My First 13er

Over 4th of July weekend, we went backing packing in the San Juan mountain Range.  We drove down Friday night, hiked in Saturday, climbed Organ Mountain on Sunday, and hiked out on Sunday.

Basking in the spotlight on the peak

 

Napping on the hike back down

Brushing our teeth in the hammock

After a cool-off swim in the creek

The homestretch back to the car

Pretty Flower

Boulder Res

We found that you can access the north side of Boulder reservoir by walking from Coot Lake.  There is a nice rustic swimming area and dogs are allowed off leash.  We've been taking Pickles there quite often on the weekends.  The water is high at Boulder Res so the area we go to is flooded.  It makes great swimming for the pup because he can just wade in and it gets deep very gradually. He'll swim for 10 minutes or more just paddling around if we're out in the water.

Pickles makes a girlfriend

We are keeping an eye on R&R's cat Millie this week so Pickles got to meet her for the first time. Earlier in the week we went to say hi and he was quite afraid of her, always keeping his distance.  She didn't mind him at all though and never stopped purring.  Today, however, he was all love and kisses. Millie seemed quite enamored herself.

Pickles Loves to Swim

Mean Old Chickens

Pickles has developed an interesting relationship with our three chickens. He is very wary of them and somewhat afraid, but also enjoys taunting them. The chickens appear to have no idea that Pickles could destroy them and if he gets too close to one of them, it will charge at him. When feeling especially frisky, Pickles plays a game where he gets the chickens to chase him. He runs by one close enough that it will charge him and then runs away, circles around and zooms by another one, continuing around the yard doing figure 8s and seeing how close he can get to them or how far they will run after him. Sometimes he even grabs a toy and imagine he is playing keep away.

The chickens have discovered the deliciously raw meaty soup bones that we give Pickles and all three of them will run him off a bone and then stand there pecking at it while he watches longingly from a safe distance. He is too afraid of them to go take it back or to run them off himself. Once we run them off for him, he takes him bone and hides behind the bushes chewing on it; whenever, a chicken starts heading in his direction he picks it up and moves to a new location. The chickens are very bold about running him off if they catch him not paying attention.

Here they are with their stolen treasure.

Agility Jumps

After playing with agility jumps over the weekend, we decided to make our own. There are lots of plans all over the internet and pvc is pretty cheap. We made two jumps for about $20/each. You could make them for less, but we got threaded joints so that they are easily detachable. Pickles got the hang of it quickly.

He's not supposed to do any real jumping until he's 14 months old and his growth plates are closed. So we're keeping all the jumps low, below shoulder height and only asking him to do a couple jumps at time.

Pretty Pictures