Whiskey Ribs!

I came home to a funny sight this evening! After a last-minute call to guide a trip this afternoon, working my a$$ off to entertain a boat of 13-16 year old boys and their mother, getting no tip, and getting home at 7 pm, I found this! It made my day that much better!
Apparently using a couple of teaspoons of whiskey in the rib sauce and then drinking the rest of the bottle is not the best way to ensure that you get some of the aforementioned ribs! More for me!!!

And here are some pictures of my minions, just because!

And Then There Were None

Welp, little Hyside, got the snip yesterday. Much to my surprise, Keith wanted to watch and didn't freak out as much as I expected him to. I don't think that he'll be jumping in line to get his very own vasectomy any time soon, however! The little guy is handling the loss of his family jewels as well as can be expected, I suppose. He was one of those dogs who wakes up all of a sudden and quite violently, going from dead asleep to flailing and bashing his head on the cage walls in less than 10 seconds. (Probably should have seen that coming since he's obviously a shepherd.) Anyway, he's awake now and home and alive. He was such a little baby last night, though. Not that I can blame him. It's not that he was in pain however, lots of pain meds on board, it's that he hated the cone, which I also can't blame him for. He whined and whined all evening after we brought him home and he was quick to let Kona know that he wasn't in the mood to play. Pretty funny little guy when he's grumpy! Anyway, he's feeling much better today. Despite our best efforts to keep him quiet, which is nearly impossible with 2 puppies, he's been running around all day, chasing Kona. He's used to the cone now, in fact, it's already all beat up from him running into stuff at full speed, but she's still pretty freaked out by it. It hurts our legs when he runs into us, so I can only assume that it hurts her too. It's pretty humorous watching him chase her around, all while he's got that ridiculous cone on his head! A couple days more and things will be back to normal, I suppose!

Whitewater from the Past

Oh yeah! If only the water was still this high!

Nada Surf. Or rather, Nada Raft.

We took the mutts rafting for the first time last week! Actually, I'd like to remove the exclamation point from the previous sentence. It was not the ideal, happy ride down the river, that I had envisioned these past months. In fact, I'd actually go as far as to classify the experience as horrible and/or disasterous.

The morning started out well enough, with breakfast burritos, and happy, smiling Kona faces. The dogs were good on the ride up, and super excited once we got to the river. I rigged the spyder that I was going to row the dogs down in while Keith rigged his kayak and then I loaded up the dogs. They didn't exactly jump in to the raft, ready and rearing to go, but I tossed them in, and they didn't immediately jump out, which was a pretty big accomplishment in my mind! However, things quickly went downhill. They were scared, and wouldn't get out of my lap. Minus the sharp claws and the scratches that they left on my thighs, the fact that they were in my lap wouldn't have been a problem, except for the other fact that I had to row in order to get the boat down the river. After tossing them into the front and the back of the boat dozens of times, only to have them return 2 seconds later, Hyside decided that he was done with rafting and peaced out. He jumped out in flat water and motored toward Boyscout beach. I, very, very frustrated by this point, rowed to shore while K, paddled upstream, back to me and the dogs.

At that point, kayaking was over. There was no way, in this life or any other, that I was going to be able to get down the river in one piece (minus the flesh under the dogs' nails) by myself. So, we strapped the kayak to the back of the raft, and Keith took the oars. I sat in the front of the raft, a dog on each side, holding the handles on each of their life jackets and desperately trying to keep them in the raft. Not fun. The Koners freaked out each and every time that she saw any whitewater or heard the noise associated with whitewater, and Hyside tried to jump out numerous time before he finally found his safe haven in the kayak.

By the last third of the trip, things finally calmed down a bit as far as whitewater, and so did the dogs. They wandered around the boat a bit on their own and I no longer had to hold them both in the raft. They survived the first time, and so did I, so that's good. Hopefully next time will go better, and the time after that will be even better! It can't get worse, so that's good! I think taking only 1 dog at a time will be the plan until further notice. Yep.

Here are some photos of the dogs running a class III. Kona took a pretty good shot! If you look closely, Hyside is in the kayak in the back of the boat. You can at least see his ears in some photos. He has on a red life jacket too, if that helps.