Yesterday morning I awoke from a peculiar dream a felt rather disoriented. I feed the dog and myself, but as the morning went on I felt more and more like I just couldn’t face anyone today. I had a deep need to take Billie and go away, just the two of us.<\/p>\n
I battled with this, thinking, no, I must<\/em> go to work; get over yourself, Barbara. But another voice said, when you are physically ill you stay home, you take care of yourself. Why can’t you do that when you are emotionally\/mentally ill? Why is there such a stigma attached to that?<\/p>\n And so I took the day off. I drove to the Crown Land just west of Kitchener and Billie and I tramped through the woods for 2 hours, covering over 5 kilometers of trails. The wind blew more strongly near the edges of the woods, and less when we were in dense pine forests. Billie had a wonderful time smelling this and that, here and there, only running into difficulties when we met other walkers with large dogs off-leash. (Billie is very frightened of large dogs and thus gets very aggressive; they usually respond in kind.)<\/p>\n Here are pictures from my morning in the woods:<\/p>\n