Ilovermont, Part 2…

My Grandpa Lambert worked for the Rutland Railroad in Alburgh, Vermont, about a five minute drive from the Canadian border.  That’s where my father was born and grew up.  So my ties to Vermont are actually blood ties.  I am not sure if that has anything to do with the fact that when I cross the border into Vermont, I tend to decompress and feel more peaceful internally.

This is a photo of my Grandpa's baseball team.  George is the adult sitting on the bottom step in the front on the right.
I come from a long line of baseball lovers, too.

Most likely, this has more to do with me feeling good about Vermont:  The largest city in Vermont is Burlington, which is located an hour due south of Alburgh.  It is a city of approximately 42, 000 people, which makes it about the same size as the city I grew up in – Middletown, Ohio – although Middletown does have a few more people.  Burlington is the most populous city in Vermont, while there are 17 cities larger than Middletown in Ohio.  That leaves room in Vermont for a lot of this:

...and this:

Of course, it doesn’t mean that these kind of scenes don’t exist in Ohio.  They do.  But in Vermont, it's that in between those rural scenes are just more of those rural scenes with picturesque little towns sprinkled around.  I love it!

  Now and then you see a sign that makes a human heart and a pug heart skip a beat.  It looks like this:

Our trip to Vermont this time was prompted by Greg finding a bed & breakfast in West Rutland, Vermont, called The Paw House Inn.  The Paw House caters to dogs and dog-people.  It’s a great place to stay if you love dogs and travel with a dog.

Olive the pug had a great time there as did we.  Unfortunately, I had a brain fart while there and neglected to take my camera down to breakfast so I have no photos of the Inn Dog, Stanley, a friendly, but serious little terrier mix who helped to greet us and make us feel right at home.  You can see a nice photo of Stanley sitting on a big yellow chair on the inn's website.  Click here.

  Stanley and Olive saw eye to eye and that was a good thing.  The seven other dogs who were there at the time were all bigger than pug-sized.  No matter.  They all got along fine.  Well, there were a few episodes of barking and showing off, but mostly there was a lot of face licking and butt sniffing going on. It was a peaceable kingdom of dogs.

I must have been in a haze each morning, because I got no pictures of the other dogs either.  My BAD!  What was I thinking?????  My only excuse is that I had to come downstairs and take Olive out before I had my coffee.  But I did manage a shot of the downstairs parlor with its doggie wallpaper.

Anyhow, it’s time to call it a day here.  Guess what?  I have a lot more photos of Vermont and hope to go through them more thoroughly soon.

 I hope you all have a great weekend!

Ilovermont…

Last week Greg, Olive the pug and I took a short break and drove up to Vermont.   When I say I love Vermont, it is a bit of an understatement.  Personally, I think Vermont might just be the most wonderful place on earth.  I’ve often fantasized about living up there, but I don’t suppose at this point in my life, it will ever happen.  Still, I feel lucky that we live only about three hours from one of the most beautiful places on earth – The Republic of Vermont.

What prompted our visit this time was that Greg heard about a bed and breakfast in West Rutland that caters to dogs and dog-people called The Paw House Inn.  We put the question to Olive and she decided that she wanted to check it out, too.  I’ll blog a little more about that later, but right now, I’m just going to post a few photos of our trip up north.

On our way, we stopped for lunch at a nice little roadside restaurant called Grandpa Joe's Fried Food somewhere in northern Massachusetts.  When we travel with Olive, we love finding places where we can eat outside.  At Grandpa Joe's, this little girl spied Olive and was pretty taken with her, but she wasn't allowed to come down and pet her.  Isn't she cute?

For the first time in my life, I had an Elvis Sandwich.  It consisted of grilled peanut butter and bananas.  It was pretty good, but I don't think I'll make a habit of it.

Once we were back on the road, we made it into Vermont pretty quickly.

And eventually, we ended up in West Rutland where Olive was royally greeted at The Paw House Inn.

One of the innkeeper Mitch's suggestions for dinner was a dog-friendly place on Lake Bomoseen called The Lake House Pub & Grill.  Olive was once again treated like royalty and was given many treats and pets.  I got myself a treat, too.

As the sun was setting over Lake Bomoseen, we headed for our temporary home.

And Olive enjoyed the bed that was put there just for her majesty.

The Life and Times of Olive the Pug: Taking Time to Smell the Sunflowers.

Thursday was a picture perfect summer day here in central Massachusetts, so Greg and I asked Olive the pug if she would like to go for a little ride.  She said yes, of course, and off we went down to Griswold, Connecticut to Buttonwood Farm to walk amongst the sunflowers.

Since 2004, the good folks at  Buttonwood Farm have been planting sunflowers in their pastures and for about a week at the end of July, people come to view and buy the sunflowers, take hayrides and rides on their cow train.  The donations they receive from the visitors go to the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Connecticut.  Then, after the week is over, they open the fields to their cows.  Lucky cows!  I have to wonder if that's why the ice cream there is so very good.

  It’s a wonderful idea that has obviously become very popular because when we got there, we were surprised to see that they had a full house of people of all ages.  But that sure didn’t deter Olive from having a great time.  The kids all wanted to pet her and tell her how cute she is.  She couldn’t wag her tail fast enough.

We walked among the sunflowers enjoying the cheery color.

Olive, of course, had to stop and smell at least every other flower and she did stop to get petted a couple more times, too. Sometimes she even multi-tasked.  She’s pretty talented that way.

At the end of the path, we could go up on a slight incline to see the array of sunflowers from a slightly different perspective.

While on the hill, I spied these two little beauties who were all decked out in their finest sunflower regalia.

The wait for ice cream was a little too long at Buttonwood for a tired pug and a couple of tired people, so we continued on our journey back home stopping at the wonderful Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm, in Moosup, Connecticut, where I got to taste cucumber ice cream for the first time, which I recommend very highly – a refreshing, sweet taste.  And Olive got to meet a couple of little goats.  They seemed to like each other quite a lot and were disappointed that there was a fence separating them from one another.

Olive ended her day by obliging the photog and posing as a purkey.  

How can a pug have a better day than that, I ask you?  It’s just not possible.  If you were to ask Olive about it, she would tell you that in life, it's very important to take a little time out of your busy schedules now and then to stop and smell the sunflowers.

The Life and Times of Olive the Pug: Another Friday Night...

It’s certainly no secret that this is what a pug loves most in the world:

But on Friday evenings, a pug will give up a nap for a chance to spend time down at the beach.  The minute the humans start to say words like “cocktails” and “golf cart” a pug can barely contain her excitement and she might even let out a scream or two in exhilaration and delight.  She just can't help it.  After all, going to the beach for cocktails on a Friday night pretty much trumps all of a pug’s favorite things.  She stands at the door wishing the slow human (that would be me) would just hurry.

Eventually, we all get there and it is a beautiful evening with a slight cool breeze and no humidity.  Lovely!

Unfortunately, none of Olive the pug’s canine friends are coming out this particular evening and she is stuck with just having humans for company.  It's a sad fact of life that humans talk too much to each other and don’t pay enough attention to a dog.  That means a dog might get into a little trouble by getting up on top of the picnic tables.  Of course, she doesn’t have a clue why the humans freak out about that because she knows it’s going to be raining cats and dogs the next day anyhow and the tables will be washed the way nature intended.

Then she spies a couple of lucky dogs whose human knows how to make his dogs feel very special.

But by then she’s pretty sure she wants to get back to that nap, so she heads for home with the humans to take up where she left off.

Celebrating Independence Day – Walker Pond Style

Yesterday was our neighborhood’s annual Fourth of July party.  We don't always  hold our big party on the actual fourth, but this year since the fourth was on a Saturday, that was the day we picked.  I heard someone say yesterday that this was the 49^th year that our neighborhood of Walker Pond here in Sturbridge has been celebrating the Fourth of July together.  I’m sure someone could verify that for me, but it sounds about right to me.

As usual, the day starts off with a Fishing Derby.  Greg used to chair that event but has turned it over to someone with more interest in fishing.  The Derby starts at 7am so I think that Greg’s interest in sleeping in a bit had something to do with it, too.  The Derby is followed by a road race at 8am.  That’s an event that neither Greg nor I have ever been witness to.  But the Parade is at 10 am and I don’t think we’ve missed it but once or twice it in the 28 years we’ve lived here.   Here are a couple of pics from this year’s parade.

Winner of Best in Show were this pack of Patriots:

We don’t have a Best Dressed Dog category, but if we did, this handsome pooch would have gotten my vote:

Olive, the pug, watched the parade closely from the comfort of our golf cart and was pretty excited about that good-looking bulldog, too, but she didn’t get to attend the party, poor girl.  She just gets too excited among all those people and smells.  And while it’s a dogs dream, people would give her far too many bites of their hot dogs than would be good for her, so she had to go home after the parade.

The day continued on with field games one of which is an egg toss.  We had a lot of participants.

This year a new event was added.  The Wellie Wanging involves standing on a half barrel and tossing a Wellington Boot as far as possible while maintaining your stance on the barrel.  Not as easy as it sounds as it turns out.

Here’s a neighbor in mid-wang (?). We were told that this Wellie Wanging is a tradition across the Pond, but I’m not completely sure I believe it.  Verification needed! 

It rained on us for a while so everyone got cozy under the tents and had a few drinks and eats.  But it turned out to be a beautiful evening and every one, including Uncle Sam, enjoyed the day.

The Life and Times of Olive the Pug: Dog on Vacation

Our time here in Florida has been nice for a dog. Olive has been very comfortable temperature-wise. The highs have been in the 60s Fahrenheit...perfect for a pug. But now and then, the temps have dropped and it's nice when a dog has a patch of sun big enough for her bed.

Olive decided to pose for a side view so you can see her new collar, which we purchased at Oysterbones in Apalachicola. Oysterbones is a very dog-friendly store in a very dog-friendly town.  Olive picked that particular collar because “Dog is my co-pirate” is her motto.

But when a dog spends too much time in the sun, she tends to get a little sleepy and eventually has to lie down.

But just the very mention of “cheese” tends to perk a dog up...

...at least for a few seconds.

Good Fences Keep Out the Riff-Raff...

"Hey, Whitey, what the heck is that down there?"

"Well, Henry, I think it smells like a Pug!"

"Sure enough, y'all.  It's a pug."

"Thanks goodness for fences."

Linking to The Run*A*Round Ranch Report's Good Fences!

Thanks, Theresa!