Summer weather on the way....

Here we are, the middle of July already and it looks like this week will bring some Summer type weather, finally. How cool is that!  The small garden centres are almost done with flowers and plants....waiting to receive the Fall Mums.  We haven't watched much TV lately but I bet that the back to school commercials are just about ready to hit the waves. This feels so crazy and yet it's the way it is. I really wish Winter would go by as quickly as Summer.

This past week was good but busy. I spent some time at my parents' new apartment and emptied the last of the boxes.  I also rearranged some of the furniture in the living room. I think their place looks good and it's all ready for my mom's arrival, hopefully early to mid-August. I visited her today and her spirits are good but she is counting the days until she goes home. I can't blame her. Her physio treatments are going well and she is now walking with the help of a walker and an attendant.  Her physiotherapist is impressed with her progress.  My dad's new routine now is to visit her towards the end of the day so that they can have dinner together in her room. Last night, he brought Chinese food, tonight a good club sandwich with fries. All that's missing is a little glass of wine.  Soon mom, soon.

Auntie Lorraine came over for lunch on Thursday. She was so happy to finally meet Spicy. Both pooches were glad to see her and gave her lots of kisses.  It is always nice to see her.

I have been doing some basic training with Spicy. She is a well trained dog already but was trained as a show dog.  Show dogs are not trained to Sit and do a Down in a ring, makes sense. So in anticipation of our Fall Obedience training, I wanted to get the ball rolling and get her to learn the basic commands the way I know how to use them. We are fortunate to know an excellent trainer who has been kind enough to spend time with us and give us good training tips. Thank you Wanda for this! Spicy is an incredibly fast learner and a good student.  We train a little bit every day and it's going really well.  We are continuing training with Cooper also. As a matter of fact, I hope to register for the Fun Obedience class with him in the Fall. So lots of training on the go but it's all good. On the topic of training, there is a small yapper dog that lives one street over, behind our house. I tell you, she is a real yapper. You can just imagine how our duo reacts when the yapping starts. Well, we are training them to be quiet and they are learning. The "good quiet" is coming in very handy.

Before I finish my blog, I have to share with you a little something that we learned the other day. Did you know that dogs, small ones in particular, can be prone to do what is called "reverse sneezing".  It is their attempt to remove irritants from their nasal passages. Well, we found out all about this when Spicy, at 2 am Friday night, decided that she wanted to "reverse sneeze". If you have never heard a dog do this, it is quite alarming. Since we didn't know anything about this, we were very worried and seriously contemplated taking her to the 24/7 animal hospital.  What stopped us from doing so is that we could tell she was not in distress. Her breathing was normal, we checked her mouth, her eyes, she was alert and all she wanted to do was lick us and go back to sleep. We even had her walk and gave her a sip of water. We waited it out and then it stopped. We eventually went back to sleep and all was good. Needless to say we sent Darlah & Nathan a note about it the next morning and to our great relief, we were told that Spicy was simply doing a reverse sneezing. We then Googled it and read all about it, even found videos showing dogs doing it. We knew right away what Spicy was doing. I also touched base with a good friend who has two Havanese and sure enough, she confirmed that her duo also does this from time to time. Why hasn't Cooper ever done this? It seems that because he is larger in size, his nasal passages may be bigger no so need to do this. So, we learned something knew although it was not a good experience for us at the time.

That's it for me this week. I leave you with a potpourri of photos. You will see one of the VegTrug. Not easy to find vegetables to grow at this time of year but we were able to find a few plants of cherry tomatoes, a cucumber plant and some herbs. Have a great week everyone!

Auntie Lorraine with Spicy...while Anne
hugs the Coop!

VegTrug full up and with the micro-mesh cover on the
back deck. Lots of cherry tomato blossoms.

Back flower bed, day lily after early morning rain.

Backyard corner bed in full bloom.

Front porch with Cooper, Spicy and Anne.

Hey...Spicy and Cooper woof...
your food smells good!

Two for the road....shopping cart style at Jasmin
Garden Center.

The new and improved VegTrug dog den...
Spicy approved.

Cooper listening to the music, speaker on the wall