Life in Montana is pretty darn cool — especially for a dog. Well, not recently — it has actually been ridiculously HOT for all of us but you know what I mean.
Capella is my current longer distance walking buddy and so we left the house and headed out on our usual four-miler. This is an out-and-back walk down our gravel road that has just a little stretch in which a leash is required.
Most of the walk is fenced well on both sides and you can hear a car coming from a good distance — yesterday one car passed us during the entire four miles!
I started with Capella and she quickly turned into Pig-Pen…
She stopped to chat with the bull. He reported that nothing unusual is happening in the neighborhood.
We sometimes do portions of this walk with Suzanne, and when Skylar was alive and well she would lose her mind over the ground squirrels. Skylar would race off to find those squirrels, completely deaf to Suzanne’s calls, and come back covered in dirt from trying to dig out the squirrels.
Capella has started to do the same thing — as if Skylar passed along the Squirrel Patrol job to Capella before she left.
I think of Skylar on that walk — an incredibly special dog gone much too soon.
In addition to legions of squirrels that have never actually been caught — dogs are such optimists! — the walk has various wildflowers throughout the summer.
And cows — so many cows.
Yesterday we discovered fresh bear scat (aka poop) on our walk!
Note to Self: Carry Bear Spray in the future.
The walk has shade for taking sun breaks…
…and irrigation ditches for a quick dip.
Since they are filled with mountain run-off water, the ditches are drying up but Capella knows which ones still have water…
We saw a rafter (aka flock) of wild turkeys…
Home! That is our arena in the background…
The arena is getting good use these days. We are doing regular draft practice and Capella — who most definitely inherited the Zoey Bean Jumping Gene — is learning about agility.
I am very blessed to live here with these dogs.
What blessings are you noticing today?