dog days 1

I was able to take a couple of days off from work to go down to Coarsegold, CA (between Fresno and Yosemite) to visit my sister, do some crafty things, and give the dogs a nice mini vacation. Ellen and Patrick (my brother in law) have a gorgeous piece of property with a seasonal creek.
She and I spent a fair amount of time sitting at the table making things (I'll show you soon), but we went out one morning with the dogs to "hike" down to the creek and enjoy how beautiful the day was getting to be.
The dogs (Louie and Ella) had a great time wandering around, investigating cow pies (Ella), barking at the horses (mostly Louie), running in the water (both), and just being loose. At home they are couch potatoes (in fact both are snoring on the bed right now), but when they are here, not only do they get spoiled rotten by Aunt Ellen and Uncle Pat, they get to go pretty much anywhere they want. We did take precautions so they wouldn't interfere with the pregnant horses (no matter how big they are, the horses are a LOT bigger) or the cows (closed a gate), but it was great watching them run. Each morning I'd take them to the front pasture and Ella would run from one end to another chasing squirrels and just being a happy dog. Louie would follow her a short way, then turn around and come back to me (he's really very lazy). He watched her closely, and if she seemed to be having too much fun, he'd trot down to her and see what she was doing, but mostly he watched. Part of what was so great for me to see them enjoying themselves so much was the recovery of Louie from 4 ACL surgeries, and Ella's recovery from a spinal cord stroke last year. Truly amazing and inspiring.