It’s a rainy day today. This summer here at Ridgway State Park has been fairly wet. People who have been here in the past marvel at how green the grass is in the campground. As we look up higher on the surrounding mountain slopes, we see lots of green on the meadows above timberline.

It is our 2^nd day off this week, and we don’t mind the rain. The highlight of this day off was breakfast at Denny’s in Montrose. The pronunciation of “Montrose” is a little sidebar to this blog. When we ask folks how they pronounce Montrose, they pause, and then often say, “Mont-rose.” When we hear them talk and they have forgotten whether or not anyone asked how they pronounce the word, they often say “Mon-trose.” We will be leaving Montrose with this mystery still firmly in hand.

Anyway, back to the state park and our lives. This morning when we walked the dogs between rain showers we saw this:

Pretty cool, huh? We didn’t take the rainbow as a sign we should stay longer. It was definitely a sign that sunny roads are ahead and elsewhere.

The campground is pretty quiet and deserted. However, when walking around, it feels like the calm before the storm, real storms with lightening, thunder, and rain notwithstanding. Every campsite post has a reservation card for either Friday or Saturday, and the exit day for the majority of the campsites is Monday. Calm before the storm, indeed.

I mentioned the word “dogs” as in more than one dog in the blog post from yesterday. So, to review the Jones canine situation, first there was NMI (not-my-idea), a.k.a Scamp or Tuzi.

Then came RNMI (Really-Not-My-Idea), a.k.a Ultra-Squirt or Lilly.

Lilly is a Yorkshire Terrier. As long as I’ve known Shannon, at least 100 years, she has wanted a Yorkie. Her great-niece, Meaghan, who lives in Telluride, had two dogs, and was moving into an apartment that had a one-dog limit. Somehow I was once again blindsided by the perfect pet storm, and we now have two dogs. Lilly was the dog Meaghan chose to give up since it was her ex-boyfriend’s dog left behind after he moved out. Lilly is older than we first thought. She is 5 years old. The first thing we did was have her spayed, and the vet said it appeared that she had had puppies. We think she has been passed around to a number of different owners, and when she arrived she was very thin and timid. She also did not know how to play, and we were told she hadn’t figured out how to go up and down stairs.

To our surprise, one day we came back to our motor home and there was Lilly up on the dash with Tuzi. We now have observed her jumping up onto the dash, and she goes up and down the motor home steps very nicely, thank you very much.

Tuzi is jealous, but she has helped Lilly lean to play. She will grab a stuffed toy, shake it, and chew on it. I even got her to chase one of Tuzi’s tennis balls. Of course that is totally unacceptable from Tuzi’s perspectives and tries to put an end to the tennis ball chasing immediately.

About the time we were dealing with Lilly, we learned from the vet that Tuzi has a liver issue. The liver is not producing what it is suppose to produce in quantities sufficient enough to do the job it was intended to do. I know that was really a technical statement, but bear with me and just believe that we now have a dog on a special diet and getting a pill once a day shoved down her throat when she gets up. After our long ordeal dealing with Addison’s disease with our Westie, Libby, we thought a mutt from some rural farm in AZ would not have any chronic health issues. And so we thought… We have an appointment to see a specialist in ABQ next week, and then we take it from there. NMI and RNMI? You bethcha!

I know you’ve thought for a long time this blog was going to the dogs, and perhaps you’re right. So, enough about dogs. The sun is out, things are drying out, the corn bread is being put in the oven, and I must be about more important business.