Doggy Day Care

Roscoe and Lily both came over today to play with Pickles.  I think it's a safe bet that they were all very very happy about this situation.  The morning started off with some wrestling in the living room followed by a game of chase in the backyard.  Our backyard is way too small for chase.  They might have all sustained some bruises from running into things.  It's pretty hot outside today too.  After everyone got as much heat as they could stand,  the party moved back inside for another hour of wrestling.  Finally, at 12:30 they all took a brief nap.  After nap time, we had some lunch.  Roscoe ate out of a Frisbee and was surprisingly ravenous, Pickles ate off the floor and Lily ignored them and continued her nap.  After lunch we had some training 101.  We practiced sit, down, shake, come, and stay.  It is really cute to train three dogs at the same time.  They are adorable all lined up in a row sitting or laying down.  Next they had a rousing game of ankle biting.  This is especially fun with three dogs because you are never safe.  Sometimes Lily likes to just supervise.  These are seriously the three cutest dogs ever!  They get along so well.  They slept for another hour and then played the rest of the day.   We'll have to have another play date soon.

The Garden Plot

This year we rented a small 10'x10' plot in a community garden.  It's only about a 10 minute walk from our house up on a hill skirted by a grassy slope.  This is a great Pickles walking destination.  He gets to run off leash up the hill through the grass to the garden, and there are often other dogs up there to play with.  We have quite a harvest of cherry tomatoes this year so we usually walk up there every couple days.  The garden is also overrun with acorn and butternut squashes; another month and they should be ready to harvest.

How many acorn squashes can you find?

You can see the corner of Paul's plot on the right.  It is much more organized that our tangle of vines.

Agility Class

We enrolled Pickles in the Humane Society's puppy agility class which is 4 weeks long for an hour once a week.  The class is geared towards puppies with age appropriate equipment, i.e. no high jumping.  We have been to two classes so far.  It's been a slow start in part probably because Pickles is not afraid of any of the equipment and he already has a jump and tunnel at home, the two pieces of equipment he has been introduced to.  So far we have gotten our puppies used to going over a jump and through a tunnel and walking on a wobble board and other flat boards.  They did have a tire jump which he hasn't seen before but had no trouble going through and they can bend their tunnel so that it isn't straight.  This also didn't phase him.  On the boards, we were supposed to work on him pausing at the end with front feet off and back feet on.  This is the easy way to make sure the dog puts at least one paw in the "contact area" a yellow portion at the bottom of the A-frame, dog walk, and teeter totter that is aimed to prevent dogs from leaping unsafely off the equipment from high heights.  We're still working on the contact part.  Hopefully, in the next two weeks we'll actually get to see a dog walk, teeter totter, and A-frame.

The best part about class is that there are other puppies there that are really good distractions so that we can work on keeping his attention and getting him to focus in the face of real work distractions.

Swimming with Lily

Lily is spending the weekend with us.  She and Pickles have become fast friends.  We took them to res to go swimming this morning and Lily loved the water.  Here they are cooling off.

Horsetooth Mountain Park

A couple weekends ago we went up to Horsetooth Mountain Park near Fort Collins.  There is a huge reservoir (Horsetooth Reservoir) next to the park.  On the beginning of our hike we came to an arm of the reservoir and stopped to take a swim.  Pickles waded right in and swam in circles to cool off.  Our hike then took us up to a waterfall which had carved some really cool pools into the rock.  We had lunch at the bottom and Pickles enjoying another cool-down swim.

Horsetooth Reservoir

Top of the waterfall

The falls