Katie here!  Did you have a good weekend?  A wonderful Easter?  A beautiful Passover?  Mama says she’s glad she didn’t invite anyone to dinner because she just slept and slept and slept all morning!  I could hardly make her get off the sofa until later in the afternoon when my Dad went outside and started up the lawn mower.  Well.  That got me barking and Mama decided we should go to the park.  Wonder how that’s all related.

So anyway.

Guess what?  The burned up park is already green and it’s only been a week!  We had the park almost all to ourselves…guess everyone else was home eating Easter dinner.

Mama says here’s a reason we don’t go down the hill and explore the train track:

Hey Mama! What’s THAT?

I didn’t like it one bit when that train went by.  I barked and barked at it until it ran away.  Got to protect my Mama that’s for sure.  I’m good like that.

Get out of here train!

The rest of our walk around the park was pretty uneventful.  My Mama made me stand on this stupid log like she does every year.  But since I get cheese I don’t mind.

I’ll pose for cheese.

We practiced recall too, once.  I got cheese again…and then somehow my Mama lost my treats.  So that was that.

Cheese Mama?

No more working for me!  I did spend some quality time in the shade under a picnic table getting a drink while my Mama watched the pond.  That was nice.

Chillin in the shade

Then we went home and I took another nap.

Yep it was another great day!

zzzzzzz…

Katie here.  I bet you’re getting tired of hearing from me every weekend, ey?  I just wanted to tell you that they burned my park between when I was there last weekend and today!  HUH!

Look at all the burned grass!

My mama says they do that every other year or so, it helps keep invasive plants away.  I don’t know.  I just know it smells bad.

It’s a beautiful day here in Michigan and my mama took me for a quick trip to my park after we cleaned up the deck and sat out there for a bit.  I was, as usual pretty excited.

It was windy. This is not my most flattering angle mama.

Along the walk to the back of the park I stepped on a bunch of big burs and started limping.  My mama is very observant and checked out my foot right away and found 4 big burrs tangled in my fur and running down right to my pads!  She pulled them all out and I felt lots better, but when we got way back to the point furthest from the car I decided to limp again.  Just to see what she’d do.  She checked my foot again and didn’t see anything, but geeze, she wasn’t wearing her glasses so how much did she think she was going to see?

I decided I’d refuse to walk at all.  I do that sometimes when I feel like messing with her.  Then I asked her to pick me up so she did and we walked a little like that, but it got hot pretty fast, all my fur and her sweatshirt and all.  So she put me down and told me I needed to walk.  I did a little and then I stopped again.  She sighed and picked me up for awhile.  But it’s a long way back to the car and she said I needed to suck it up and walk some more.  Then you know what she did?  She dropped the leash and went on without me!  HEY MAMA!

She walked up to the top of the next hill and turned around and you know where I was?  Right in back of her that’s where I was!  She can’t get away from me!  Na-uh.  So we walked a little bit more and then when I refused again she just left me again.  After awhile she turned around and said “KATIE!  COME!” just like in school and I ran really fast with all my furs flowing and sat in front of her just like I’m supposed to and she gave me a treat!

Well!  After that I just walked along with her like a good girl, no more messing with her cause this time she got me good!  Mamas are sometimes smarter than you think.

Anyway, it’s a good thing mama took pictures of the field of grass last weekend…

Last weekend’s grassy field.

…because this weekend it’s all black.

Smelly black field.

But it will be green soon, the grass is already coming up.

Bits of green.

See you guys next weekend I’m sure.  Maybe she’ll take me somewhere new!  I’m off to take a nap now.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

See you later!

Katie here!  Hey remember last weekend when my mama took me to my park for the first time since we got all this snow?  And how much fun I had even though it was wet and cold?  Well today my mama was sitting on the sofa and she told my dad that it was too bad she was so tired.  Because if she wasn’t so tired she’d take me somewhere fun cause it was really pretty outside.

A trifle windy!

And do you know what my dad did?  He said to me…..”I bet you want to go to the park don’t you Katie, go for a ride?  Do you want go GO Katie?”  Dad was pretending not to notice mama’s evil eye.  Well!  I got so wound up that I could hardly stand it!  I began to bark and run to the front door and then run back and bark at my mama and then run to the door….you get the picture…right?

Mama yelled at my dad but she really didn’t have any choice.  So she put me in the car and we went to the park!  I knew that bribe I paid my dad would work and it sure did!  And it was worth every bit of my allowance too!

This weekend there wasn’t any snow left over at my park.  Well, a little bit, but I just kissed it goodbye!

Bye-bye snow!

We got to walk all the way around the park and my mama let me sniff wherever I wanted.  Except she wouldn’t let me go down the hill to check out the railroad track, I don’t know why.  Sometimes my mama isn’t very adventurous.

Can’t we go down there?

She took a lot of pictures of the grassy meadow and the back pond too.  I don’t understand that, she should be focused on me!  But she’s weird that way and I tolerate it because while she’s doing that I can wander around.  I always come right back when she calls, though, because I love her.  And because she has treats in her pocket.

Pretty country at my park.

We got to walk around my pond too.  It still had some ice on it, but that just made it more pretty.  Of course it’s not prettier than me, but it’s nice.  In a chilly sort of way.

The water looks cold!

It smelled good too.  But I didn’t get too close.  I’m a princess you know.

Hello frogs!!!

I had a really nice time and even mama got over being mad at dad.  She says she thinks she might have heard a frog which would mean spring really is here.  There were definitely a lot of  birds singing there, and ducks and geese too.  I only chased one robin; mostly I was interested in all the great pee-mail that was left by all the dogs before me.  I left quite a few messages myself.

So anyway, I wanted to say THANKS DAD for getting mama off  the sofa.  I don’t think you should do it again real soon though.  You can trick a mama once, but twice in one weekend would probably be too much to hope for.

I’ve got other ways to get her to take me out for adventures, don’t you know.

We’ll talk later.

love, Katie-girl.