Hangin with my homies

It wasn't too long ago that I decided I had no patience for those really tiny people that fall somewhere between puppies and people. Despite the fact that occasionally they smelled like something I'd like to roll in, I didn't appreciate their unpredictability and seeming lack of regard for personal space or the incredibly strong attachment that my fur has to my skin. That was before I met the Shays kids and realized I was way off on my initial assessment of super tiny people. First off, once my peeps made it clear that my bed was off limits, at least I had a hiding place. And once I discovered how terrible those little people were at getting food into their mouths and how much of that food ended up on their faces, clothes and the floor I quicky realized that they where WAY better to stick with than big people and now I'm their biggest fan. As long as they stay off my bed. Really, we've got the same basic priorities. Food, snuggles, playing, dirt, food, attention, food and food. I'm not sure how good they are at swimming yet but I have confidence that we've probably got that in common too. So I guess you CAN teach an old dog new tricks... If said tricks are cognizant of old dogs physical boundaries and are usually covered in the remnants of their last meal.

The Plague

We have it. "We" meaning the short one and I. Yesterday we hit the road for a quick trip to Bend and Mt Shasta only to find, while Anna was giving a presentation yesterday and couldn't stop coughing, that her demise was soon to come. Hope we made it out before infecting the tall guy! When we left home she was loading all the fun stuff (bikes, dirt shoes, helmets) and now we are sitting in the Oakridge house drowning in balled up Kleenex and empty chicken broth boxes. To add to this viral intruder, shorty decided to drop caffeine figuring she might as well suffer all at once. What does this mean for me? That I need reinforcements ASAP. HELP!!!! She won't let me photograph her so I leave you with these lovely shots from yesterday's drive.

I LOVE smelling luggage

Sometimes I think that maybe I should have taken up drug or bomb sniffing as I find sniffing luggage to be immensely satisfying. Take, for example, the bag of smells my short one just came home with. She's been in DC for a week which is a smelly city. Her shoes have walked through the halls of the senate and house buildings, into the offices of senators and congresspeople (a couple of them even had dogs in them!), through the DC metro (she calls it the gerbil tube), along miles and miles of side walk littered with stinky city stuff and through airports and hotels for 6 days. That bag of dirty cloths and shoes is like Christmas for a dog! I must have spent a solid 39 minutes sniffing all the sniffs out of it when she got home. Also, I was wondering why there were so many tall shoes and suites but hey, what happens in DC stays confusing to dogs. I'm just glad she's back and that I don't live where she was because it smelled a lot like concrete and the place we go sometimes where I mostly stay in the car and very little like dirt, sweat and trees which are the smells I relate to fun. Well, also I like the smell of things that are decaying but my peeps don't approve of that.

While the short one was in DC pretending to be tolerant of crowds, uncomfortable attire, a couple inches taller, and bad food, the tall one was taking a really cool instructor certification program at the indoor bike park in Portland. I think we can all agree that this week JW wins for coolest job. Also, he's now a certified mountain bike instructor so maybe he'll be able to teach the short one how to ride a bike at a speed that does not necessitate quite as much waiting on our parts. Though, these days I never turn down a break. So, here are some photos of marginal quality from the past week. Though it seems the only one from DC is of the tiny plastic bike pins that Anna refuses to wear and Congressman B always takes great pleasure in pushing.