Summer is always a great time for a walk or a meet up at the dog park or just in someones yard.  I think there were 6 dogs this one night.  It is more like a parade taking 6 dogs and a few kids on a walk in the summer evenings but a ton of fun.  The dogs just love doing tricks for the kids to get little pieces of dog treats.

It is nearly impossible to get anything done with them around.  They insisted on laying on the blanket through the entire sewing process.  I guess they think dogs can quilt.

Oli gets everyone to play soccer with him.  He has his own special ball that he chases and chews for hours.

Rhupert is constantly coming up behind Dory and nipping at her, as all good pups do.  She is four and a bit more calm than he is but they still like to play.

Spring break should be spent at the beach.  Dory and Gus-Gus had several days of fun in the sun.  Digging, sniffing, sun bathing, romping in the water, and then sacked out in the car. 

This is a paved trail that goes for several miles along the cliffs of Santa Cruz.  We stopped at one of the lookouts to watch the surfers down below in the water.  Dory was not too sure about this but stopped to sniff the ground cover and watch for a minute.

Dory just loves stairs.  We took her to a friends house awhile ago and she spent about 10 minutes running up and down the stairs.  She loves having people sit at the top and bottom of the stairway and play "come Dory."  She went straight for the stairs at the beach in these pictures and usually easily beats us to the top.  She has an A frame for agility and she likes it too, and we find her out in the backyard just standing at the top of it some days.  She is quite the climber.

Dory lives with two other dogs that are both Basset Hound mixes.  She is the only one that can jump high and she tends to get up on anything she can.  But she really can't play ping-pong.

This was one of Dory's more busy days at the beach.  Lots of running, sniffing, digging, splashing, and meeting other dogs.  Then the ride home was really quiet; she just laid down on a towel in the backseat and enjoyed the ride home, as one tired pup. As they say, 'A tired dog is a well behaved dog'.

Here are a few more pics of our day at the beach over winter break.  We just went for a few hours on a sunny day down to a local beach.  This beach requires dogs to be on leash at all times but we like it all the same as Dory is a beagle and is not trusted off leash anyway.  There is a dog beach nearby but it tends to have a lot of seaweed.

Dory loves to dig and especially at the beach.  She tends to get really sandy.  She sticks her whole head in the hole and sniffs sometimes and ends up with a nose full of sand.  She digs at home as well but this is not usually as welcome as she has tunnelled out of the yard on several occasions and dug up a too many plants.

Dory had a tree at our last apartment she loved to climb.  We let the branches grow in such a way that she could not jump the fence. 

Farley is the biggest singer of the hounds.  He likes to sing every time the piano is played and gets the other dogs going, too.  Farley also starts howling at any sirens in a full hound howl.  The other younger dogs try and just don't quite get it but they are all hounds and trying to learn.  Dory also bays at cats in a really high pitch horrible ear piercing cry.

Dory at play.  She likes to bring us shoes, chew on shoes, and bite at heels sometimes.  She is a terrier and likes to play tug and hang from her rope toys. In the second picture she is a full two feet off the ground (she is not jumping, but hanging by her teeth). She could spend an hour playing chase and tug and so we frequent the dog park to wear her out.  A happy dog is a sleepy dog.

All three dogs love to swim.  Farley started it all.  We had two previous dogs that hated water.  Farley is half golden retriever and we could barely keep him out of the water.  He loves to have his ball thrown in the water and jump in after it.  Any kids that come over take him swimming; if no one will throw the ball he will drop the ball in the pool for himself.