Dog-gone dogs!

The dogs had a fairly naughty day today, well probably I should blame the children. They have gotten complacent about leaving the house without dogs slipping by on out the door too. So we had dogs on the loose and the following occured:

1. Freeze jumped in our man made pond and disturbed the poor frogs residing there.

2. Poppy was almost hit by a car, she was in fact bumped by it.

3. Bonkers cornered a young porcupine in the woods.

BTW this was all within about 15 minutes this morning. After Freeze was dried off, Poppy checked over for injury and the poor porcupine rescued from Bonkers I had to give the kids a serious talk about their letting the dogs escape. There is not a lot of traffic on our rural road that is true, you can go the better part of a day without a car coming by but when they do they tend to be speeding. There is a leash law in this state and dogs aren't meant to be running loose. Also our dogs just aren't well trained for being loose outdoors. We have a very large fenced back yard for them to play in, they get walked on leash regularly and are let off for a swim in the lake when nobody else is there. They really don't need to be running loose except for when swimming or in a dog friendly park. I think the incidents today helped the kids realize they need to be more careful.

Here is the frightened young porcupine trying to hide under a rock.


Colin was in charge of keeping the dogs away from the porcupine until we caught them and got them leashed up to bring back to the house. He happened to be playing outdoors with a squirt bottle when the incident began so he sat near the porcupine and sprayed the dogs if they went near the rock.



We took the dogs home, this was about 5 minutes walk into the woods. Then waited an hour before going back to make sure the porcupine had moved on.We weren't sure if it was still young enough that the mother was caring for it or if it was on it's own. I figured quiet was needed either way for it to get it's courage back to leave or the mother to find and help it. By the time we checked back the porcupine had indeed moved on so that was good.

Later in the day the kids played in the tents and also played a round of badminton.


I "practiced camping" since the cub scout camping event is coming right up and I do have to stay with the boys. Yes it was daytime, 80 degrees and close enough to the house to get a good internet signal but one has to start slowly with these tricky situations such as camping.


I have now slept in a tent for one hour on a cold night and stayed in one for three hours on a warm day. I think it's just the discomfort of the hard ground and the potential cold night temperatures which are what I dislike about camping. Well I haven't fully camped yet so I shouldn't say I dislike it but dislike the thought of it.

I read this book for ambiance while practice camping.