the sheltiechick blog

Training schedule for 7/30/12 and our big news!

Well, last week’s training went kind of crappy because I was involved in something else going on… the big news I hinted about in the last post…

We’re moving!! Because I bought a house!! Ahhhhh!!

There’s some work to be done after close before we move in, but we should still get some nice time in the fall to work in the backyard! Payton is super lucky to get to learn all kinds of things in our brand new HUGE backyard, which has the space for all my jumps, a full-size dogwalk, a full-size a-frame should I decide to upgrade from my mini-aframe, and pretty much anything else we could ever want. I could even give him an underground pool if I wanted to! (That is, however, not on my to-do list.)
Even more exciting – this means Miss Pepper gets to move in permanently! Hurraaaaaay!

Not a terrible time for Auggie to be retiring, overall. The money I would be spending on his entry fees is instead going to go towards doing some stuff on the house, and it will take some time to get Payton (and Peppy) ready to trial and my finances will have rebounded by then, so financially everything seems to have happened at about the right time. I have mailed in Auggie’s entry form for our last trial and have a Pinterest board to plan his party. I was a little sad filling the form out and mailing it in, but I know this is the right thing to do. Besides, with our brand new yard, Auggie will have plenty of room to run and play at home without any of the pressure he gets from trialing. All positive!

This does unfortunately mean Miss Georgie will lose her best buddy, half-Uncle Payton, and her grumpy Uncle Auggie (I admit to calling Auggie “Uncle Auggie” just about all the freakin’ time now) – but she will get to come over and play and train with us! So once again, still positives here. Besides, that means once she’s lonely, my parents will decide to get another dog for her to play with. ;>

All good stuff. So in light of this, my training schedules will probably be a little crappy because I have a lot going on the next few weeks and into the fall as we do some fixing up on the house and of course the actual move. I’ve decided to keep up the general training idea for now. Payton got one solid session of “grab the bumper,” which turned into an incredible fetch session with Georgie, who is now the proud owner of her very OWN bumper since she loved ours so much. However I don’t think his “grab the bumper” is where it should be. We’ll keep working on it, and Auggie could do with some extra “grab the bumper” training too.
Besides that, I’ve decided – against my better judgement, much like when I taught Auggie “speak” and now have a dog who yaps at me while we’re clicking training just in case “speak” is what I’m looking for – to teach all three dogs to jump into my arms. Payton and Georgie I believe can do this easily. Auggie is the only one I’m not sure about. He can jump higher than I think, as he has proven while running up to agility practice jumps that are set for big dogs and taking them in his excitement before I can reset them to his jump height (I believe 22″ is the highest he’s done) – but I’m not sure if this is really something he can do for me given his physical limitations. It might be a “jump into my arms as I kneel” trick for Auggie. We will work on it, and hopefully will be able to finish our last agility runs together and wrap them up with that trick. (And hopefully my eyes won’t be so full of tears I will miss catching him!)

So that’s our plan this week! Keep working on “grab the bumper” and start “jump into my arms.” No clue what to call the latter one yet. “Don’t kill Mama?” “Don’t throw out my back?” “Careful, Mama is still increasing her bar weights at the gym?”


Georgie’s First Birthday Party

Her birthday is actually the 25th, but schedules got crazy. My mom celebrated with her and I took some birthday pictures, but we didn’t get to “party” until the weekend!


The princess.


Auggie, always the good sport.


And Payton, who still hates when you put things on his head and only wants to wear a hat when HE is getting all the birthday.


We made a doggy cake, but I also brought home a small slice of REAL white cake, just for her.


NOM MY CAKE


Mmmm…


This one hahahaha


Icing alllll over her whiskers. Hurray!


Payton and Auggie both got some of the doggy cake (no real cake for them.)


Then Georgie had another birthday party hat malfunction…


…and Payton chimed in with a birthday party hat malfunction of his own.


Then Georgie got her presents! Not very nicely wrapped, I just left them in the PetSmart bag, haha.


She doesn’t care anyway.


My mom’s gift to her (she also gave her a new harness and lead, plus an ice cream cone, on her actual birthday) – it’s a Nylabone peanut butter flavoured “stick.” I bought one for the boys and she loved it, so Mom decided to buy Georgie one of her own.


And my gift to her… her very own amphibious bumper. She LOVES the one I bought for the boys (noticing a theme?) and fetched it non-stop one day, so now she has her very own bumper to fetch!


Training Challenge 07/20/12

I haven’t posted one of these for a few weeks, mostly because I was recovering from our last agility/rally trial, partially because it’s still really stinkin’ hot outside and it makes it hard to do much work out in the yard, and also because I’ve been busy juggling a few other things. I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t say more just yet, but really fabulous things might be about to happen for the Sheltiechick crew!

So this week, instead of breaking it down day by day, I think instead I will just make a general goal. I have been working on teaching the dogs to swim and yesterday I decided to start adding in more as it relates to Dock Dogs. I bought a small plastic footstool that sits inside the pool (actually, it floats, so unless a dog is sitting/standing on it, it’s floating around the pool…) and had Auggie standing on the stool, click+treating for him nose-bumping our ChuckIt amphibious bumper. Being the rock star that he is, very quickly I had Auggie nose-bumping the bumper when it was floating in the water. Next step will be to get him to actually mouth the bumper.
Payton’s turn was next, and the poor dog made me laugh so hard I almost fell down in the pool, because he was trying to do his pivots in the pool. He kept thinking his back feet should be on the bottom of the pool and his front feet on the stool, and he should then pivot around the stool, right? No, Payton, no! Poor guy. Payton will actually fetch the bumper for me on land but he doesn’t want anything to do with it when he’s in the water, so I think I need to train a “grab the bumper” outside the pool (rather than just “fetch the bumper”) and then move back INTO the pool and generalize “grab the bumper” to him standing on the stool in the pool.

Of course, my parents want to re-roof the house this week, so the pool is due to be emptied and come down. I’m thinking this coming weekend I might actually go to the lake again and see if we can get some swimming done there. I think Payton will do much better now with his new life jacket, and could benefit from being in water that’s actually deep rather than a pool where if he tries he can actually put his back legs on the floor and just flail around with his front legs. Auggie, meanwhile, is doing awesome, particularly if I put a life jacket on him. He doesn’t seem to really need it, but with the life jacket on, his swimming became much smoother. Unfortunately he wears the same size as Georgie but they don’t fit the same, so I will have to buy a third life jacket if I ever intend to have all three dogs in life jackets at the same time. I could order one of the Outward Hound jackets in pink for Georgie and give Auggie her orange one…

So that’s the training plan this week – “GRAB THE BUMPER!” Low key but still a goal regardless.


Payton discovers the sprinkler

In a vain attempt to save our completely brown lawn my dad has decided to start watering the yard. Last night he put the sprinkler in the back yard late at night so Payton only saw it once when he went out to pee right before bed. But it was running when I came home for lunch today, and, well.


What is that?


OH.


Ta-DAAAAAAA


C’mon baby! Let’s do the twist!


This is why I feel bad sending pictures to his breeder sometimes.


She sends me pretty pictures of his sister and I’m like “oh she’s so pretty! Here’s mine.”


Derr!


Oh gosh there’s water involved in this sprinkler thing and it’s in my EYE


I wish this one were sharper. Total joy. <3
This could be a sufficient way to let my dog wear himself out. Sure! Play in the water and get all cooled off and sleepy!


I love this dog so much. I honestly can’t put it into words. He might drive me crazy and wear me out but God do I love him.


…er.


Auggie’s look of total disdain while this was going on hahahaha. Auggie wants NOTHING TO DO with the sprinkler thankyouverymuch.


But it’s FUN DO IT DO IT C’MON GET IT


Oh puppy. <3


Swimming Shelties

I have now become obsessed with the idea of having these three be a Dock Dogs team. Wouldn’t that be fabulous?? I wonder if Miss Pepper would like to swim too…

Apologies for my pasty legs, melanoma runs in the family so I don’t tan, deal with it =P


Auggie went first. I tried the life jacket on him but really, he didn’t need it. So I just swam him without the life jacket on.


There’s a lot of flailing rather than smooth paddling… I think it’s because they can almost touch the bottom of the pool so they are trying to kick off the bottom rather than just swim.


Swim swim swim swim!


Payton was running around the pool the whole time barking THAT’S MY POOL GET OUT OF THE POOL HE’S IN MY POOL GET OUT OF THE POOL


Scrawny soaking pup!


Payton is still in his life jacket most of the time. I bought him a brand new Outward Hound life jacket that I think fits him better as opposed to the Premier Fido Float we used at the lake, and I think it definitely works better. However, Payton can definitely touch the bottom of the pool, so is kicking off the bottom. It’s not all the way full so this next weekend I will top it off and see if that makes a difference.


He kinda likes it though I think.


Holding him to try and get him to use his back legs more…


Paddle paddle paddle paddle paddle paddle go go go go


Seriously, I do think he likes it. I’d let him out and he’d run off to go shake, but every time I called him he came running back even though he KNEW I was going to put him back in the pool. Either he likes it or he’s really dumb LOL.


I like pool. maybe.


My cute puppy <3
MISS GEORGIE


Georgie is the smart one of the bunch… the boys will swim to the edge of the pool. She doesn’t bother, she just turns around and swims to me like “okay now pick me up.”


She is so cute I almost can’t stand it… seriously. In her little life jacket. Also an Outward Hound model. OMG.


Go! Swim to your mama!


But I’m getting water up my nose!


Little princess paws…


PICK ME UP


No life jacket! Go rock star princess, go!


She actually almost hopped out of the pool here hahaha.


One more time! Go little girlie!


SPLOOSH


Her ears are hysterical here.


Why? Why you do this to me??


THE END.


Whatever Wednesday

Other ideas for names for this post was “Wimpy Wednesday” or “Whiny Wednesday.” Or maybe I could save this post and call it “Failure Friday?” Let’s stick with the slightly more optimistic “Whatever Wednesday,” because once again, I’m trying to be positive, right? Right. So let’s go.

As I mentioned in last week’s training challenge, Payton was entered in his very first rally trial last weekend. It was novice rally – not a huge deal, right? Payton’s perch work was fabulous and his heel was looking really good as a result. Not flawless but really good for the semi-rush job I was doing to get ready for the trial. I thought we’d maybe scrape out a Q, even.

Sometimes life just likes to punch us in the stomach though.

I had Payton out before going in the ring and was practicing the moves for the signs, popping him some treats to get him all locked in and ready to go. He was sitting in heel and I was chatting with a friend while feeding him and just working on eye contact before we were going in the ring. She was telling me he looked great, was so attentive, I was feeling pretty good. Optimistic!
Then a large dog almost sat on him.
Cue a meltdown from Payton. I got up and took him in the opposite direction but that wasn’t helping. He was barking and flipping out. I had a treat and tried to get him in heel to pop him the treat, he had NO interest in the treat at all.
My dog’s brain was gone… and they just called our number to get into the ring.

I did about four signs with my dog barking the entire time and swiveling his head around looking for that big dog, freaking out, before I realized there was no recovering. I turned to the judge and said “That’s it for us, thank you,” and out of the ring we went.

My friend told me not to feel bad, that dog had just freaked him out, but I still felt bad. Immediately doubts started setting in. Payton is kind of OCD at times. If you move something in the house, he’s alarmed and barks at it. If you bring something new and strange into the house, he’s alarmed and barks at it. If he sees something new while on a walk, he’s alarmed and barks at it. The response I was anticipating from Payton in the ring was for him to get really excited and start jumping around and playing like a crazy, not panicking. What was I going to do?

The second day I got Payton out and was ready to try again, and made SURE I was very calm and quiet with him before we got in the ring. I kept out of everybody’s way so nobody would accidentally sit on him again, so nobody would do anything strange and freak him out. We got in the ring and he sat in heel at the “start” sign and looked up at me with a smile. “Yes,” I thought. “We got this.” I took a deep breath as we started forwarded…
and as we reached the second sign, there was another person standing right outside the ring gates with their border collie, doing as border collies do, creepin’ and peering into the ring.
Cue meltdown!
I did manage to get Payton to complete the second sign, and we started towards the third sign, but he wouldn’t do the third sign (a left pivot) for me. I looked up at the judge (a different judge this day thankfully, I don’t think I would have even had the guts to walk back in under the same judge) and said “We’re all done I think, thank you.”
“That was a good decision for him,” she told me as we walked out. I’m pretty sure my face was bright red. I know I did right by my dog by taking him out so I didn’t poison the ring experience, but this was mortifying. I’m sure everybody thought my dog was a total nutcase and completely untrained.

Just to be clear: I don’t blame the person with the border collie. Yes, it would have been nice if they weren’t standing right outside the ring gate with their dog staring at me. Before Auggie goes in the ring for agility, I try to keep him back from the ring gates, but I am getting him revved up and that means he’s jumping around and barking. If that sets off a dog in the ring, it’s unfortunate and yes, I would feel bad, but it ultimately means the dog in the ring needs to be trained better against distractions. Same rules apply to Payton. He needs to be trained better. It is not the fault of the person outside the ring that my dog was unprepared for that kind of distraction, it’s MY fault. The answer is TRAIN MY DOG.

So that’s why this is WHATEVER WEDNESDAY. Part of me feels really beat up and beat down right now (and it’s not because this week’s gym activities have left me unable to tell you a part of my body that is NOT sore at the moment.) I am terrified that we are facing a long uphill battle and might never be able to fix this problem. I’m picturing my dog freaking out every time I take him in a ring and he sees something new. THERE’S A SANDBAG UNDER THAT DOGWALK OMG. THERE’S A SIGN HANGING ON THAT WALL OMG. THAT TABLE IS PAINTED PURPLE INSTEAD OF YELLOW OMG. It’s panic inducing picturing serious problems for the rest of his life. You certainly can’t control every aspect of every trial – there will always be something new or unknown or unusual.
But you know? Whatever. I know the answer: TRAIN MY DOG. And it’s kind of that simple, isn’t it? I went to the Dollar Store and I bought a bunch of “weird” things. Anything that just looked different, stuff that maybe Payton hadn’t seen before. I bought some spinny flower sticks, some glow sticks in the shape of a trident and an axe, a plunger, big buckets, just anything that looked different. We’re going to start more distraction work. I’m going to double down again on the recalls and try to rebuild getting him locked on when he hears his name rather than having him tune me out so much.
My biggest plan right now is to re-read my way through Control Unleashed, especially as it addresses Over Noticers. So I’m planning on running a nice muscle soak this evening and dying a little while reading the book. Just like I’ve been making a weekly schedule on what to work with my dogs every week, I need to battle plan out how to work on this with Payton.
It all comes back to training.

We’ll see how simple it is when we actually tackle the problem.


Master Auggie


So this is the result of this weekend. Well, not just this weekend. The result of a long time, a lot of work, and more money than I care to even try calculating.


It takes 10 Excellent B Q’s to get Master’s titles. Auggie got his MJP on Friday afternoon and his MXP this morning.

And with that he is more than likely all done. I doubt if we’ll ever get his speed up to where it needs to be to ever get a PACH, so there’s no point in continuing to shovel money at it when he has just as much, if not more, fun playing in the backyard. I’m already entered in another trial and there’s one here locally that I might enter depending on the judge, and I’ll be getting Auggie a pirate ship cake that says BON VOYAGE AUGGIE and we can have him a little party. I may bring him back out of retirement one day if his speed issues ever get resolved and let him play again… but I’m really not counting on anything. I feel like this is it.

I wish I had gotten today’s run on camera. It was so totally an Auggie run. He was a little snot in the rally ring so I was hoping he would be on fire and run fast in agility and he was definitely revved up. We have been having rear cross into tunnel issues but he took off for the tunnel today like nobody’s business. He came wide around a jump and headed for an off course tire and I ended up yelling “Auggie Auggie AUUUUGGIIEEEEE” – and he stopped RIGHT in front of the tire and looked at me and came over to take the dog walk like he was supposed to. He flew through the weaves so fast he slipped but kept in them and tore it up. The triple jump was the last obstacle and he was running so wild I thought he might knock it. He took off and I thought “oh God, he’s not going to clear it.” He clipped the last bar. It went CLANG…
but it didn’t fall.

There were people outside the ring watching and they all let out a “WHEW” when the bar didn’t fall. I looked up and mocked wiping sweat off my face, hahaha. One of the agility people I know was scribing and she yelled “Boy, you had to work for that one, didn’t you?!”

It didn’t even occur to me until we were out of the ring that that was it, that was #10. We were done. I was just laughing so hard. What a snot.
I really wish I had it on camera because it was just… it felt like a defining run for us, LOL.

I’m so proud of him and even though I’m sad that we will never get a PACH and never get to run a victory lap or anything like that, we have done so much in our time together. At more than one point I thought he was done and I would have to quit, but he never quit on me. After our very first run in agility together, I heard someone outside the ring – and to this day I don’t even know who it was that said it – say “One day, that dog is going to be awesome.”
In some ways that was more of a curse than anything else because I have always felt like I was giving up on him whenever things happened. Dropping him to preferred felt like I was giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome. Even this sort of feels like I am giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome.

But the reality is that “one day” is today, yesterday, last Tuesday, tomorrow, next Wednesday – every single day since the very first day I brought Auggie home and every single day until our time together on this earth has ended. It doesn’t matter if Auggie will never have letters before his name. It wouldn’t matter if he never had any letters on his name at all.

My dog IS awesome. And he always has been. He is an amazing dog, and I could not have asked for a better partner in our journey together through this ridiculous game called agility life.


Training 6/25/12 Wrap-up

After dropping the 2x2s with Payton, I went ahead and switched to weave-a-matics since I already had them dragged outside and ready to go. It was going pretty quickly, I was basically treating them the same as you would 2x2s – get the dog going through the chute of weaves and practice from all angles. Not a big deal and he was going with a lot of drive.
Then we hit the major heat wave that has affected most of the US. I figured it may have not been wise to be outside trying to work a new skill (especially one that had us hitting our heads against the wall with 2x2s) while we were slowly melting, so I axed a lot of the outdoor agility work.

Instead we switched to doing a lot of heeling practice inside. We worked more on the perch and slowly, slowly started getting the progress we needed. I took Saturday off completely with him to let some latent learning set in, but as of tonight we have walking in heel with a C+T every three steps. His left turns are AMAZING (I mean really amazing), his right turns pretty good, overall not terrible at all. I really can’t complain about his progress. I’m a little antsy about how it will translate to a trial setting, but you can never really predict for that.

For Auggie, I decided to keep up with doing some jump work outside, but switched it up a little. Auggie’s current problem is that he likes to hug the right side of jumps… even if we’re doing a left circle, he hugs the right side. He wastes a lot of time on the course altering his path to take the right side of jumps. I’m not sure if this is a physical problem due to his feet, if he’s possibly got a vision problem (all signs point to no vision problem), or if he’s just weird. Personally I think it’s a bit of A and C mixed together. So my challenge is to re-train him to NOT always hit the right side of jumps.
I’ve had a few different ideas on how to approach this, and I’ve decided to do some work with a v-bounce apparatus, or “the spider.” I’ve taken my stick-in-the-ground weave poles and made my own very ghetto v-bounce apparatus, and it may be ghetto, but it does the job. I decided to alter some Susan Salo jump chutes by adding the v-bounce in. I set up a straight chute and put the v-bounce on jumps 1, 3, and 5. I started back-chaining to see what he would do… jump 5, then jump 4, then jump 3. Once we did jump 3 and he kept himself in the center for all the jumps, I switched to all five jumps. We did that for a few reps, then I took the v-bounce off jump 3 entirely and left it just on jump 1 and 5. And he was still running the center line rather than veering off to the side. Whoo-hoo! I even proofed it with some motion and got what I was looking for.

So right now the plan is to do a few more days with the v-bounce in, then remove one more. Probably remove it from jump 1 and leave it on the last jump and see what happens. If it goes well, I’ll take it off jump 5 and work that – and pray that I get a miracle. The idea here is to introduce some new muscle memory to the situation and reward heavily for running the center line.
Obviously running the center isn’t exactly ideal either – you want a dog who can pick his line and either wrap left or right depending on what is most efficient. BUT if I’m given the choice between a dog who wraps right or just runs center, I will take running center. I’m expecting to have to do a lot of work on this, anticipate we may see setbacks with his take offs, but all I can do is cross my fingers and hope we work closer and closer towards a confident, fast dog who can jump safely and appropriately.


Training Challenge for 7/2/12

This week is going to be a bit different, because Thursday night we set off for a three day agility trial for Auggie, which includes two days of rally for Auggie and also – gulp – two days of rally for Payton. That’s right, Payton’s trialing debut is this weekend. And I’m slightly terrified. Anyway, on with the schedule!

Monday
Session 1:
Heeling (Payton)
Treadmill (Auggie)

Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)

Session 3:
Rally sign practice

Tuesday
Session 1:
Rally sign practice

Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)

Session 3:
Rally sign practice

Wednesday
Session 1:
Rally sign practice

Session 2:
Heeling (P)
Jump chute (A)

Session 3:
Heeling/rally signs (P)
Treadmill (A)

Thursday
Session 1:
Jump chute (A)

Session 2:
Rally sign practice in the hotel room

Friday
Auggie agility trial!

Session 1:
Last desperate attempt to fix any problems with rally signs!

Saturday – Sunday
TRIAL TRIAL TRIAL

I have printed out a full set of rally signs, so we will hit those on July 4th, since I have the day off and can play with them a little. I know one I need to practice is the “bowl of food on the ground” with Auggie. It also occurs to me that Payton doesn’t have a very good Front, so I probably need to teach him that.

Auggie’s jump chutes have changed according to our weekly wrap up, so we’ll continue with those this week and cross our fingers that it may put some deposits in his jumping bank before this weekend’s trial.
Weaves for Pay have been scratched from this week, partially due to the impending rally trial and the need to work more on heeling, and partially just due to the heat. I’ve been taking Auggie out to jump after 8pm at night, and even though it’s still pretty hot and humid then, it’s at least a little cooler than the rest of the day. He’s also still getting some treadmill work to get in better shape and improve his speed. So far he seems to be doing really well, he’ll hop onto the treadmill and doesn’t seem bothered by it, so hopefully that will do some good for us too. It’s always a surprise with Auggie, haha! We are two standard Q’s and one jumper’s Q away from his masters agility titles, and I’m hoping we can clean those up this trial. But it seems I’ve been saying that for a while. Ohhhhh Auggie! <3


Payton went swimming

Ssssssorta.
Yesterday while at Target buying a pool for our backyard (this has become an obsession) I ran into a friend I met through agility. She moved out of town, not too far away, and just happened to be in town visiting her parents. She told me there’s a lake near where she lives and she has been taking her portie there and it’s a great place.

Well, I was told I couldn’t set the pool up, at least for now. And I was bored. So I packed Payton into the car and drove down to this lake. It’s about 90 minutes away, if that, so not too far really.

I took him in the water and he wasn’t really sure what to think. There were plenty of people out on boats and whenever a boat would go by (the boating section is on the opposite side of the lake from the public swimming beach) there would end up being sorta large waves rocking over to our side of the beach, and that confused him. So I took him back out and put the life jacket on.
He WILL swim, but it’s a terribly ungraceful splashing swim. I took the life jacket off and he hated that, his head dipped under water a few times too, so for now life jacket only. I ended up putting my shirt back on because I thought he was going to yank my bikini top off flailing around LOL. People were super interested in us, I kept hearing “I thought all dogs could swim!” Does it look like he can swim? LOL. One guy and I think his teenage son were talking to me about it while they threw a football back and forth, and Payton was watching them, and the guy said “Will he float in that if you let it go?” So I let it go to show him, and he was holding the football, and Payton started sloppy-splash-flail-swimming to the guy because I think he wanted the football hahahaha. OH PAYTON, you need to try that with SINGLE guys who are MY AGE, but nice try honeyface.

I tried to get him to go for a tennis ball but he was having none of it. He wouldn’t even swim out to get closer to me – I left him standing on the beach and floated out in the water and he just stared at me. I said “what if I was drowning out here??” and he just stared LOL.

We went back to the beach and sat down for a bit to get a drink, I pondered what I could try differently, then we went back in for a bit. This time he walked into the shallows all by himself and played around a little, he even walked in until he was about chin-deep, but he stopped there. Like he’s thinking about it, just not sure.

We sat on the beach drying off and I asked him if he still had fun or if he hated me now, and he gave me a kiss, or maybe my face just smelled like fish (we found half a dead fish near the shore and I was SO glad I left Auggie at home.) Picked up a few shells that had washed up on the shore and went home. Not too bad, we only spent a couple of hours there and I spent three-ish in the car, but it was really fun anyway.

I’m hoping my dad will change his mind and let me set up the pool in the backyard so we can practice more. =P

Here’s the photos I nabbed – none of Payton in the water since I was out there all by myself and wasn’t taking my camera in the lake, even if it was my crappy point & shoot…


Attempting to get a photo of us together hahaha. The lake was filthy, by the way. We both got right in the shower after getting home and my swimsuit was almost BLACK inside. Grosssssss.


“I don’t like you much right now mommy.”


Just sittin’ there, watchin’ people play in the water…


It was SO nice down there… even though it was still about 100 degrees back home and even hotter the further south you go, the air off the lake was fabulous. The sand seriously almost burned my feet though. But other than that it was super lovely!


Layin’ on his towel drying out, watching the people hanging out away from the water…

That’s it, nothing very exciting. =P I’m frickin’ exhausted right now but Payton’s like YAY YAY YAY PLAY PLAY PLAY YAY YAY YAY. stupid puppy.