A TYPICAL
      DAY
FOR RUDY:
Richard
4-11-02
A
 Hi i’m Rudy a 7 year old Black lab.  I live in Newport Rhode Island with the Pfetzer family.  I am always on the go, ever since my owner Mark started mountain climbing at age 14.  Marks adventures all started when he attended an advanced camping course near his home town of Newport.  He instantly fell in love with mountain climbing.  I can remember his first time up into the mountains of New Hampshire with a man named Frank that he met in the Rhode Island Rock Gym.  Mark had never even seen a mountain before.  When he got up to the top of Mt Crawford he saw all the mountains and he got so excited.  He said he now knows how surfers feel, all those waves they can’t want to ride them all.  Mark sees all those mountains for hundreds of miles and he wants to climb them all.  As for me I see all those shady trees and I just want to take a nap under them all!  But I know that will never happen while i’m with Mark.
 Anyway, me and Mark have plans to go camping with Marks sherpa friend Jabion who is here in the U.S. for the summer to visit.  We are going to Baxter state park up in Maine for a week.  I guess they want to climb Mt Katahdin, great!, that means more work for me.
 Today when we first woke up Mark dragged me straight to the newport hospital, nobody was sick, but Mark wanted to train.  He spent two hours running stairs, up and down the ten story stairs at full speed for two hours.  “As for me, I slept on the big couch in the lobby.”  “And then, after all that hard work burning calories, he went to Macdonalds and got a big mac and a shake.” “Sometimes I think he’s a little crazy!”
 Soon after we left the Hospital we went to pick up Jabion.  Then we hit the road, on the way I heard Mark and Jabion telling about their experiences on everest and all the near death experiences that they had.  They were also saying how great it would gave been if Mark’s dad was still alive and able to go with them. (Marks dad died after a tough battle with brain cancer in the summer of 1997.)  When we arrived at the state park we hiked in to our secluded camping spot and set up camp. It took mark an hour just to set up the tent.  It reminded me of the time when he climbed Cho Oyu and he found the perfect place for a tent, it was great, it had views of the mountain and it was near a mountain stream in a pasture.  There was only one problem, there was a giant boulder in the way, mark spent hour huffing and puffing his energy away until finally him and some team members broke the rock free and sent it tumbling down the trail.  Luckily today it is just some sticks in the way.
 Now it is getting dark now and i can hear the wolves coming out so I am going to get in my tent and shut out the night sounds.  I can still hear Mark and Jabion chatting about what to do and where to go tomorrow, wherever we go tomorrow I hope  there ate plenty of rest spots, otherwise Mark will try to drag me up every mountain in this place.  I hope this description of a typical day with Mark showed you how he is always looking for an adventure and a challenge and also that he is willing to try his best to overcome any obstacle that gets in his way, especially a boulder!