Cricket was off in training and Toni was off with family, leaving just me, the Sasha, and the Nix. That meant walking two at a time (for who can leave one dog home alone? Oh – the faces!). This should be easy enough. We’ve even been to class on walking two dogs at once. But no – Sasha is afraid of a lot, and she seems to be more afraid when she’s yoked to Nix. So after two long walks when I thought I might get my arm pulled from my socket, we settled for trips to the dog park.
They developed a new trick. Sasha focuses on the ball. Of course she does – she’s a border collie. So when I say focus, I mean FOCUS. Well, it’s a dog park. It’s acres and acres, but there are literally hundreds of dogs some times. Dogs like balls. So this week, whenever a dog dove for Sasha, Nixie blocked them. Every time. It was hysterical. Nixie – of note – does not care about the ball. But she does care about Sasha.
But now Cricket is back (as of yesterday) and Toni is back (as of today) so Nix and I snuck out and walked all the way to Redmond Town Center and Toni picked us up so we didn’t have to walk back.
Pretty good life, all in all.
It is HOT. It is the 4Th of July. The dogs are HOT. The wading pool is full of cold water and ice. The big dogs are wet and lying in front of the fans. The baby dog has taken her frozen bone and retreated to her shady cool place in the garden. I see her peeking out every once in awhile. Mostly she is hidden from sight. We did some jump training early this morning before it got too humid. It is so warm, in fact, she hasn’t even been bugging me to train all day long:>) Fortunately, she does not notice fireworks. Neither does the Nix. Sasha will cower behind a toilet all night. But we’ll plug in the DAP (Dog Appeaser Pheromone) and put on some music and try to behave as if nothing bad is happening. DAP is the stuff that momma dog’s secrete in their milk to soothe their baby pups. It is odorless and has no impact on people or other animals besides dogs. I doubt it works on every dog, but our three zone out in bliss when we plug in the infuser. 
Usually Nix plays catch only when the border collies are not around. They are smarter, tougher, and faster than her and she knows it. But in this case, she gets the ring.
7:0o ish Am
Summertime in the NW – and a month early! Can’t beat that with a stick:>) We are on countdown here. Five and a half more days of school! WhooHoo!!! Katie has been working double time to finish up year end projects, meet her committments in track and the school musical, and just stay alive. This collage is a web page from a personal website she’s building as her tech project at school. There’s a home page, a number of tabs (hobbies, pets, rice, forest ridge, Three Dogs Blog, etc) and this is the entry to the Pets tab. I think she did a really nice job with it, especially the way that Cricket’s ears fit into the star!
