My Weekend

Shawn found out late Thursday night that he was going to get to go to Dallas with the rugby team on Friday.  So Friday morning, I drove him to the airport, then I came home to work.

My job has been going well.  We've hired a number of new English teachers, so I have begun to mentor some of the new teachers.  I have 4 "mentees," 3 of whom live in Washington state.  The 4th one used to live in Seattle...but has recently moved to Denver.  Ironic, don't you think?  From what she has told me, I think she lives about a mile away from where Shawn lived before we were married.

Anyways...after putting in a few hours of work on Friday, I took Satchel to the vet...to get his claws trimmed.  Shawn and I agree that we just don't feel comfortable doing it ourselves, and our vet is only about a mile and a half from our house.  I'm so glad I did it!  It's nice that Satchel no longer scratches me when he steps on my foot when I have no shoes on.  :)  Because of my various errands on Friday, I ended up having to work until about 11:00pm Friday night.

Since Shawn had gone to Dallas, poor Satchel was restless and confused Friday night.  If Shawn's gone at night, he's usually at rugby practice and comes home between 10:00 and 10:30.  By 10:00 on Friday night, Satchel was trying to sleep on my lap...but every time he heard a car door slam outside or any other noise, his head would pop up and he'd start looking around.  I really think he was looking for Shawn.

On Saturday, Satchel and I went hiking with a couple girlfriends of mine!  We went to Wallace Falls, which is a hike that Shawn and I have done a few times.  The weather was absolutely perfect for a hike (upper 60s and sunny), and the trail was packed.  The girls I went with had never really been hiking, so it was strange for me to actually be the experienced hiker of the group.  :-)  Satchel had an awesome time, and he did so good!  He gladly did the entire 4.75 miles with us (roundtrip), and he happily let lots of people pet him (I honestly would estimate that more than 100 people petted him on Saturday!).  He also played nice with every dog we encountered...which was a lot of dogs!  Unfortunately, none of us had a camera, so I have no pictures from our hike.

Poor Shawn...the weather was perfect here, but Dallas was about 35 degrees and rainy!  The weather for the game was pretty much miserable.  But his team won!  They've now started their season with 2 wins...which is more wins than they had all last season.  I took Satchel with me to the airport to pick him up Saturday night, and Satchel was definitely a happy pup.

Finally...today.  We started off early, since I was the lector for 8:00am Mass.  Then we brought home McDonald's breakfast.  We were thinking of going to Meadowdale Park with Satchel, but the beach access is closed until this summer so they can repair the tunnel.  We decided that it's not really worth it to do the full hike there if we couldn't access the beach, so we tried a new park not too far from here.  It was great!  It was a super easy trail, so not strenuous.  There was a pond area with some tall grasses and weeds...and Satchel's retriever instincts totally kicked in!  It was fun to see him get super excited and start bounding through the grasses, and this was the first time we've seen him happily walk into the water.  I think he would be thrilled to be a hunting dog if we trained him for that.

On our way home, we stopped at a local co-op feed store and bought Satchel some better dog food than what we've been feeding him.  We're hoping that he'll be healthier (read: less gassy).  :)  Truthfully, this stuff is more expensive, but our trainer pointed out that since this food is higher in protein, the adult dog will eat much less food and still be full (and have enough nutrition)...so ideally, the cost will end up being lower in the end.  As of today, our dog is eating better than we are!  (His new food contains things like roast duck, roast quail, blueberries, sweet potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes.)  We also got him his first bully stick, which he loved.  It also kept him busy for about 2.5 hours...so I'm very tempted to stockpile these things and give him one every time I have something important to do for work!  :-)  (And yes...I do know what bully sticks are.  I've also eaten Rocky Mountain Oysters...so it seems that Satchel and I are even.)

So...I think that's basically our weekend!  I would promise to update the blog more often...but, well, I've been making that promise a lot lately, and you can see how well that's gone.  :-)