Another Heat Wave

We're having a long lasting heat wave again.  Tonight is the first break in five days of hot, very humid, buggy , sun intense weather.  The dogs have been so patient but they've had enough.   We've done all the usual things and today Nick washed down every dog with water.  Late day Jim sprayed pens and redid all the water.
Now it's thundering again, lightning, scary for all of them.

We are seeing more deer in at the apple trees and in the raspberries.   Can't wait for the oppressive weather to go away for all of us.

Nature's Bounty

The apples are ripe and falling;   raspberries continue producing;  blackberries are ripening; pincherries are waning and chokecherries are turning purple.   The wildlife have taken notice and are appearing nightly to eat the harvest.   They seem to leave my plantings of sunflower and kale until all the wild things are gone.  They usually don't touch the kale until November.

The Navy goes to sea

Navy had his first lake visit since he's been with us and he appeared to love it.   He submerged himself several times, and even jumped off the dock (pursuing a distant water skiier), but he smelled rather fishy, surprisingly, so Nick gave him a bath when we got back to the kennel.

He seemed perturbed when we first put him in the back seat of the truck, his first truck ride since he has been here.   Of course we can't know what he was thinking, but he was happy to see that he was back at the kennel an hour or so later, very happy to greet Eos, as she was him.  He had a nice adventure that turned out well.

Dog Days

Not sure why these are the ''dog days" of summer but they're cooler, thus better for dogs than July's days.

Not too much wildlife visible and it's possibly because there is good wild food for them... they're not coming as close to humans because they're able to find food farther away from us.

The deer are pretty consistent about walking through, eating berries, apples, so we do see them. 

Rabbits trigger the field camera as do the deer.

Josefina on front page , Sled Dog Central.com

www.sleddogcentral.comwww.sleddogcentral.com published the photo of Josefina, age 5, taking her first dog sled driving lesson.
She is accompanied by Jimmy Richard and Tanner Johnson, handlers.  Check it out!

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.