And a cold spell

Billed as a cold spell, this past weekend was refreshing.  Temp went as low as 36 degrees in the valley where we photograph the wildlife with the field camera and the temps ranged into the 40's and 50's for the weekend.  Add pouring rain to that and it was quite fall like.   We even contemplated soup for the dogs on Sunday but it seemed a bit early for that.

The wildlife is happily eating the many available wild berries, grasses that seem to be abundant this year, thus not coming in as closely as usual.   The apple trees are full and dropping. Blueberries here are still not ripening and they are small.  Raspberries look to be waning already, maybe from the grazing.    The cherry trees are literally dripping with the weight of the green ones, yet to ripen.

Two fawns were in with a doe yesterday afternoon, looking healthy.

Heat Wave and Remedies for it

We've had high heat (90's), high humidity (80 to 90), dry conditions (sand, sand), flies, mosquitoes, gnats, etc.

One of our favorite topicals for flies on ears is Burts Bees Hand Salve, but this last crop of biting flies must have liked it, so we had to go to applying SWAT.  Some dogs suffer more than others (Yeti, Yuki), while some seem to not be bothered much at all (Sherpa, Zoom).

For shade we rely on easy to fix tarps strung overhead with bungees.  While it doesn't look so great, it does a good job of creating shade.  Sunflowers provide great shade for Ruby and Yo every summer.

Of course, water, water and more water is necessary.  The water pails and pools are changed once to twice or three times daily.  Yeti loves his pool and kicks all the water out of it, so his needs refilling.

Nick rigged a great solution to beat the temps down... he wired a soaker hose to the top of the pens and it shoots out sprays of nice cold water, cooling the pens down by as much as twenty degrees.

Timeout for the 4th of July

We, of course, don't take a time out from the dogs, but things slow down when the temperature and humidity increase.  Today it is 86 degrees, 35 % humidity and very buggy.  We have been treating dogs for flies almost every day.   They are digging DEEP holes for hideouts and we encourage that... a place for them to cool off and hide out from bugs and sun.  The shade tarps are mostly up and each pen has a cool corner.  We fill pools each day and water is changed twice a day.   So with dogs just relaxing in the heat, we headed for the lake for some water activity.