Love Beside Me

"If this is love beside me
I’m working on forgiveness
Laying the past down behind me
Letting go the ways that I’ve been hurt
Let the rivers rise and rage
I’ll try to stand with grace
If everything is love"........Sarah McLachlan

Horse Yawn

Today was a good day. It was the first time I've been able to ride in quite some time. Solana was very relaxed. :D

A Dog's Memory...

...and other things I wonder about.

Gwyn's behavior has gradually improved over the past few days and now she seems to be back to her normal self. She's not too fixated on what's going on outside. On our walk Tuesday morning she very much wanted to go off in a different direction--a farther walk than we normally go. She was spending a lot of time looking around. Which made me start wondering about how dogs' memories work.

I've read some (ridiculous) theories that dogs can only retain things for so brief a time that as soon as we leave their sight they've forgotten us. Leading to the equally ridiculous notion that that explains why they're always happy to see us. I don't subscribe to this notion. However, I also recognize that dogs are much better at living in the moment than we are...a feat I strive for so much that I have a bracelet that reminds me to do just that. So, where does that leave us? It leaves me wondering what was going on in Gwyn's brain as she was obsessively looking for the elusive black dog. Feel free to weigh in with theories of your own!

On a different note, we could discuss cats' brains! Note in the above picture that Xander is lying on a string. A boot lace, to be more precise. Those are Xander's current favorite toys. He carries them around the house and will lie on top of one and roll around making sweet little "play with me" noises. :D

Birthday Girl

Guess who's six years old today? That's right. Gwyn. And I elected to use a slightly different perspective than the traditional shot :D Thought maybe I needed to shake things up since I've been suspiciously absent for 2 months! Geez. The quick version is that I've had some health issues that I won't go into here. One aspect has been a lack of energy and a lack of focus...with the result being that I just needed a hiatus from blogging. I'm feeling good again and am hoping to start back posting regularly.

So...back to Gwyn. Hard to believe she's six. She's doing really well....except that I don't think her birthday's turning out the way she would like.

It all started last night. She went out in the back yard for a little while. When she came in she rushed to the front sliding glass door and stared out and whined. It soon became apparent she was in that full-on greyhound fixated-obsessive....thing. You hound people know what I mean, right? She paced. She whined. She went out. She came back in. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This morning it started up again and I think I figured it out. When I went to take her for her walk there was a timid black dog running loose. He (or she) appeared very interested in us but wouldn't let us get too close. I think this dog had been running around and gotten Gwyn all excited. I think that's what she wants for her birthday! I've tried explaining that it's just not gonna' happen....she's starting to believe me...begrudgingly.

Clearly we set the bar too high last year...after all, this is what we got her last year:

Because she's the

From now on it's stuffed animals and extra treats for birthdays!