Herding Breeds in the Wild

We took the girl dogs for a walk/hike in Southeastway Park. They had a blast. After we walked the trails for a while, we stopped to relax at a picnic bench.

I don't know if you know, but picnic benches are Violet's favorite. Violet's favorite thing to do on a summer day is recline underneath a picnic bench. While Natalie hangs out on the seat...

...Violet stakes out her own spot. 

Occasionally, she ventures out.

Guess what? Collie butt.

We went to the park with the dogs today, then to my grandparents' house. They lost their five year old dachshund, Lizzie, very unexpectedly on Thursday. She began vomiting and became lethargic overnight Wednesday. When they took her to the vet (my second clinic, I worked there for two years, and Dr. Borst, the owner goes to church with my grandparents) first thing in the morning, her temperature was 98 degrees (well below normal for a dog), and she was salivating. The clinic ran bloodwork, and everything was off. She died on the table shortly thereafter, and they were left suspecting antifreeze poisoning. My grandparents live in an apartment with no yard and walked her every time she was outside, but she could have licked something in a parking space. Very sad. The dog was truly a landshark, but she was great with them and they loved her very much.

We went to their apartment today to check on them and bring a sympathy card (Granny is doing well, she's had several dogs and is perhaps a little more accustomed to the grief of losing one, and Lizzie was more his - Gramps is still very, very torn up about it), and my mother was also there with her new dog, Jack, a black and cream longhaired dachshund. He's a very sweet boy. I took a lot of pictures today.

Violet on the way to the park. She has some recent car anxiety, I'm not 100% sure what to do about it but I've been trying to take her on short, frequent trips with lots of positive reinforcement. She seems to be improving, but you can see the anxious body language here.

Butt feathers. Eric says, "She looks like she's wearing pants." She does.

Little Dewey, big world.

I kept trying to get a picture of Violet, and she just kept talking.

  

 

Co-pilot

My grandparents.

 

The last of fall's mums.

My grandmother had this chalkboard in her kitchen in the house in Michigan for as long as I can remember, including when she met Gramps, 15 years ago. At some point shortly after they met (at the tender age of 50), he wrote her initials (JAG) and a heart on it when she wasn't looking. She never erased it, even when she moved to Indiana a year ago.

They're fake.

Jack. New kid in the family.

My (long deceased) great grandfather's shaving supplies.

And two videos.

Watch Basher fly over the creek at about 0:20 in the second one of Piper helping Violet find her way back across.

God willin' and the creek don't rise...

We had a playdate today with Eric's aunt, Mandy, and Mandy's partner, Josie. Josie is from Alaska and had an ACD (Basher) and an ACD mix (Trance), and apparently all 3 had missed the "wilderness," so we took them out to Southeastway Park, along with Mandy and Josie's shepherd mix puppy, Goose. The dogs had a blast. There's a creek down a trail that was secluded enough to let all but baby Goose off-lead, and they had so much fun splashing through the water and zooming over logs and through trees. Basher found an invisible herd of sheep (??) in the water and spent a long while barking/biting/herding the creek, which was pretty entertaining. Violet splashed/leapt/semi-swam across the creek in a fit of zoomies, and got stuck there with no idea how to get back. Piper the mer-dog had to go get her. Piper was entirely at home in the water, as usual. We made plans to pencil in an Eagle Creek dog-excursion next weekend. I hate that winter is getting so close. I don't know what we're going to do to keep the crazies at bay when there's snow, but maybe our Alaskan friend will have some ideas.

More pictures after the cut, to keep your load-times reasonable.