camera so here are some shots of Grandma and Grandpa's house:

There is cheese on that coffee table and I didn't even try to steal it!

The sideboard with its holy light

Looking out from under the table

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and got some turkey and mashed potatoes and pie. Remember to be good so that Santa Paws will bring you presents next month!

Hike 10 or Hike 15 or 16...The Last Hike

Up until a couple of years ago Mommy and I had the Thanksgiving tradition of taking an all day hike and then stopping by a friend's great big Thanksgiving gathering for pie on the way home. (Her friend is the oldest of 11 kids, which is an awful big litter for humans, and with all the spouses and kids and in-laws and leftovers like Mommy they rent a church hall for the gathering and the church isn't far from our house). It was fun taking those hikes because hardly anyone is on the trails on Thanksgiving Day and we'd get to see a lot of wildlife, but then a couple years ago Mommy's oldest brother stopped inviting Grandma and Grandpa to come to his house in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. When that happened Grandma and Grandpa decided they wanted Mommy and me to come to their house for dinner along with some old friends of theirs. So no more Thanksgiving Day hike.

So, we started a new tradition and now take a day before Thanksgiving Day hike. Mommy's work has a 1/2 day the day before Thanksgiving Day and Mommy doesn't do 1/2 days so that gave us the day for a hike. Today we took the last hike on the county hiking challenge. It was a wildcard hike which meant that we got to pick our own place to go so we went to the savanna that is not too far from our house. Mommy had to do some laundry first and I was VERY impatient to get going, but we got out around 1 p.m. The preserve wasn't empty like on Thanksgiving Day, but there were no bikes and no screaming kids and only one person who thinks that hiking means you talk loud on your cellphone so we got to see a lot of wildlife after all. Shortly after we started our hike we spotted two cooper's hawks circling over the savanna and then a third one came swooping out of the trees by the wetlands and flew so low over our heads that Mommy actually flinched! It flew off to join the other two and they all circled and swooped around the prairie. When we got to the wetlands we were suddenly mooned by a good two dozen ducks all at the same time. That seemed a bit rude to me, but Mommy laughed and said something yummy must be in the water. A little further along the hike we saw a flock of Canada geese hanging out debating about continuing south or staying at the savanna for the winter and then we spotted two sandhill cranes hunting mice in a burn area. I watched them quietly with Mommy for quite awhile, but then I couldn't take it anymore and I had to bark at them. Mommy made me move along at that point. After hiking a bit more we came to the wildlife watching area and we spotted a great egret! We see snowy egrets a lot, but we've never seen a great egret. He must have been a migration straggler. Then four more sandhill cranes flew overhead. I think they were going to go visit the ones we saw hunting mice. Maybe they were going to have Thanksgiving together. Finally, just as we were about to finish our hike three deer came bouncing out of a small clump of trees and ran right alongside us!! This was WAAAAAY too much for me and I dragged Mommy along behind me as I totally forgot my hiking manners and chased them. When they disappeared into another clump of trees I barked and hopped around trying to get them to come back out and run some more, but they didn't.

The wildcard hike was listed as counting as one hike, but, since we did a 3.6 mile hike for our wildcard Mommy isn't sure if it would officially count as two hikes so that is why we aren't sure if we are at 15 or 16 for the official count. Doesn't matter though since we only needed to do 7 hikes to earn our badge. I was very tired by the end of the hike, probably because of the deer chase, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to hop in the car, but I did manage to climb in and I fell asleep as soon as the car started up. Mommy ran a couple errands with me in the car, including picking up my hiking badge, and I gave her the stink eye each time she came back to the car and woke me up.

Despite all the critters we saw I didn't get a single picture of one. Here are some of my shots I thought you might like though:

looking across the savanna

there wasn't a cloud in the sky

stopping for a drink

Doesn't this one look creepy?
Mommy liked the way you only see the guy's feet and shadow.