Lena’s Back!

Cousins & Friends

Time to fast forward a year and Lena’s back with us for 2 weeks, this time it is dog sitting.  She is all grown up now, bigger than I am but we are still good buddies.  I am so glad her family goes to Florida without her every year so we can have her at our house!  Katie is still not really into hanging out with Lena so I get to play with her mostly by myself.  She likes to pester my poor sister and she doesn’t have the heart to woof back and her so Lena keeps it up.

Lena came a bit later in the winter this year so we did not have as much snow to play in but that was ok too.  Mom started her training for the marathon right before Lena got here so she took Lena out with her on runs sometimes.  Katie has retired from running and I am just not all that into it with my short legs.  Lena seemed to enjoy it and it helped her mellow out a bit.  One morning mom had a bad accident with her just a block from home.  Lena got scared and tripped mom but she could not stop herself and fell right on her face.  Boy was it a mess.  Her whole face was covered in blood, her eye was all swollen, her lip was cut, her pants ripped but she would be alright.  She did not want to go out for about 3 days as she looked like someone had beaten her.  We all felt so bad but Lena did not do it on purpose.  After a few days mom ran with Lena again but paid better attention.

Waiting for mom again

The three of us dogs are luckily pretty smart as mom took us on nice long walks and had to juggle 3 flexi leashes!  We all had a place to walk, I was left, Lena middle and Katie right.  We figured this out after about 10 mins and after that rarely got tangled.  We ran into many people that commented on how well we all walked together and how color coordinated we were!  Walking with more dogs is always more fun because everyone sniffs different things so it is more interesting!  Lena likes to retrieve tennis balls, Katie and I don’t understand this behavior but Lena is a retriever so we accept it, just as I am a scent hound and Katie is a guard dog – we are each born with our instincts.

Our cat Sophie was not real thrilled about Lena being at our house, but that is nothing new, she does not really like dogs.  Bert is more like a dog than a cat, so sometimes Lena and I would really play with him until he got nasty.  Bert made Lena cry out of frustration on several occassions!  It seemed like Lena had just gotten here and already the 2 weeks were over and she had to go home.  At least we can see her every now and then when we visit her house.