Holy, Moly It's Hot

I don't know how else to put it, it's hot here. Really, really hot. Over 100 degrees everyday with no chance of rain in the foreseeable future. This is not the time of year you want to be giant and pregnant. But with only 8 weeks to go until my due date, here I've found myself with two heavily panting dogs. It's too hot to do much of anything, but a couple weekends ago we made our last summer trip down to the river so the dogs and I could finally cool off. Simon's become quite a swimmer and it was so nice to wear him out in the water rather than with running where he gets so, so hot.Everyday, at least twice a day we took him swimming down at the bulkhead at our house. We also walked the dogs down the street to the small dam to go swimming as well. So 3-4 times a day, Simon was swimming. We found that just as much as he loves catching the frisbee, he loves swimming for it. I meant to bring our Bumi with us, but totally forgot so the frisbee was a welcome surprise. Our friends Brandon and Kathryn stopped by with their new dog Ellie. They rescued Ellie a few months ago from some horrible friends who were treating her terribly, and she has really flourished in her new life. Since Kathryn was at this point also hugely pregnant (she had her baby two days after we left!) we commisserated together and didn't mind the dogs shaking water on us. That's right, we Didn't Care if frigid water was shaken on us at random because maybe, just maybe those droplets might make the cabbage patch feet go away. No such luck.

Now, Simon didn't really take that well to having to share the frisbee. He especially did not appreciate when Ellie tried to take his frisbee. He kept looking at us like, "um, when is she going to leave." Sorry, Buddy, she's basically family. Get used to it.
Ellie seriously learned to leap. Check out that form! She got so good at jumping off the steps into the water, but the end she was way faster than Simon. He did not appreciate it.Now, while Lizzie does actually like to swim, she really prefers to wade in and swim out as she sees fit in true Lizzie-fashion. Jumping into the water off of some steps just isn't really her idea of a good time. But, digging up the fire pit on the bulkhead where some squirrels live is what what she lives for. She spent a good 30 minutes digging this up and trying with all her might to get at their squirrel hole. We were pretty sure she was going to pull something out, but I think they might have moved on. All weekend, when we let the dogs out, Lizzie would bound down here to check on the hole.
Digging a giant hole is seriously hard work.
The whole time the hole digging was going on, yep, you guessed it.
Still swimming.
In the end, he got a little confused about where the steps where and found himself marooned here on this rock outside the bulkhead. Or he was trying to avoid Ellie who was rapidly getting his frisbee.
At the end of the swim, Simon took solace with Dewayne who had to go retrieve the last frisbee throw.

This weekend we also tested the limits of Lizzie's off-leash ability. It was a great weekend because we were the only ones staying at the house, and there weren't honestly a lot of people even on the street. Sometimes you go down there and it seems like every house has a party going on so it's just not safe to let the dogs off.
But this weekend was pretty quiet. We regularly let her off into the yard to play and do business without a leash (there's no fence) and low and behold, she did pretty well. There were a few instances where she took off and Dewayne had to go get her, but overall she is getting SO much better at listening and coming when she's called. And it doesn't hurt that still, to this day, when she comes to the house from the giant, expansive yard she gets something delicious - bacon, sausage, leftover hamburger. Hey, she's no fool.