It seemed like a lot going on this weekend, and yet not so much.  Katie and I did agility on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon I drove through snow to Ann Arbor to attend a concert at the University of Michigan, Sunday morning I drove back home, again in snow, so that I could work at the library Sunday afternoon, and now Monday  I’m enjoying a day off thanks to Martin Luther King, watching inauguration doings on television and cooking stew.

During agility Katie and I practiced a lot on all the different equipment.   She got over her fear of the dogwalk, and loved leaping up and over the A-frame.  She still had problems with the chute, and had to have it held open for her to run through, but she ran through the tunnel no problem and even went over a very high jump that had been left high after a German Shepard had jumped before her.  No problem!  Then we got to the teeter totter which she decided she hated.   The instructor and I worked with her for quite a long time, but only succeeded in making her afraid of the dogwalk and the A-frame again!  Just doesn’t like that yellow paint.  Oh well, we’ll try again next Saturday.

The concert in Ann Arbor was lovely.  It was called a Collage concert, all the departments in the University’s music, dance and drama departments participated.  The stage had either the band or the orchestra in the center, and smaller groups along the edge, the chorus on risers along the back.  What was really cool is that while the spotlight was on a particular group and they were preforming, other groups were coming and going, and as one group ended, the next began, the spotlight moving to them.  It was snippets of music, dance and drama, one right after the other, each piece totally different from the one before.  It moved really fast and was fascinating and wonderful.  At one point lights reflected off the cymbals and threw patterns of moving light on the wall.  For an instant I panicked thinking Katie would start barking at the moving light!  And later I noted that concerts are sort of like agility, except it’s the musicians and dancers all taking cues from the conductor rather than dogs taking cues from their handlers.  This particular concert probably felt more like that because there was such a sense of quick movement between the groups of performers.  It just felt so similar to what I had been doing with Katie earlier in the day, in an odd sort of way. I have to say I loved the four cellos playing Fandango by Jeremy Crosmer, and the group of five saxophones who played The Girl with the Flaxen Hair by Claude Debussy, the dozen or so drummers doing Samba Batucada arranged by Sissauyhoat; but my favorite turned out to be the full orchestra playing Nimrod from Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar.  It just made my heart swell and float away it was so beautiful.

Working at the library Sunday was fun as well, I was at a different location than I had ever worked before, so there was the usual questions from me as to where stuff was.  But this particular library had patrons that checked out books!  Real books!  Of course there were also the movies and music going out the door, but a big percentage of the stuff heading out were books!  I was elated and the time flew by.  Once home I realized I was tired, I’d been on my feet nearly the whole time because it was such a busy branch.

And today, Katie is wound up, needing attention as I try to watch news from Washington.  We went outside a bunch of times, but Katie wasn’t happy to be in her plowed out walkway.  The snow is up to her shoulders now, we got 5 or 6 more inches of snow over the weekend.  She wanted to go PLAY in the snow.

So we did.  I put the long leash on her and the high boots on me and we went out in the back yard to play.  She loved running and leaping in the snow, and we only came in because my fingers were freezing.  Hard to try taking pictures of her while running and trying not to fall in the knee deep snow yourself!

It’s a wonderful, optimistic time for all of us.  Katie is grateful for the run.  I’m grateful for the hope I see coming from Washington.  Maybe we’ve hit the bottom; the bottom of the winter, the bottom of the economic downturn…maybe we’re headed back up into the light.