on saturday, we took our guests to the ocean. you would not believe how happy atlas was to be out and about on an adventure. (never mind that we had gone on an adventure right before we left for the ocean – to the recycle bin. hahaha.) he had the biggest smile on his face as he dragged me all around.

unfortunately for atlas, i didn’t let him run. we also did a fair amount of sitting and waiting while amy and katherine went on without us. but he was still happy. and we were so happy for him.

the good news is that his splint earned him lots of extra attention and sympathy and scratches and a giant dog treat.

i must say, atlas really hasn’t slowed down at all. we went to the vet today to get his splint rewrapped and one of the girls there commented that she had never seen a dog move quite so fast with a splint on. he is as speedy as ever. i guess it is a lovely testament to adaptability, even if i wish he would move more slowly.

it looks like the splint might stay on for two more weeks and then he can do the rest of his healing without it. here’s hoping.

just when i think atlas can’t get any more adorable, he goes and does. just look at him.

i think the splint is supposed to slow him down. atlas’s opinion: “i am just as speedy with the splint on as i am with it off!”

there is a fine line between feisty and ornery. the line depends on the current mood of the observer.

atlas’s new nickname is thumper. can you guess how he acquired it?

unfortunately for atlas, he is starting to develop rubbing sores so i am having to curb his enthusiasm for speed and limit his walking and movement. (i was good about enforcing no running, jumping, or playing. i was not so good about enforcing no movement. that seemed like a lot of no’s for an energetic pup.)

the amount of attention atlas receives seems to have increased exponentially.

when this is all over, i am going to have to post pictures of all his splints together. they are so colorful. the last one had bright yellow tape with green dog bones. the current one has aqua tape with navy stars.

i am happy to report that the atlas and elizabeth house is more peaceful. atlas is adjusting to his splint and we are adjusting to our new slower mode of life.

after the first day, which was horrible, and the second day, during which he tried to remove his splint every time i went upstairs for more than a second (i finally asked a neighbor to come and sit with him so i could take a shower), he seems much more tolerant of it.

astonishingly, a week of inactivity has also been tolerable for him. he seems neither terribly depressed nor terribly saucy. i have been giving him lots of massages and playing brain/mental games with him and i think he is enjoying all the attention.

he is not, however, a very good invalid. he keeps stomping around with his splint and running around the living room and whenever i decide we’ve walked enough and try to turn around, he tries to tug me in the opposite direction. we went to the park for his potty walk the other day (it’s practically right next door) and he kept trying to run off into the field.

the hardest parts of this involve the stairs and the bed.

after two attempts to sleep downstairs on the couch, both of which worked well for atlas (besides the fact that he doesn’t like to sleep on the couch at night – nights are for beds) but not so well for me (the second night, he slowly took over more and more of the couch until my entire lower half was dangling off of it and i decided i might as well sleep on the floor), he is allowed upstairs once a day at bedtime. if he has to go outside in the middle of the night, we sleep on the couch for the remainder of the night and do not go upstairs again.

after much trial and error, i finally figured out a way to make getting on and off the bed safer and easier by creating stairs out of pillows. what does atlas do? he ignores my stairs and leaps over them as usual. this is not so bad when getting on the bed, but it is terrible when getting off. twice, he got around me and leaped and landed and his face instantly contorted in pain. now, i have to be very stern and make him wait and lead him off. (i tried lifting him off the first couple of nights. let’s just say that didn’t go well.)

going up the stairs seems fine. it’s going down that’s the problem. he does not know how to go down slowly. i tried carrying him down a couple of times. (again, let’s just say that didn’t go well at all.) the best way i can describe my current method is to say that he tries to race down normally while i stand in front of him and block him and hold him back by pushing on his chest. this does slow him down, but it takes him forever to start because he does not understand what i am doing and why i am in his way. i actually think it would work the best if he sat on my lap and i slid down the stairs, but he refuses to try this.

of course, there are blessings in everything. i am learning to ask for help and support and to receive it. i have a rich and warm community. and i am appreciating the opportunity to slow down and take care of atlas in a new way.

last night at bedtime, atlas was lying next to me on the bed – quietly snoring, his tummy rumbling, his head on my pillow, his cast resting on my heart and whacking me every once in a while – and i was overcome with gratitude and love.

well, folks, atlas is in a splint. doesn’t he look sad and adorable? i am counting my blessings that, considering how very active he is, this is the first time we’ve gone through something like this in our nine plus years.

we went hiking on wednesday with friends at the sandy river delta. he was racing down the path and slipped on a patch of mud and limped all the way home. it got worse instead of better, so i took him to the vet yesterday.

apparently he fractured a weight-bearing toe and the splint is to help him keep weight off of it. (i don’t know how long it will last. i think he would stay quieter without it.)

the vet said that he is supposed to stay quiet – no running, jumping, or playing – for at least two months. can you imagine it?! atlas goes stir-crazy after a day of no activity so we are being super diligent for a while in the hopes that it will heal quickly.

he does not know how to go up and down the stairs slowly, so i have blocked off the stairs and we are living downstairs. the couch is the new bed.

in the interest of being honest, i will say that yesterday was horrible. he was sad and confused and stumbling. he would not lie down or stay still and stomped around with his splint and whined and whined and whined. i was mad and frustrated and sad and scared. in order to get him to stay still, i was not particularly nice, because he wouldn’t listen otherwise. i felt so ashamed of myself for behaving horribly to my dog when he was feeling horrible. i felt like the worst dog person in the history of dog people. i could not find the kind and patient version of me, the one who usually shows up when my beloved puppy is not well.

in the middle of the night, he came on the couch next to me and fell asleep.

today is a new day. he has forgiven me. i have forgiven myself. we will figure this out.

if i am more quiet than usual, this is why. i am downstairs with my silly pup, loving on him. (plus, he does not like it when i am upstairs and he is downstairs. right now, i can hear him at the bottom of the stairs, whining away. oooh. i think he’s attacking the splint. time to go.)

it seems like i find a new funny series of atlas photos whenever i look through my archives. this is the latest series that got me to pause in my search for photos in order to click back and forth and back and forth. notice how he slows down as he gets closer, silly pup.

’tis the season for our hikes at the sandy river delta to begin!

atlas and i headed there for a hike (for me) and a run (for him) last tuesday and then again on sunday.

on tuesday, we met that little black dog. he (or possibly she, i can’t remember) was hilarious. he kept dropping that slobbery ball on the ground, lying down in front of it, and then staring at it. but if his person tried to get the ball to throw it, he would grab it and run away.

on sunday, we met another weimaraner. you can see him (or her) chasing atlas in one of the photos.

it’s such a great place for dogs. i have a feeling we will be heading there again tomorrow. plus, a tired dog is a happy dog. or is it a tired dog is a happy owner. probably both.

atlas and i have an almost-annual tradition of visiting a corn maze. last week, we went to bella organic’s corn maze on sauvie island with a friend and her pups.

it is a fun tradition for me, though i was wondering what atlas thinks about it. it occurred to me while we were walking that, from a dog’s perspective, it might seem like wandering around in a corn field with a person who doesn’t seem to know where she’s going and often winds up in the exact same place is not really the best idea.

(you would think that dogs would be good at leading you through mazes. as it turns out, not so much.)

just for fun, here are the stories from two previous visits:

• lost in the corn
• the story of a girl, a dog, and a corn field

hello, friends.

if i could give you one piece of advice from my very long life, it would be this:

learn to open doors.

you will be glad you did.

besides the possibility of opening that marvelous food-filled box in the kitchen, there are many times when i want to leave a room or a building and elizabeth is strangely uncooperative, no matter how strongly i attempt to communicate my desire to her.

if i could open doors myself, this would not be a problem. i would just open the door and walk out.

oh, the freedom.

for most of my life, i was not a dog person. at all.

it wasn’t that i disliked dogs exactly. i wasn’t comfortable around them – which makes sense, because we didn’t have a dog in our house – and i didn’t think there was anything particularly special about them.

whenever i thought about owning a dog (not that i thought about this often, you understand), i would decide that the only way i would ever have a dog would be if it were a siberian husky. any dog of mine would certainly not be coming inside my house. and it would definitely not be coming near my furniture. and since huskies clearly want to be outside all the time, i wouldn’t have to feel guilty about this. (i cannot help but laugh at this, since atlas is curled up underneath my quilt on my bed as i type this story.)

a couple of years after i started at intel, i worked with a guy who had a weimaraner named anton. i thought anton was a decent dog, for a dog, though he didn’t make me revise my opinion of dogs very much.

one january, the guy mentioned that he drove to new mexico for the new year because he didn’t really know anyone in sacramento who could dog-sit for him. i felt sorry for him, and also suffered from a horrible tendency to feel responsible for people, so i volunteered to take care of his dog if he ever needed someone. it is possible that i even said i liked dogs and would be happy to do it.

a few weekends later, he needed a dog-sitter, and i agreed to do it. my only caveat was that even though i knew anton was used to sleeping on the bed, he was most definitely not allowed to sleep on my bed. i was not having a dog on my bed. no way. no how.

anton was dropped off at my house after work that friday. a few minutes later, i said good-bye to my roommates and anton and left to meet a friend for dinner and a movie. i figured anton would be fine while i was gone.

toward the end of dinner, i saw that i had a voicemail. when i listened to it, i heard the sad voice of my roommate alan, “elizabeth .. this dog is so sad .. he keeps trying to come into my office .. we barricaded the stairs with chairs .. he keeps barking and whining .. can you pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese come home? we don’t know what to do!”

oh my goodness. i felt horrible. i finished dinner quickly and left. the whole way home, i kept thinking about poor anton being dropped off in a strange place and being abandoned by the only person he (kind of) knew. oh, did i feel guilty.

when i got home, anton was lying at the top of the stairs while my other roommate sat next to him and scratched his belly. i sat next to him and cried for him and petted him over and over and over.

then, it was bedtime. i made him a nice comfy bed on the floor, settled him in it, and got into bed. as soon as the lights were out, anton jumped onto the bed. i got up, settled him back in his bed on the floor, and got into bed. anton jumped onto the bed again.

repeat. repeat. repeat.

still feeling guilty about leaving, i decided that he had had such a rough start to his weekend that he deserved to sleep on the bed. to save face, i pretended that i had fallen asleep and didn’t know he was there.

the next morning, when i woke up, he was snuggled next to me. i didn’t mind.

all weekend, anton was there. he went running with me, and followed me everywhere, and i loved it. by the end of the weekend, i adored him to pieces.

i wound up dog-sitting him a lot and grew more and more fond of him. it grew harder and harder to give him back, and i eventually knew that i wanted a dog of my own. of course, by that point, only a weimaraner would do.

the guy did tell me that anton was not a good representative of a weimaraner because he was too mellow, but i didn’t listen. i kept taking the “are you ready to be a weimaraner owner” quiz and deciding that none of the hard stuff mattered. i was ready to live with all the quirks and challenges of weimaraners.

and then i got my own dear weimaraner who, as it turned out, was mellow too.

i still think about anton fondly – he has since passed away – and i often tell atlas that he owes a doggy debt of gratitude to the dear sweet dog who helped me realize that i was meant to have a dog of my very own.

last friday, atlas and i celebrated nine years together.

nine years! can you believe it?!

by celebrated, i mean that i told him approximately one million times that i adore him and love him and then i took him for a long hike on our favorite trail.

on saturday, i took him to the pet store and bought him a giant treat. he ate it in the sunshine. (it was too smelly to allow inside the house.) it took him 50 minutes (a record, usually treats take him seconds, maybe minutes if i’m lucky) and then he got up and walked slowly to the house. his tongue was hanging out and he was panting and he looked like he had never worked so hard in all his life. it was pretty funny. (it was really due to the sun. he usually heads for the shade after a couple of minutes, but he was so engrossed in his treat that he couldn’t be bothered.)

i know i say this often, but i cannot believe how lucky i am to have atlas in my life. he is the best four-legged friend a girl could have. my life is infinitely better and richer because he is in it and i am a better person for having known him. i have been given the greatest gift – nine years of unconditional love and joy and companionship and play and adventure. i wouldn’t trade it (or him) for anything.

he is my pup, and i am his girl, and i hope there are many more years in our future.

(today, he is slightly less happy, as he is limping, and he does not like it. he keeps sitting tall in front of me and waving his bad leg at me helplessly and looking at me with big sad eyes like he knows i can fix it if i just try. oh, how i wish i could. here’s hoping he feels better soon.)