Hi, Everybody! Daisy Jones-Klein here. Did you have a good
Labor Day weekend? I certainly did, and want to tell y'all all about it.
Labor Day is a funny sort of Holiday, at least for Peeps.
Since the late 1800s, on the first Monday in September, Peeps celebrate the
American labor movement and contributions that workers have made to the country.
And just how do they celebrate? Well, by not working. Hmmm … think on that for a while. And I also suspect that picnics, cookouts, new cars
and mattresses somehow figure into celebrating labor.
But for us Jack Russell Terriers and other working dogs, Labor Day is another day for, well, labor.
And there’s always lots to do! There’s taking the Peeps on walks around the
neighborhood, making sure there are no leftovers in the food dish, barking at
Carl the UPS Guy, napping where the sunbeams are, receiving belly rubs, helping
clean the plates for the dishwasher, and even writing the occasional blog post
to stay on top as the Internet’s “favorite dogblogger”. I tell you, the days
are just packed!
But this Labor Day weekend was even busier. My Bro' Ethan and
Marianna came for a few days, all the way from my old Forever Home in Virginia
to my now Forever Home here in New Mexico. Yay!!! It’d been three years since I last
saw them, but after a couple of scratches behind the ears and some extra snack treats, I recognized them right
away.
Having them here meant twice as much work for this working dog. Twice the plates to lick, twice the belly rubs, and twice the laps to sit on. But you know the old saying: if you really love your job, it hardly seems like work at all.
The Peeps spent lots of time being out and about, especially
walking and hiking around cool places. New Mexico’s got about a zillion places
to see, lots of them just a few minutes away. Now, I’m mostly an on-road dog
these days, since small paws + cactus thorns = OWWW! But the Peeps all had hiking
boots and sent me back a bunch of pictures.
Their first hike was just off our own backyard. Our house is
in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, backing up against a state
park and the Santa Fe National Forest behind that. A hike up to the ridge takes
you to views of the Jemez Mountains in the west and the Santa Fe Ski Basin to
the east. The trails wind through the remnants of an ancient petrified forest and overlooks of Tesuque Creek far below.
And less than a half hour away, just three miles past the
Santa Fe airport, is La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site. Hundreds of petroglyphs, most
dating between the 13th and 17th centuries, can be found on the rocks on the
way up to the top of the mesa.
Also nearby, a little south of Los Alamos, is Bandelier National
Monument, over 33,000 acres of rugged beautiful canyon and mesa country. Some
500-900 years ago, ancestral Pueblo people lived and worked there, and the
remains of their central plaza and dwellings line the valley floor and canyon
walls.
Another half-mile up Frijoles Creek takes you to Alcove House,
140 feet above the canyon floor and mostly reached by ladders. Reaching the kiva at the very top of all those ladders is clearly not in this small dog’s skill set!
Whew! That sounds like a lot of work for a non-working weekend. And at the end of the day, it fell to me to help them unwind. Such is the lot of a hard-working doggie.
Daisy Jones-Klein
Santa Fe, New Mexico
September 2015
