Willow likes her sticks. Sometimes she throws them in the air and catches them or just has to chase them down again. Sometimes she likes me to throw them but mostly she entertains herself with them. She does like to make sure I can see her having fun. And she likes to make her sticks smaller as she plays with them.
Rest in Peace Old Friend
August 17, 2013 – September 30, 2025
Almost exactly twelve years ago, Ken woke up one morning and said, “Did you see what was in the paper last night? Labrador puppies in Riverside!” I knew we were in for a long day. After Sam, our original lab, had passed in June, we had agreed to get another labrador retriever. And here was the opportunity. If you’ve ever gone to see puppies, you know it’s nearly impossible to resist them and a couple weeks later, we brought home little Sky. Night Sky Star Shine. She was a dog who lived to please us. She was powerful and worked as hard as she could at whatever she knew to be the task. She worked through pain and rarely let us know how much it hurt. If she’d had better trainers, she would have ribbons for everything. She was the last of the original Good Girls’ Club. She was an excellent retriever, an entertaining and sometimes good agility dog and a great companion and adventure and travel partner. And she was the best dog at the stick game. Even in her last couple painful weeks, she went out of the way to show the others how it was done. She was a good dog.
I miss her so much.
Sky is used to having her picture made. As a puppy, she learned to sit for the camera from Luna. I have many charming photos of the two of them together. Being a labrador, the promise of a cookie when we are finished is all it takes to get her to sit and stay and be a good girl. We used to do lots of photos of dogs on rocks with both of them and other dogs too. Yesterday, as I looked at this big boulder above the trail, she knew what I was thinking. First she went to the front which is way too high for her and then I said ‘Go round’ as if we were doing agility and she went to the backside and found an easy path to the top. She’s a good dog. And the picture of her on the trail shows just how tall the grass grew with our prolonged spring and early summer rains.
Today power was restored to much of the valley and most communications are back in service as well. It’s a big relief to those of us that have not suffered losses from the wildfires. Our dogs have been out of sorts with the lack of a regular schedule, lots of noise from generators and helicopters and also from the anxiety that their people have carried around for the last ten days. I took our dogs to the lake for a rousing round of fetch and Sky was beyond happy. Luna liked it too but she doesn’t share Sky’s enthusiasm. Few do.
Yesterday we hiked to beautiful Blue Lake in the North Cascades. What a relief from the 100 degree heat here in the valley! We saw some snow (much to the dogs’ delight) and found the lake still had a little bit of ice so that clear blue water was cold! That didn’t stop Sky from jumping off the rock in pursuit of sticks!
My Everyday Photos 