I had not been to Wayfarer’s Park without Karl. I wanted to go as the wildflowers on the path are 1-2 weeks ahead of my woods. But it was the one place that I hadn’t been able to go alone.

Today, I had some errands in Bigfork and decided that I would at least drive through with Bear and if he seemed interested we’d go for a short walk by the lake.

He was interested :)!

I let him pick where he wanted to go, curious to see what interested him and particularly if he’d want to go in the water.

He didn’t go right to the water, but after exploring the shore paths, he walked right in.

He drank a bit, walked along the edge, had another drink and we puttered around on the rocky beach…lots of good smells. A woman with her 2 young granddaughters were exploring and Bear happily dispensed kisses all around and stood quietly for the girls to pet him.

I had a few tough moments, but mostly it was a joyful time of seeing Bear enjoy a place that Karl and I so enjoyed.

A video…it is probably not going to happen often, but I do want to document some of the training and as I looked at this video, I realized that Bear is doing much better than I. My commands are not consistent and they are not timed properly :(

There were 4 whitetail deer that I could see, maybe more that I could not. They were 100 yards off.

Oh…this video and all outside photos of Bear have been taken with my phone: HTC Thunderbolt.

A Montana woods is a pretty exciting place for a guy just off the ‘plane from ‘Jersey :)!

Silly squirrels!

Mountains and deer and turkeys.

Places to go and things to see.

Bear is doing very well. He does get very excited about deer and squirrels, but you can see here that he is on a loose lead even watching the deer. I’m working on getting him to “give me his eyes” even in the midst of something exciting going on. If we are ever to go off leash, I need for him to listen and trust me enough to obey a command.

Bear is very smart. He understands everything I’ve asked of him. He’s given me a paw to trim nails, he comes when called in the house, even when he wants to do something else, he sits, he stays, he goes down and does a down stay – all happily, not robotically. He was trained with love.

There is a lot of training to be done to live here with him as I’d like and it will take awhile, but he is a joy to work, play and just be with.

Loving Bear does ease the grief for Karl in some ways and in other ways, it makes it more intense. Sometimes a mannerism that is so like Karl brings tears. Sometimes it is just doing things with a dog that is not Karl, a dog that requires that I change how I do things. And that brought back memories of the same thing when Karl was a puppy and it required that I changed how I had done things with Zack. It is all good and all part of the process. We learn to live with loss but there is always someone, some dog, some cat missing. We ultimately feel more joy in memory than in sadness but certain things can trigger sorrow as well.

As I experience more, I’ve learned to be ok with those times of sorrow, to notice and think about them and then go on. The more I’m in the woods with Bear, the more I feel the joy of Karl and of a new way of doing things.

Bear.

Lookout Pass on the MT/ID border.

Found the toy box.

The chair…

…so comfy!

Squirrels!!!