Friends

 Holly is enjoying the addition of Helen to the social activities of late.   Helen is not a playmate to Holly,  but an interesting addition to the house.  Similar to the learning curve with Gracie, Holly is learning to move slower, act calmer and practice restraint with her front paws and the dropping of toys on their head.  Helen is masterful at ignoring Holly, and Holly is still in the ‘Squirrel!’ mentality and can easily be redirected elsewhere, generally towards Keltie.  They just seem to figure out how to coexist in their world together, not to say there isn’t some human intervention happening at times.

Holly had her annual vet exam today and all went well.  She was a trooper and stood still through three shots, plus the expressing of her anal glands (a bit of wiggling happened with that!).   She weighed in at 58.2 pounds.  A good weight for her.

Play continues to be Holly’s primary interest, one she is quite good at.  She and Keltie can play for hours in the backyard, chasing & dodging & rolling & tugging.  DeeAnn and I don’t know the rules or what is the trigger for the game to change in a blink of an eye, where one is chasing the other and both stop on a dime and the chase goes into reverse order.  It is just baffling.

If another playmate is not present, Holly takes it upon herself to play a game of chase around the yard by herself (or with an imaginary friend!)  She does laps to the front & back, from tree to tree, cutting through the middle and ending on the back porch step.  She ends with just as big of a grin on her face as she does when her friends are present.  

Her favorite part of the morning is going into my closet to see if she can grab a sock and do a taunt walk by me.  Every morning it is a tease of ‘game on’ greeting me to the day.  

Rise and Shine!  It’s a new day and it’s time to play!  Some good life lessons!