Doggy swimming teachers redeem themselves.

Dylan never quite felt comfortable with the idea last year, but he took the plunge on his first opportunity this summer. We visited B's parents on their lake up north this weekend and enjoyed ourselves swimming and fishing. Dylan swam and ran himself absolutely ragged. He'd retrieve the tennis ball or a stick from the lake, run a few big hyper-energetic laps around the dock and house to whip the people into a frenzy, then go hide the ball or stick somewhere until we requested that he go find it and start the whole process over again. He had a great time. So did we.

We squeezed in a little bass and bluegill fishing in the late afternoon and evening. The big fish were not as plentiful as they often are, though we were both using 3-weights, so perhaps that's OK. The biggest bluegill was probably in the 11" range and the largest bass, pictured here, was around 17" in length.

We enjoyed dinner with B's folks and stayed until well after dark. So our drive home was super late and punctuated by lots of jaywalking wildlife. We saw lots of deer of course. We also interrupted 2 raccoon families out for an evening excursion - fortunately no animals were harmed in the production of this blog post. We were also lucky enough to get a good look at a bushy-tailed red fox out hunting along the roadsides. I think fox are very handsome animals and I'd love to get a glimpse of them more often. We typically have a few in our immediate vicinity, but rarely see them.

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