This last weekend Gus and Frodo joined us for a long weekend in North Cascades National Park for a hiking/camping trip. Both of them were little troopers, doing about 6 or 7 miles of hiking on both Friday and Saturday. We brought the ex-pen that a friend lent us and clothespinned a sheet over the top for shade and they didn't mind being in there too much while we were at the campsite. I think they were so tired from hiking that they were too busy sleeping to be bothered with complaining about the ex-pen. They slept with us in the tent of course, one dog per sleeping bag, burrowed all the way to the bottom like they prefer. How do they breathe down there?!
Gus had a bit of a misadventure on Friday. Showing the Chihuahua side of his heritage, that blasted "little man syndrome", he charged a string of pack mules, startling my husband who dropped the leash. Here's this 9 pound little fart trying to take on 6 mules who obviously were less than happy about him charging them. Luckily my husband was able to stomp on his leash, which was a good thing as the park ranger explained that one of the mules hates dogs and tried to stomp a dalmation last month. YIKES! It took a while for my heart to stop thumping after that one.
Frodo has his little problem the next day. We had just reached a tiny, deep little mountain lake that we hike up to on Saturday and Frodo discovered the wide assortment of dragonflies flitting about the shore. Being a bug catcher extraordinaire, he was delighted. Seeing several perched on a big log a foot out in the water he leaped for the log, not realizing it was floating. The expression on his face was priceless. Off the poor guy tumbled into the ice cold, glacier fed lake. He was on leash when this happened and so I was able to lift him out. Nervous on the best of occasions, he was a mess and must have tried to shake the water off for a full 2 minutes. Unfortunately the shore was dusty and so my pretty tan and white dog was soon mostly a tan dog, covered in mud.
Everyone made it home in one piece though, ready for our next adventure this weekend - a visit to see my sister's new baby in Portland, OR. Between their two dogs and Gus and Frodo it should make for some crazy moments.
The photo above shows Gus (top) and Frodo finishing up a very steep 4 1/4 mile hike up to Pyramid Lake. By this time Frodo had dried and hiked off all the dirt (gotta love a smooth coated terrier!)
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