Memorial Day Montage

I took a whole pile of pictures and couldn't really decide on just one - so here's a grouping! 1. Pretty flower on a bush (I took so many flower photos today - they were everywhere ><) 2. Loki watching for a chipmunk. His face is covered in pollen - almost a green hue to his face. 3. Corra helping my Mum with her gardening by inspecting her watering can and making sure her gloves were on right. They checked out ok.

This morning Mr. badger, my parents, the dogs, and I all headed out to Gates Pond for a nice walk. It wasn't too bad temperature wise, since we are in shade pretty much the whole time. There were tons of people there with their dogs, and Loki being reactive and all, I was worried that it would be too much for him, but Mr. Badger felt that he could handle Loki. Boy was he right :) Loki did awesome, only barked/lunged a few times - otherwise he was being very calm and listening to Mr. Badger. So proud of the both of them :3

Corra on the other hand ... She was sort of a monster. She was all revved up and it was hard to get her attention. She was doing much better as we'd walked around a bit, but phew! The path around Gates Pond is right next to the pond it is named for (which is actually really large, I don't know when a pond is considered a lake - maybe it needs connecting rivers? - but this pond is close to lake sized I would guess. Anyways, along the pond side of the path, there are bits were it is easy to get into the water. One of the first ones we passed, Corra went down to investigate and then proceeded to go into the water and started swimming! This was the first time she'd ever actually swam - at the beach, she doesn't normally go in deep enough since the waves are too much for her and the little streams/brooks I've taken her to haven't been deep enough (and I don't let her go far into the pond behind our place). Sorry, that's a lot of explanation, but I was surprised to see her swim so well right off the bat. She tried to go in a couple of other times, but I successfully called her back. I let her go in again when I could see that she could easily get in and out of the water. Anyways, as we were nearing the end of the walk, there was another little path down to the water, but this time it had a more steep drop off into deeper water. Corra started running towards it, I called her but it was too late. She leaped off the end and dove in head first - submerging completely. She popped up and looked very confused and there was no way she could get out. I got a little panicked and asked Mr. Badger to hold my camera so I could get her out. Mr. Badger was all, "No, I want to be the hero. Wait here citizen!" and went down to the edge and all heroically pulled her soggy little body out of the water and got her onto solid ground. She pretty much just shook it off and kept going like nothing had happened -_- I was too nervous to even think about documenting Mr. Badger's heroic endeavors. He later told me that he didn't let me do it because he knew I'd end up in the water too ;_; He's probably right ... but at least I was willing to do that for my little doggie!

Before Corra's first dive, we all had come to the one little beach on our walk and I was going to try and get some shots of Corra swimming around (because she is stupid cute when she swims!). I sat on the bank and then figured I needed a stick to get her to swim after it (she was already swimming around ... just not what I had in mind). I spotted a stick a little further down from where I was and I got up to go get it. At that time, my Dad asked "What was that sound?" and I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. And that's when Mr. Badger was all "Ummm, there's a raccoon right there." And sure enough, under some bushes on the little beach there was a scraggly looking raccoon angrily glaring at us (the stick I had wanted was a little past the raccoon). We all figured it was best if we got out of there since this raccoon looked unhealthy and not in the least bit afraid of 4 humans and 2 dogs ... so no swimming pictures! Hope that raccoon wasn't full of rabies =\

We got some delicious chinese food for lunch, hung around for a few more hours (that's were the pictures came from) - Soup showed up to play some games with Mr. Badger and I joined them for some more Incan Gold. We finally packed up and headed home - stopping at our favorite ice cream place on the way, making it officially feel like summer!

Hope everyone had a great, rabid animal free Memorial Day too!