Its been a little while since we've gotten all of the dogs together for some good old fashioned romping and yesterday presented a perfect opportunity to do so.
I brought Nande, Paul brough Modoc, John brought Brady and Mike brought Cinder down to one of our local wonders, an enormous stretch of gorgeous beach where dogs can roam a bit. John showed up a few minutes after I got there and it was good fun to watch our two dogs race up to each other, get an obligatory sniff in and then start chasing each other all over the beach.
Now, these aren't small dogs and they're not perfectly well trained and we had more than a handful of episodes of them racing off down the beach after another dog or to see if they could knock down an ambulating kid (no, they were unsuccessful on that one). People walk up and down the beach with their hounds and we had a steady stream of new dogs coming by that would rile up Nande and Brady every couple of minutes.
And when there weren't new dogs or joggers cruising by, we'd run out into the surf to see how far the dogs would come with us. Nande continues to impress me in the water. She doesn't really care to be in water she has to swim in but she's starting to broadside waves and really have fun in the surf, she even body surfed back in once or twice!
A little later, Paul and Mike showed up with the other two dogs and the thrill of the chase was rejoined with great enthusiasm. Four dogs chasing each other in and out of the surf, up and down the beach, occasionally racing over to some of our sand neighbors (oh bad dogs, don't go and spray sand on those pretty ladies in their bikinis, bad dogs! bad! hehehe).
Cinder got top water honors, when Mike went out to swim around a bit, Cinder was right there with him, no questions asked. She swum with him and then came back in with him. Nande will go out until she's mostly submerged but will head back in to avoid being washed by a wave. Brady will go up to his knees (about 8 inches at best) but will swim when John carries him out into the surf. And Modoc? Modoc's still a little uncomfortable with the water in his water bowl much less ocean surf. He hung out well clear of the surf but would occasionally go chasing down into the very edge. Our guess is that he was traumatized as a pup and is pretty securely hydrophobic.
So we hung out, talking, playing with the dogs, drinking illegal beers (who decided that it is wrong to drink beer on the beach? nothing better than a cold beer in the sand!). And, as people came by with their dogs, our wolf pack would go running out to greet, sniff and romp with the new dogs. At one point there were six or seven dogs all chasing each other all over the place, sometimes charging straight at us en masse, and remember that we're probably talking about close to 500 pounds of dogs, only to veer off at the last instant. Sometimes one wouldn't be able to veer and there would be a heavy thump as furry dog body impacted with human.
By the time we left the beach, there was a swath of sand in front of our spot that was completely churned up by the dogs. It was probably two hundred feet long and about fifty feet wide and there wasn't a spec of smooth sand in there. And the dogs were as docile as exhaustion makes them. They were happy to lay down next to us and couldn't even muster the energy to chase each other as we headed off the beach.
It was, all in all, a fabulous afternoon. Nande slept like a champ all night, my feet and legs are incredibly sore today from all the running in the sand but it was well worth it. Nande and I both needed to get out and blow off some steam and it is harder to do that when P and Graydon are with me.
There is some pending sadness though as Modoc's mom is coming back out to get him later this month. Its a long story but she went back east, couldn't take him at the time and is, more or less, killing the relationship with Paul. It sucks and we're currently working on ways to "lose" Modoc while she's here so she can't take him. We don't know what will happen but there's a chance we will keep him and that would be great because he's a great dog and one of my dog's best friends. But we'll just have to see how it all shakes out.
[Update: Here's photo proof of what happened to Nande when we got home, Nande sacked.
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