Spring in our steps

Daylight savings + 49 degree temperatures = hockey in the driveway until 7:30 at night.

I must be getting better at the sport. The last few games, AJ's beaten me by at least 3-4 points, but last night it was a nail-biter 'til the end, with him squeaking out a 10-9 victory.

Despite the relatively mild temperature, AJ insisted on wearing snow pants and boots. I, on the other hand, wore just shoes. This gave me the added advantage of being able to make him chase the ball down the hill through the snow anytime it got knocked out of bounds. Mommy scores the best move of the game! Isn't spring glorious?

For her part, Maggie is having the best week she's had since January when we learned her diagnosis. She's of course still limping, but has more energy and is showing a strong desire to play and explore. This became blatantly obvious when I had to call her over from the neighbor's yard...

and from down the hill in the back yard (twice.)

She also interrupted our hockey game at least a dozen times, nudging my hand with the ball she held in her mouth, urging me to throw it for her, or at least to try and wrestle it from her strong grip.

This comes a day after she made it all the way to the end of the driveway with me when I went out to get the newspaper. Though, reaching that particular destination created an entirely different kind of trauma for her. Suddenly she could smell just how many neighbor dogs had visited our mailbox in the last month or so. How dare they?!?  It took a long time to pull her away.

By later last night, it was obvious she'd over done it. Maggie never has known how to pace herself. She plopped herself down on on the carpet in the living room and didn't move. Well, at least not until I pulled out a can of soft food, her new favorite bedtime tradition. She always can muster up enthusiasm for that.

There's something significant to me about Maggie still being with us on this date. It was two years ago today that our cat Maddie died. Back when we first learned of Maggie's diagnosis, in the midst of all the weird thoughts that flashed through my mind as I tried to deal with the horrible news, I remember thinking it'd be horribly ironic if both pets died on the same date. (Another of my weird, random thoughts back then was about the 50-pound bag of dog food I'd recently purchased, and how sad it was that Maggie wouldn't be around to finish it all. A few years ago, our neighbor brought over a bin of uneaten dogfood from their black lab who had died. I assumed we'd be returning the favor.) By late February, when Maggie had her series of bad days, it occured to me that there was no way she'd make it until March 18.

As wonderful coincidence would have it, not only is Maggie still with us, but one of the things on my shopping list today is more dogfood.