Happy 4th of July!

Brent drove up to visit us on Friday, July 2nd. We took Laurel and Hardy swimming on Saturday. Now that Laurel has started swimming, she has become obsessed with it (not a big surprise to anyone who knows her). At first, she is so excited, she swims like a motorboat - with her butt way down in the water and her front end up and out of it. It's not real pretty but when she relaxes and swims like a Lab, it's such a lovely thing to see ... she gets that goofy Lab look on her face and you can see that's what she's meant to be doing. And, again, Hardy ran right into the water and swam a big circle around before coming back onto the shore to eat goose poop. He's 12 weeks old now and it's nice to see that he has his priorities all set. Also, although there is a tremendous amount of their poop there, we realize that we have never seen geese at the lake. Do they come at night or is all this the result of fly-overs? We had local corn on the cob ... best corn I've had in years and years!
Yesterday (Sunday, the 4th), we did the first session of puppy class again ... seeing the new puppies is always fun! Then, we went on the off lead puppy walk. Unfortunately, Hardy was the only puppy to show up so the instructor brought her dog along with us. We had a great time walking around Marden Lake and Hardy did his usual swim in a circle to prove that he can before heading back to the goose poop covered shore. Then, oddly, since we didn't see any fireworks on Canada Day, there were some around us last night!?

This morning, Brent went with us to Cornell Animal Hospital where Laurel, Hardy and Eco saw Dr. Mark Gemmill. Mark seemed to think that Hardy was a nice little puppy, physically and temperamentally and after watching Laurel and Hardy play on the floor of the exam room for a bit, commented that, "Hardy will grow up to be a better dog because he has Laurel in his life and she is such a patient teacher." I thought that was very insightful and such a lovely comment about my silly yellow girl. I appreciated hearing it more than he will know. Mark also took out Eco's stitches and said that he could start going for 10 minute walks several times a day. This evening, we took Laurel and Hardy out off-lead with Sue walking Eco on lead. Hardy pranced right next to Eco ... we're pretty sure he wants to grow up to be just like Uncle Eco (although we think the ears are going to be a problem). Laurel would race up to Eco and throw herself on the ground as an apology for being a Lab instead of a GSD.