This past week has been really busy. Jolene planned a last second camping trip. I told her that I’d only go if all the puppies were all gone to their new homes. Which, happened last week.

Jolene and I used to go camping numerous times a year. As we got older it became less often. The last time we went camping was when Johanna was 3 months old. Johanna is now 3 years old. It was fun to see her experience it, and hopefully it’s at a point that she will remember it. We almost had our two golden retrievers stay with family so that we could concentrate our time with Johanna. At the last second we decided to take them with us. We didn’t regret it.

Since it was during the middle of the week, there really wasn’t anyone else in the camp. We went to Green Valley Lake near Arrowbear California. We haven’t been there before. So it was a new exprerience for us. The entire time while we were camping both Tina and Alice were off leash. I’m sure if it were the weekend we would have had to leash them, but since no one was around we were able to get away with it. Neither of them wondered off further than a visible distance. I was really happy on how it resulted. Johanna slept great in a tent, and so did the dogs. The irony, was Jolene and myself didn’t get much sleep as our backs can’t handle the hard surface of the ground anymore. So next time, we will have a lot more padding. Tina liked to sleep at Johanna’s feet, or in between us. Alice liked to sleep at our heads. Jolene took a photo of Johanna, Tina and myself. We didn’t bring our cameras, so a camera phone photo will have to suffice.

We did get to swim at the Green Valley Lake. They do make it so that the dogs are in a total different area, and you cannot swim with your dogs. Their rules state that they must be on leash, humans can’t go in the water, but the dogs can. So in reality if you follow the rules, the dogs really can’t swim. So we left them on their leashes, and let them go into the water (and allowed them to swim anyway). Alice loves the water. This is the first time she actually got to swim somewhere that she can’t touch the bottom. She’s a natural swimmer, but she does have a very high kick. Tina on the other hand, doesn’t like to get into the water as much, but she did enjoy some water.

Well, since it turned out so well we plan to go more in the future. I’m sure our English cream goldens enjoyed getting a break in nature, just as much as we did. The day after we returned I had Lasik done on my eyes. So my eyes have been a little blurred, and I just got back on the computer. Anyway, that was our update. Our goldens are great and enjoying life.