Ithaca in the Fall

Pickles is adjusting to his new life in Ithaca, NY.  He has been apple picking twice.  Fallen apples make great fetching toys, and he likes playing with the resident dogs, especially Jasper.

 We often go to the Ellis Hollow Community Center down the road from our house where there is a giant field perfect for playing Frisbee, a play ground with slides and tunnels, and woods with squirrels to chase.  Unfortunately, we have to de-tick him multiple times a day.  Hopefully, winter will kill all the awful ticks.

Giddy-Up

We finally got around to buying Pickles some booties to keep the ice balls out from between his toes and to save his paw pads when we're on rough rocks.  Like all dogs wearing booties for the first time, he galloped around like a marionette.  This is actually the 2nd or 3rd time he wore them so he was mildly used to them.  His feet still had minds of their own though.

Guinn Mountain Hut

Several weekends ago, Pickles, Lily, Mark, and I hiked up to Guinn Mountain Hut near Eldora to check it out as a possible overnight destination.  It was a great hike and a neat little cabin so the next weekend we hiked up with a bunch of friends.  Pickles and Lily had so much fun playing in the snow, chasing sledders down the hill (Pickles barking ferociously), and snuggling up in the cabin.  Unfortunately, after Dec. 1, dogs are no longer allowed due to the need to melt snow for water.

View of the cabin on our scouting trip, you can barely see the loft up above

Pickles sporting his new backpack compliments of Talia.  Thanks!

Everyone getting ready to leave the cabin

There was a strong wind storm over night and lots of huge trees had fallen in the trail

R&R sledding their way down

The top of a tree that blew off in the storm; we took it home with us for a Christmas tree

Mousey

We often have mice getting into our chicken food.  Lily has been quite helpful in catching them for us.  I think she's caught a total of three.  Here's a real little baby one that she caught and we let her and Pickles play with it for a bit.  Pickles was super gentle with it, nudging it with his nose and licking it.  While Lily didn't actually kill it, I'm not sure if rolling on it is considered gentle.

Trick or Treat

We had a very doggy Halloween at our house this year.

We carved a scary dog face in our pumpkin

Pickles dressed up at a teenage mutin ninja turtle

But he didn't like wearing his ninja mask so we let him just be a regular turtle

Lily wore green to be supportive of Pickles turtle theme and the environment. 
She says "Happy HaaWooWeen" to her family.

It's already 7:30pm, and we've only had three Trick-or-Treaters, one of which was our neighbor; she was dressed as tinker bell and thought Pickles costume was super silly.

Apples

Despite the abundance of apple trees in Boulder, there is only one you-pick apple orchard this side of Grand Junction , and you have to make reservations to pick at that orchard.  For the past two years, we have been picking apples from some half wild trees along the bike path near our house.  They're small apples, and many have rotten cores, but if you slicer peeler corer them, there really aren't that many bad spots left to cut out.  They are a wonderful variety, something similar to my favorite Empire Apple: sour and crunchy. With no other options, we decided to return to our bike path you-pick trees.  

Pickles got to come this time, but I'm not sure if he'll get invited back next time.  First we have to jump over the creek and then climb up a 3ft vertical rock wall to get to a little ledge between fence and creek that has the trees on it.  It took an acrobatic hand-off to get Pickles up onto the ledge without either of us falling into the creek.  Once there we tied him up and climbed the tree to pick.  Apparently, he never learned that it's okay for people to climb trees because he started his pitiful don't abandon me crying.  Something like when he was 2 months old and left alone in his crate.  We were only 10ft away from him and usually he is fine being tied up if we are within sight.  Maybe he was just looking out for our well-being afraid one of us would fall out of the tree.

Despite his less than perfect behavior, we picked a ton of apples in less than 20 minutes and took them home to process.  We ended up with about 9 pints of apple pie filling, 3 quarts of apple sauce, and 3 quarts of sliced apples.  All free.

Mark is peeling and coring the apples while Pickles hides under the table tasting the peels.

Fall Aspen

Lily and Daisy were both visiting this past weekend so we had 3 dogs.  We took them down into Lost Creek Wilderness on the Ben Tyler trail to see the aspen and run wild.  The trees were amazing, the weather was great, and the dogs were pretty well behaved.