Dog Day Afternoon at Ball Creek

My name is Brooke, and I was asked to sit in for my grandma on blog duty this morning.  Usually, I get to rest on Annie's bed while Grandma writes the blog.
She must be feeling lazy today.

And, I can understand why.

We covered a lot of ground yesterday up at the Nature Conservancy north of Bonners Ferry.

We thought it was going to be a usual day of hanging around the Lovestead.  I was thinking that I might even spice up the day by sneaking over to the neighbors’ when Grandma wasn’t looking.

She’s rigged up this new get-up to keep me home.  It’s a long rope with a small piece of wood on the end.

I can move wherever I want when I’m outside, but it kinda slows me down. 

Worse than that, I’m humiliated to be the only Border Collie in Border Collie nation to have to lug something like that wherever I go.

She says it works cuz she can hear me when I try to sneak off across the crusty snow. It’s hard to keep that piece of wood quiet.

I was figuring yesterday, though, that the neighbors are probably missing my visits, and they wouldn’t mind seeing me----rope, wood and all.

But then, she announced, “We’re going for a ride.  Load up.”

So, all four of us jumped in the car, and, of course, I rode shotgun, like I always do.

We headed north.  It seemed like we traveled for a long time before she stopped.

It was at a bakery. 

She came out with a sack of bread, and she stuck it on the floor in front of my seat, telling me to leave it alone.

I did.  I try to be a good doggie.

The next part of our trip didn’t take too long.  We drove north on the highway and then turned off and crossed the Kootenai Valley. 

We drove down a dirt road for a while, and then she turned into a wooded area and parked.

She walked from the car to the woods, stood near a tree and squatted.  I think that may have had something to do with all the coffee she was drinking.

We all gathered around in a circle and watched. I won’t tell you what she was doing because she might not like that.

Anyway, she finished up and then headed down the trail.

Our grandma kept asking us to stop running so she could take our pictures.

It was fun being out there, but I got kinda tired of Kiwi.

We are herding dogs, but I see no reason why we have to herd each other.

I don’t do it to Kiwi, but she sure won’t let me out of her sight, and she never wants me anywhere near Kea.

So, that got to be a drag.

Kea’s lucky cuz she gets to go wherever she wants, and so does Todd, the Wonder Dog.

He always likes to lead the pack, and Grandma has to call out to him sometimes because he gets so far ahead of us.  

We wanted to go down to the big river, but Grandma kept telling us “No.”

I think that may have had something to do with the fact that when we first went off the trail, every one of us got covered with those little “velcro” seeds that come off from dead plants along the river.

I bet she was thinking that if we had all our velcro and got wet, she was gonna have a mess to clean up before we got back in the car.

So, we stayed out of the river.

We did scare up a few pheasants, and she called Bill to tell him about the pheasants.

One time Kiwi started picking on me so bad, when I was trying to rub off that velcro that I just plain played dead.

Kiwi seemed proud.

But then I came back to life and continued my seed removal.

We had a great time on that hike over the dike, and when we got back to the car, she pulled out a comb.

Each of us got a pretty nice comb-down before getting back in the car.

We all went right to sleep and enjoyed dreams of a fun dog-day afternoon near the Kootenai River.

I hope we get to go again cuz any day without having to drag around that rope and that stupid stick of wood is a really good day.

The End