A winter day in the Rockies

I am not good at resting. I am a Border Collie personality. So, of course, I was outside with my pups today, albeit more sedately than usual.

It is fair to say that relative to my regular life, I rested today - but I don't feel any better yet. It seems as if our illnesses may make all our Christmas plans fall apart due to serious concerns about how contagious we are. I definitely don't want to make anyone else sick, especially not any older relatives, so we'll do whatever the health care professionals say that we should. I suspect that may be a quarantine.

On a different topic, we had a big snowfall yesterday, and then the usual winds hit today. Amazingly, Shyla is not afraid of the intense winter winds that routinely blow at 30 to 70 mph around here. K always was skittish about the wind... so I expected that Shyla would be too. I need to remember, in all facets of life, that they are very different dogs. They may be the same breed and they may both have incredibly sweet and sensitive spirits - but, in many important ways, Shyla is unique and wonderful in her own way.

In these first three photos, you can see the snow flying through the air in the wind around Shyla. I never took photos like this of K because of her fear of the wind. Shyla actually seemed to enjoy the wind, as unbelievable as that might sound.

Shyla made a game of wind today. It would pick up the snowflakes all around us and whirl them past us. Shyla would chase them, biting at the snowflakes in the air just in front of her snout. Because she's a genius dog (in my unbiased opinion), she figured out very rapidly that she couldn't catch the jet-speed snowflakes and stopped the game. It was fun to see her puppy spirit during the brief game!

In other pup news, we have good signs about R's health. We haven't had new blood tests yet. However, the Runner has been cooking a special diet for R over the past month. R has gained 6 pounds in that time, returning him to his normal weight for the first time since August. He'd wasted away while he was sick so I think that the weight gain is a huge victory! It also points to commercial kibble as being a big part of the problem.

I also see a luster to his fur and an intensity in his eyes that I haven't seen in a long time.

And, most importantly, he's acting like R, a recognized nutcase in the Mango Minster Cracker Dog category last year!

As soon as I recover, I'll take him to the vet for his blood test which is due now. I suspect that it will confirm what I feel - that our boy is BACK!