Hugs

As promised, here is another random photo of a shelter dog looking for a little love and affection. We spent about 15 minutes with this dog just to take photos and post them on the petfinder website. Moral of this post is:
When looking for your next companion animal, consider adopting, don't just go shopping!

Another New Neighbor

Exciting news, especially for our neighbor's Mustang mare. As you can see in the photos, we now have a very recent addition to the neighborhood. This is the mare's second attempt at having a mule foal. She sadly lost the one last year. But so far, so good, with this little guy. For the first 24 hours he had to be separated from the mare. No one was very happy about that. The mare had to be milked, and the foal had to be bottle fed, but the good thing was that there was a lot of imprinting going on in the process. This all made for a very friendly and fearless little john mule.

We are all keeping our fingers and hooves crossed that this year's mule baby stays healthy.

PS...I forgot to tell you that it was born on my mule Polly's 24th birhtday..it's a good day to be born!

Colorado State Flower

Here's a Wordless Wednesday flower that cropped up near the downstairs doorway. I couldn't resist taking its photo.

Columbine......

Dog Day Morning

Maggie patiently waiting....

Okay, Let's go Mom.....

What's taking so long......

Finally, on the road again!
But I wish that I didn't have to wear this silly jacket.

For Wordless Wednesday....

Machu Pichu, Peru

Shelter Animals

I'm going to spend a little time today talking about one topic that is very close to my heart. The topic; animal shelters, and the sad fact that there are an overwhelming number of unwanted and abandoned dogs and cats in them. When we lived in Arizona (2000-2006) my husband and I spent one day each week volunteering at our local shelter. We would photograph every adoptable dog that came through the doors and put them on the petfinder.com web site with the hope that some of them would find homes. A few did, for that we were grateful, and that's what kept us going. But sadly, most of them had to be put down when the shelter ran out of space. It's been over 3 years now and I have not had the heart to delete any of the thousands of photos that I took. I'm going to post a few random shots of some of these dogs.

I don't know if they were the lucky ones or not, but they all just wanted someone to care about them. They wanted to be loved like we all love our own family dog/s.

Okay here's where I get on the "bandwagon", and I’m sorry if you've heard this too many times before. I wish that there were stricter laws governing the breeding of dogs and cats in this country. I think that people who do not spay or neuter their family dogs should be fined. I think that it should be made mandatory to obtain a special breeding license for each litter. We all need to take more responsibility for the overwhelming number of animals that are literally disposed of every day in this country.

To know a shelter animal is to love one, but we can’t save them all.

All in a Days work

This morning I took a short hike with Maggie.

Maggie is our Border Collie. She has been our top-notch trail dog, horse getter, and just all around good friend. Like all old dogs, she is starting to show her age. I try to judge just how much to expect of her, and not overdo our daily walks. This time of year there's a lot to see......miniature horses, prairie dogs, cows, and birds just to name a few.

The old dog loves to sniff "everything". I'm not sure if it's really necessary or if she is using all the sniffs just to take little rest breaks. It's OK with me, as long as she still wants to get that leash on and go, I'll let her pick the pace.

Here's some of what she sniffed this morning.