Little Dog Big Bark

My wife’s family liked to “go for a drive” to nowhere. My first real experience of this kind of an adventure was on Easter Sunday. I’ve gone places with them and we will usually take the “Scenic” route just so we can “see more country”, but we’ve always had a destination in mind as well as something to do when we got there. Easter Sunday was different. We loaded the trucks, yes trucks, kind of our own convoy, and off we went. Belle also go to come along for this journey. We left Snowville and headed “out west”. I’m not sure how we got there (I was doing homework) but, we ended up in Montello, NV – Middle of nowhere! By this time, some of the kids were getting restless and hungry, so we headed to Grouse Creek to have our picnic we packed. On the way we ran into some guys we know, they were “hunting” ground squirrels, so we stopped to chat. Belle wanted to get outside for a little walk and potty break. She was sporting her new Utes game day shirt, but that wasn’t enough…..it was COLD! Good thing we remembered to pack her coat. We learned something new about Belle on that little walk, she does not like the sound of guns, the first one she heard, she stopped dead in her tracks and wouldn’t move any further. We had to pick her up to even get her back in the truck. We finally made it to our lunch spot but the wind was blowing so hard and it was so cold that we had our picnic in the cabs of the trucks. On the road again…..we got back on the road and headed back towards Snowville. That was probably the longest six hour drive I have ever been on, but we made it back home and now I can say that I have been to Grouse Creek and Montello!

Small Dog Big Heart

One of Belle’s new favorite things to do is to go to my parent’s house and hang out with Batman and Smokey, my parent’s border collies. Their backyard is huge and Belle just runs around for hours. Whether it’s running along the fence with the neighbor dogs, chasing the birds, or playing fetch with Batman, Belle seems to be in 7th heaven there. Batman and Belle are pretty much best friends. Batman is a very mellow dog and doesn’t seem to mind that Belle is super hyperactive. When he is lying down, she likes to come up and try to jump on his head, keep in mind that Batman’s head is nearly as big as Belle’s whole body. After a while of jumping on him, she’ll usually just cuddle up next to him and they will hang out there until someone makes a sudden move….then she’s on the move again! Smokey, on the other hand, is not so mellow. He isn’t the biggest fan of Belle. He knows that it’s “his” house and he’s not going to let Belle just come over and take over. One of the best parts of our family trips to my parent’s house is that when we get home, Belle is all worn out and she is ready for a good nights sleep.

Belle the Snow Dog

Belle used to be scared of the stormy weather – if it was raining or snowing she didn’t even want to go outside. We would have to pick her up and take her out to the lawn for her to even go to the bathroom. She didn’t like to get her paws wet. Something has changed……she now LOVES it outside no matter what the weather. One of her new favorite things to do is chase the birds in the backyard. She’ll go out until she is soaked and then wants to come in and roll around on the couch to dry off. One night, it was snowing pretty bad and she went outside, when she came back in, she looked like a snowman.