On a lighter note

It has been a wild weekend here. We are preparing to leave on vacation and our daughter is going with us. Her 45 lb lab/boxer/(must be a smaller breed in there too) mix-- and our 85 lb black lab “puppy” will be staying here with a couple of different family/friends who will be house and dog sitting. The dogs are 14 and 15 months old, so still very much puppies in their behavior. When they first get together they are wild and only allowed outside and in the garage. Within the first hour Friday, our Maggie had a cut under her eye and down the side of her face—and the gas grill was turned over. You do the math. The garden with baby tomatoes, various veggies, and 10 in high corn had been very unbothered until Maggie and Darby started their wild random chases—blind to everything along the way. And part of the reason they don’t come into the house (besides the constant wrestling) is that we have a lake and they love the water. As they occasionally meander through the back yard, they will look up and see the lake and you can almost hear their thoughts. “WOW, there’s a lake. I LOVE to swim!” and then they go barreling down into it as fast as they can. My poor husband has been repairing grill turn overs, taking Maggie to the vet to check her cut, re-hoeing and replanting the garden, and trying to build a makeshift fence around it (as if that will slow them down). Yesterday morning and this morning turtles were burying eggs within 15-20 ft of the house, so we will see how they do with curious canines having seen them at the time. I expect our house sitters will have enough on their plate, so I hate to ask them the keep the squirrels—especially short-tailed Bob-- out of the bird feeders (they are allowed to eat off the ground) and keep the ducks away from the bird feeding areas entirely (the 9 of them would eat us out of house and home with no food for the birds left). Forget about the future of these baby turtles. God will have to be watching over them while we are gone.