Our Chelsi Girl..........

Me and Chelsi 12/30/07
This was her last visit to Arizona, no hiking

She gets to wear "the" bandana

While I was walking with our dog, Sheila, this morning I started thinking about all the walks we had with our first dog, Chelsi. We adopted her in December 1992 when she was about 6 weeks old. She was with us until she passed away September 15, 2008.

When Chelsi was about two years old, Charlie and I took a week off and stayed at a timeshare unit in Pinetop, Arizona. We liked the area so much, we stopped by a real estate office to get some information on surrounding properties. The agents we talked to, Diane and Mark, were very nice. They gave us listings with directions and we took off on our own to look for ourselves. We spent that week hiking trails, relaxing and looking at property. We fell in love with the small, laid back town of Show Low.

We quickly found a favorite restaurant and one afternoon we went there for dinner, but it didn’t open for dinner until 4:00pm. There was a separate bar, so we decided to go in there and wait since it would only be an hour or so. It was like walking into a western saloon with pool tables and pin ball games, etc. Just inside the door, a dog lay sleeping. We thought that was pretty cool. It’s not something we’d have seen in any bar at home! Chelsi was not with us on that first trip, but we promised her that next time she could go in the bar with us.

When we got home and back to our routines, we couldn’t stop thinking of Show Low and how much we liked it. Over the next year, we took several trips back to Arizona until we located property that we finally bought. Chelsi was with us on all of those trips.

On most of those property seeking trips, we also took a day to hike the numerous trails in the area. All are loops and some are as long as 11 miles. We usually chose a trail that was only 5 or 6 miles long. It was August and we decided to try the Land of the Pioneers trail, which is 11 miles.

We didn’t know how Chelsi would hold up for a hike that long. Heck, we didn’t know if we could finish it! Chelsi was about 3 years old then. We had stopped at Walmart and bought her a new bandana to wear on this hike.

We got to the trailhead at 9:00am and started out. It was a beautiful trail and the difficulty scale was easy/moderate. Chelsi ran up ahead or would stay between Charlie and I. We stopped for lunch and rested. Chelsi was holding up well and we were doing okay too.

Then after several hours we started hearing thunder and saw lightning in the distance. August is monsoon season in Arizona and a storm can just pop up during the day. We were hoping we wouldn’t get caught in the rain, but it kept getting darker and darker.

We came out of the trail and onto a dirt road to walk on for awhile. Charlie was walking up ahead and I was dragging behind, but doing okay, just not walking real fast. Chelsi ran between us. She would go up with him and then stop and look back at me. Sometimes she come back to me and “guide” me along. On one occasion, she ran back to me and stopped a distance in front of me, looking back. But, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking PAST me and down the road behind me. I got a chill up my back because I thought “What is behind me down the road?” I turned to look, expecting a bear or cougar or something, but there was nothing there. I’ll always remember Chelsi’s face and her looking past me.

Then of course, it started raining. Softly at first and we started walking faster. We could hear thunder. There were trees all around. Then the trail turned to go through an open meadow. We were all getting soaked. By that time, we were all walking closer together. I was a little chilly since I was wet. Charlie said I needed to cover my head and stay warm. He called Chelsi over and took off her new bandana and gave it to me to wear. For the rest of the walk I must have looked like “Old Mother Hubbard”.

We’ve always talked for Chelsi and through the years she never forgot to mention that “Mom took my NEW bandana”.

The rain tapered off and we finally saw the car up ahead at the trailhead. Charlie and I were dragging, but that Chelsi ran on up ahead of us and when we got there, she was impatiently stamping her feet like “Hurry up and open the door, you two”. We were “dog” tired, but Chelsi had so much energy after walking 11 miles. It was almost 6:00pm. We had been out walking for 9 hours.

Over the years we took Chelsi everywhere we went. She was the perfect little traveling companion.

More later..........