Nice Walk This Morning...Scary Walk This Afternoon

Hiker and I got up early because we had a walking date with Hiker's groomer Jean and her 3 dogs, Charlie, Timmy and Sassy. We are trying to get Hiker used to being around other dogs and for her to not be so nervous with Jean. I think the nervousness with Jean is because Jean bathes Hiker and Hiker HATES taking a bath. I took Hiker and Sassy by their leashes and Jean took Charlie and Timmy, Hiker is a little intimidated of Charlie because he is a very “alpha dog”. We walked 1.5 miles around inside of our gated community and then took all of the dogs to my house and turned them all loose in my backyard. Jean's dogs were busy investigating everything while Hiker stuck right by my side. She finally played for a few minutes with Sassy because Sassy is a small little girl and does not intimidate her. We'll have to try this again in a few days and see how she does. I'm a little apprehensive now about taking Hiker back to the dog park because a friend of mine emailed me today and told me that one of her dogs was killed by another dog at their dog park. I did notice yesterday that out of the 7 or 8 pet owners that were there, only 3 of them were really watching what their dogs were doing. After Jean and the dogs left, I made breakfast and then Hiker and I walked down to the community office so I could pick up my new residential stickers to put on my vehicles and then I did a little house cleaning. At least the weather is much cooler so far this week. It was only 72° by 11:00 am. There is a Pacific hurricane heading toward Baja California and they are saying that we may get some rain from it by the end of the week. It's very rare that we get hit by hurricanes and they are never very powerful. Hiker and I had a little scare this afternoon. Around 2:00 pm I took her down to the park. I didn't want to walk her on the blacktop path because I didn't want her to burn her feet so we were walking across an open area that was dirt but the city has covered it with wood chips from when they trim the city trees and there are small “mounds” of wood chips so you cannot really see if there is anything crawling around. About 10 to 15 feet in front of us, I heard a rattlesnake. Didn't see it, but I instantly stopped and the rattle stopped, so I slowly started to back up with Hiker and I heard the rattle again, so we ended up back over on the blacktop path and headed for home. My neighbor had seen a gopher snake cross the path about a month or so ago when she was walking her dog there, but this is the first time I've heard a rattler down there. I would have been more scared if I had seen it. Glad it rattled before we got too close. Need to stay out of that area when the temperature is up. Got up to about 82° today.

Hiker loves this spot on the sofa. She can see out the front door from here.