A Very Good Dog

This one is hard to write. We always knew the day would come. Our sweet old dog Penelope made the return trip home from New Mexico with us OK but it was hard on her we could tell. She loved being back to her grass yard after having only a landscape rock yard there. We saw her make doggie “grass angels” lying on her back and wriggling about to scratch similar to when the grand kids lie on their backs in the snow and move their arms and legs to make an angel. She loped along the fence line doing her surveillance several times too. She was also exhausted and laid for hours on her bed and struggled to rise. It was a beautiful day for March in the mid seventies. After having her dinner she had a coughing spell (more and more common) and I let her out and she went out into the grass and collapsed. She lay there for awhile and finally got up. We decided to take her in to the vet and knew that it was probably time. It was and we stayed with her to the end stroking her soft head and ears.

What makes a dog a “good” dog. It wasn't her pedigree, she came from a mixed lab breed litter. She had a golden lab mother and a Chesapeake brown lab father so far as they were able to determine. There were gold pups, browns and solid blacks and Penelope with her black with brown undertones and white on chest and paws. The litter was hand raised by a family we knew and Emily saw them at three days old. We wanted a female and we picked her. We are fairly certain that she out-lived all her litter mates at 14 years and 5 months.

It wasn't her perfect obedience that made her a “good” dog either. She learned all her commands at obedience class but she never learned to walk/heel nicely on a leash. She was just too distracted by all the great smells and would either pull like a sled dog or dart from one side of the side walk to the other almost tripping you.

She wasn't dainty, she drank like a horse and dribbled water far and wide. In her puppy years she chewed up some good stuff, a bean bag chair and a wood handle on a roll top desk. She tore up the grass in the back yard with her tennis ball chasing. We always had to put fencing around and through the gardens to keep her from trampling everything.

I guess it was her doggie disposition that made her such a good dog. She really just wanted to please us most of all. She loved being with her people and doing stuff with us. The kids took her along jogging. Once she jumped out of the car window going after geese at the park. She was compliant in keeping off the furniture and did not try to dart out the door or gate. She loved going on our hikes and she is in most of my posts about hiking. She would suddenly swerve off trail if there was a stream or lake nearby. She was a master at catching food in her mouth. She LOVED popcorn.

She was our empty nest dog to keep us company after the kids all became adults and left. She was a gentle dog with the grand babies and NEVER showed any aggression even when they followed her around hanging on her tail or poked fingers in her mouth to feel her teeth. She let one year old Will lie on her bed with his head on her side. If she got nervous she would just get up and walk away from them. Up until a year or so ago she had to jump to get her evening milk bones. The toddlers thought that it was so funny to see her jump straight up in the air multiple times. She wore costumes at Halloween and enjoyed greeting all the kids who came to the door.

She was fun and sweet. There will never be another one like her. Farewell old friend you were a very good dog. The photos are all from Steve's archives spanning many years and are in no chronological order.

Fun in New Mexico Part Three

We were able to spend six weeks this year and were able to enjoy some new hikes in addition to going back to some previous favorites. We were on the east side of the valley this year so a favorite evening activity was to drive east toward the Organ mountains outside of Las Cruces and wait for the sunset. We had a particular spot with a close up mountain view and no human habitation around. In fact one evening we heard a pack of coyotes or a den of howling coyotes close by. We were treated to a couple of beautiful panoramic sunsets there. The color was most often to the west away from the Organ mountains but occasionally there would be some color in the clouds right over the sillouette of the Organs off to the east.

Driving through the valley near the Rio Grande is where all the agriculture takes place. I liked this tree lined private drive in between the fields. The pecan tree orchards are bare at this time of the year but are starting to be pruned and irrigated in preparation for the coming growing season. A whole orchard is flooded section by section using the irrigation canals that surround each one. 

One day we drove twenty miles on dirt roads to the west and south of the city to check out the Aden Crater area. It is a volcanic area and once we found it we hiked a mile or so over to go inside. It was our favorite hike of the season. We were the only ones there besides the cattle grazing nearby. It was a beautiful wind-swept day. The black volcanic rock rises up to form a circular crater but not a dome. Inside we found some early blooming flowers in a sheltered spot. There are some crevaces in the rim but mostly the center is filled with grasses and cacti.

The first two weeks of March are the start of Spring in Las Cruces and we enjoyed the flowering trees around town. I had to get a picture of one of the water towers because they all have murals depicting historical scenes. They are artfully done. 

The only downer of our stay was that I had to make a couple ER visits to get checked out for dizziness and for the doctors to put me on and then adjust medication for hypertension. I had to get a digital blood pressure cuff and start monitoring. I felt pretty awful and tired on starting the meds and couldn't do much for a week or so. I am still working on all that now that we are back in Wyoming.

New hikes that we went on this year were about a mile up the Baylor Canyon Pass Trail (before it started to rain) that crosses over the Organ Mountains and a Chihuahuan Desert Discovery Trail near the smaller Dona Ana Mountains. We enjoyed them both.

Lastly, here are a few photos of the little rental house. It really worked out very well for us, but it might be fun to try something new next time.