Always on my mind

It has been snowing on and off since Saturday, creating a Winter Wonderland. We've hiked in snow and in the sunny breaks between snow squalls. If you look closely at R's eye in the photo below, you can see that he's gazing intently at a person. If you know R, you know that he only bestows this look on a few people, and the main one is the Runner.

As an aside, there's no news on R's cancer test yet so I'll have to make some calls tomorrow.

I participate in a photography group called the "Daily Dog Challenge" which challenges you to take a photo with a certain theme each day. Today's challenge was "Always on my mind" - and it involved photographing a place that you strongly associate with your dog.

I have certain places that I've been visiting with my dogs for years and years, particularly K and Shyla. So, this morning, Shyla and I started our snowbike ride on the plateau where K and I often watched the sunrise together. Shyla has carried on this tradition, although I've found that she likes to play and perch in different spots than K did.

It had snowed overnight... and it was gorgeous. I felt like K was with us.

It was also very cold, below 0°F, and Shyla had a frost beard for our entire ride.

Aside from having a shaved belly that is growing back its fur at an incredible rate, Shyla seems to be completely recovered from her laparoscopic spay.

After playing in the sunrise light until a cloud shaded the world, we headed up to Hug Hill. I'm sure that many of you remember how precious I felt that my trips to Hug Hill with K were as we approached the end of her life.

Here is K running across the peak last spring.

And here is Shyla doing the same. Of course, Shyla is younger and healthier than K was in the photo above so she added a bit of pizazz to her gallop, kicking up her heels.

And stretched out into a full galloping stride...

K loved to prop herself on a stump that's near the top of Hug Hill. She did it on almost every visit to the hill. She was squinting in this photo because her chemotherapy gave her hypersensitivity to bright light.

At one point in the spring, K went through a rough patch, and I thought that we had no more visits to Hug Hill in our future because the hike was too strenuous for her. It turned out that I was wrong because K rallied. We started hiking there regularly again - but I felt like each visit was "extra" and extremely precious. Consequently, I started a ritual. For every "extra" visit to Hug Hill, I'd find a small rock and show it to K to inspect. Then, I'd put it in one of the crevices on top of K's stump. You can see the accumulating pebbles in the photo below.

After K passed, I felt like those pebbles represented an important lesson from K - to seize and appreciate each day - so I collected them into a jar that sits on my dresser. Each of those pebbles represented a day that K and I lived and loved together. These pebbles inspire me to get out in the forest with Shyla even on days when I have lots of pain from my spine.

At first, when Shyla arrived, I felt a little funny about her propping her paws on K's stump. But, over these months, it's become "K and Shyla's stump". I hope that Shyla feels K's spirit whenever she stands tall and proud on Hug Hill.

Yes, in all of these places, K is "always on my mind", and she will be forever.