sunny break

NZ has been hammered by some pretty bad weather over the last few days. Dunedin has missed the worst of it - it has just been wet and miserable for an unusually long time so when the sun came out today I was determined to get away from work as soon as I could and head down to Black Head. I wanted to explore somewhere new so headed out to the left of the beach over the rocks past the surf break, with the dogs exploring ahead, below and above as I picked my way over the piles over basalt. It became an adventure when I got to the top of what turned out to be the last safe rock before a steep drop to the crashing surf and realised that Storm and Phoenix had pushed on ahead onto a 45 degree sketchy, wet slab of basalt that ended a good ten meters above the rocks and waves below.

They're great climbers, but not very smart.

When I called them back Phoenix excitedly headed towards me but mostly slid sideways towards the drop-off, claws skittering on the black stone, eyes wide open, tongue hanging out (it pretty much always does). We managed to meet up before he went completely south - me grabbing his collar and guiding to safer ground. Storm was next - she's lighter on her feet but I still had my heart in my mouth as she bounded down to me. I think she was trying to wind me up...

On the way back I decided to climb the bank to the quarry above - doing that classic thing of climbing up a wee way, deciding it was way too soft and loose to be safe, then realising it was going to be safer to keep going up than try to down-climb... No big drama after that except that Phoenix found the biggest mud bog in history by jumping in - another 20 minutes was spent back down in the beach trying to convince him to go swimming with the surfers to wash it off.

Didn't work.