A Day with Mattie Mae

This is my neighbour, Mattie Mae. We call her Mattie, Mattie and I get along like peas and carrots. She's also an Airedale like me, and Mattie is a few months younger than I am. Her Mum wanted her to be groomed because she looked like a fuzzy ewok, and it was time, so she called my Mum to arrange for her to hang out with us for a day, and to get groomed.

This is Mattie and me. Mattie is on the right, and I am on the left. Can you tell that she's all groomed, brushed out and neat? I on the other hand, am just me. This photo was taken at the end of the afternoon, before I slobbered on her again.

Mattie's mum dropped her off at my house early in the morning, and we played in the backyard for an hour or so, chasing each other, play wrestling and it was fun!! We smiled and played the whole time and the sun was shining. Such a crisp lovely morning it was to have a play date.

Then my Mummy had an early morning treat for me, pork hocks. They were very tasty and crunchy cos the bones were really easy to crunch. Yumm... I was very surprised that Mattie wanted some too, but I was a nice host and I shared my treats with her. I had no problem when she poked her nose into my food bowl and helped herself.

Me watching Mattie, probably eating her very first raw pork hock. She had a very good time, smelling, licking and chewing them in her mouth. Crunch crunch it went. The pieces were quite big so they really needed chewing.

Hi Mum, look Mattie's eating my pork hocks, you've got more?

Then after a morning round of games in the backyard, Mum decided it was time to hit the trails. She took her bike, loaded us both into the back, and off we went. The sky was overcast and cloudy, but that didn't stop us. Two big Airedales with lots of energy to spend? What does Mummy do? Make us run in the woods of course.

At the start of the trail, it was still nice tarred road, but the proper trail was just gravel. We got to go offleash because it was completely deserted. Plus given the bad weather, no one was really choosing to be out.

Mummy said we had 8 miles to do, so we should trot close to the bike and not do our zoomies, but we didn't listen. We still did zoomies all over the place, Mattie and I had such great fun sniffing all the bushes, rocks and branches everywhere. Then we'd zoom to catch up with Mum. It was fun!!

Zoom Zoom on the gravel trail.

At the 3 mile mark, we reached the old deserted train station called Ragnar. There are no longer trains running here anymore and the trail was actually the old track. Its deserted now, but the area is very big and open and had lots of interesting things for us curious Airedales to explore. Mum just let us go do what we dogs do. Explore.

Woopee.... we played many games, chase, tag, hide and seek. But mostly, we loved exploring together.

The ungroomed Mattie and Me.

I quickly realized that we were getting tired, and we started doing less zoomies and sticking close to Mum. We had 1 more uphill mile and then do the remaining 4 miles back to the start. By the time we got to the car, we had spent 3 hours out in the woods, it was really nice when it started to snow on our way back, but Mum said it was cold.

When we got home, Mum didn't let Mattie take a nap, she had to have her nails dremeled. She yelped and cried, and even snapped at mum, but Mum told her "No Bite" and had to make it clear to her that she was going to have her nails done, whether she liked it or not. Then she settled down and got many nice treats because she was good. Then she had a bath and a good styling, and then we could play again.

At the end of the grooming, she looked so beautiful. Mattie also goes to Cascade k9 dog school like me. Here we are posing for Mummy while on a "Chill" command. I hope Mattie gets to hang out with me again soon. I like Mattie very much.

Love,
Kimi