With Shelly back to work at her office this week, Nico is forced to tag along on my work adventures. Today was his first time joining me on a day of stream sampling. We drive 158 miles around the Ausable River watershed to 30 sites to collect water quality data. At most of the sites, he stays in the truck while I get out to do the sampling. He howled and howled every time I got out of the truck for the first half of the day. And then he practically blocked me from getting back in because he would be anxiously awaiting for me to open the door. After a dozen or so times of this, he started learning "back," which is to get in the back of the truck where his bed is. By the end of the day, the howling was much less and when I approached the truck he would either jump into the back on his own or respond to the command. There are a few spots I let him out to pee, the same spots Khyber would get out during the many years he joined me on this routine. Nico will get the hang of it eventually. If you want to support these daily Nico photos and my conservation photography work join my community of supporters below.
We've had a large pine widow maker hung up in another tree along the edge of our yard for a few years. It was hanging over an old, but no longer used, set of power lines. A few weeks ago the power company removed the lines for us and we contemplated how to safely remove the tree. I have chainsaw experience and Game of Logging certification, but this was a particularly tricky situation. My concern was the tree would fall on Nico, Shelly, or I. Yesterday I decided to put a rope around it and pull it over with my truck. Nico sat in the cab with me to supervise. He's been helping with the clean up as well. 🙂
Nico has been exhausted most of the day. He played hard with Cousin Lucy and Aunt Luna yesterday for longer than we should have let him. We went for an afternoon boat ride and dunked him in the lake to cool off. Swimming still isn't his favorite but we're keeping up with it. It's nice having a worn out puppy in the house.
