Over the River...

If you folllow us on Facebook then you may have seen a little status update from Ray: "I was having so much fun at Grandma's house I didn't want to leave."  For anyone who knows Ray's Grandma, that is a statement full of things to disbelieve.  My mom doesn't like animals.  She isn't an animal hater and we had several dogs growing up, but she can could live her life without seeing a dog and never miss a beat.  Cats?  She's terrified of so when the 85 pound "grandson" came to visit, I wondered how the visit would actually go.

So much to sniff!
My parents live "out in the country" and I brought Ray's extra long leash so that he could explore and sniff as much as he wanted, within reason.  My parents live on a full acre, part of which they are re-landscaping so there were piles of yard scraps around.  They also live bordering on corn fields which haven't been tilled? planted? yet so Ray got to sniff, dig and rip corn stalks to his heart's delight.

Good Boy
Like I said, while Mom isn't an animal lover, she doesn't hate them either, so some pretty interesting things happened.  Because she wasn't all super excited to "pet the puppy," Ray was greeted in the way I encourage everyone to greet him, which is by ignoring him until he is comfortable in the situation and asks for attention.  Since I always try to keep Ray on his best behavior, I was loaded down with treats and asked for several behaviors such as "sit," "touch," and "down" in order to keep some focus, so Mom mentioned that Ray is really well behaved, which was great to hear.  She even offered, at one point, to hold his leash for me. 

Stronger Recall
If Ray had a stronger recall (we've been slacking on that) I would have loved to let him off leash for a little while, but that is a treat for another day. I know Ray would have loved nothing more than to sniff around the field and dig for treasures for hours and I would have loved to let him but time was short and we had to head out for our next errand.

Ray-tail Therapy
The reason I was even making the trip, apart from seeing my mom on Mother's day weekend was to pick  up a beautiful Mother's ring for Asia at King's Jewelry and I wanted to bring Ray with me.  The owners are friends of ours and had mentioned that they wanted to meet Ray "someday" so I figured this would be a good time. 

I'm very happy to report that Ray was, apart from being his normal goofy, happy self, had zero meltdowns that day.  We had a nice visit followed by a little walk around town to see just how much things have changed then hopped back in the truck for the ride home.

All in all, the day was a super success and we came home exhausted from our travels and ready for our favorite past time: snuggling on the sofa.