Morning Glorious

Mornings are always interesting. Mom wakes up and her first job is assess her condition.  How many joints hurt?  Did she get enough sleep?  Can she stand up or does she need to sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes to let her feet get ready for the first step? And then, there's the stairs...don't even get her started about the stairs.  They can be a MAJOR obstacle to her well being.  There's two banisters to help out, but some mornings she has to sit on her rear end (really she calls it her butt descent) and slide down to the first floor.  The best thing is that we can impeded her progress by offering kisses, toys and generally showing how much we love having her at our level.  Ok...so that's what I think.  Mom finds the coffee that Dad makes for her to be the "best part of waking up."  Really?  Coffee over vizsla and yellow lab kisses?  Hmmmmm....I'll have to give this some thought. Coffee is about the only thing she eats or drinks that I don't want to eat.  It's blechy.

But, I digress....mom took her trekking poles, treats and loaded us into the car for a morning schlep.  (She schleps, we run, run run).  I don't have a gear for schlepping.  I have two gears  "On" and "Off".  "On" includes  faaaaasssst.

Did I mention that mom brought treats?  She makes most of our treats.  Today she brought "stinky cookies".  She makes them twice a year and freezes them.  They can only be made on days when ALL the windows in the house can be open...the main ingredient is sardines and they (according to the humans in the house) smell vile.  Hence the name "stinky cookies".  But, you can see that we loooooove stinky cookies and come at a run for them.

Phew!  Fortunately, Mom saved some for me.  It took her a minute to treat me because she was laughing at my seed face

All, in all, it was a great morning.  We only walked half the field...it was that kind of a day, but one thing I've noticed about Mom; she would rather be out with us for a schlep that takes an hour to do what she could have done last month in 20 minutes.  She says it's good for her soul; fresh air, sunshine, the company of clowns (that's us), a hawk flying overhead, seeing a fox in the distance, and listening to the crazy honks of the Canadian Geese as they begin they're migration south.  If her soul is fed and her spirit recharged, she can face the day.

Looks like today was successful.  Wet feet, sunshine and laughing.  We only hope that tomorrow morning can be the same.