In Other News...

  Elliot has proven himself to be quite a track star this spring.  He's in eighth grade track and has been doing the high jump, 200 meter dash and 400 meter dash and has excelled in all three.  He woke up sick today, went to school anyhow because of his meet, and ended up winning high jump with a jump of 5'4" and 400 meter dash with a time of 58 seconds.  The 400 wiped him out and he had to scratch the 200 and go see a doctor.  He has strep and will get better quickly I'm sure.  Last week, he got 2nd in the high jump and won both the 400 and 200.

Spring has Sprung!

So we finally have spring in progress here in da U.P.!  We have started getting the dogs out on loose runs and have been busy moving the dog yard to a drier spot up behind our house.  We were so sick of the mud that comes with spring when they are down next to the drive way.  We need to have them down there during the winter so we can easily get them loaded and unloaded for training/racing because we can't plow a route to up behind the house in the winter.  So for the moment, we have resigned ourselves to the work of moving the dog yard now for the summer and then we will move them back down by the driveway this fall before the ground freezes.  It's a ton of work to move all the dogs, swivel posts, and dog houses, but the dogs are definitely happier and so are we, not having to wear muck boots when we are in the kennel.

We wanted to get them outta this damn mud!

We moved them from down here to way up there behind the row of pine trees...

Up there...

One of the tasks was pulling the swivel posts that the dogs are tethered to.  Jeremy has come up with a pretty good system for it-

The post.

Loosening it with a pipe wrench.

Use a small loop of chain.

Use a vice grip as a stop, a heavy pipe as a lever, and a cinder block as a fulcrum.

Push on the lever.

Slides right out!

The new temporary yard.  They have small trees around them, so more shade options. 

View from the back of the yard.  Not very organized (no real rows), so it will take some getting used to, but everyone is happy.

Honestly, it's also kind of nice to have them further from the road/less visible, too.

Hit Again

Yet another snowstorm, now in May!  We had a few nice days right before that were in the mid 60's all the way to the mid 70's on April 30th, then on the evening of May 1, it started snowing and of course the forecast was for six to eight inches and none of us wanted to believe we'd see that much snow this late.  Turns out it was wishful thinking and we ended up with about 14 inches by the 3rd!  Last night, we got rain on top of it all, so there was a nice crust on it this morning.  It's a miserable mess really, with water and mud under all the wet, heavy snow.

 

Sure hope this is really the last time this spring!