Camping, Cuteness and OCD

I just returned from a totally kick ass camping trip with my family and (of course) the dogs. Cooper, Seven and my mom's dog Chucky were getting back to their wild roots and having a blast. In case you didn't notice, there was a four-legger missing. I left Jazz in the capable hands of a family friend. Camping and Jazz just don't mix. Whenever we've had him outdoors for anything much longer than a day, his eyes start to really suffer with the wind and dust and such. At the moment Cooper and Seven are curled up at my feet and I suspect they are not going to move for at least 48 hours or so...ahhh, sweet bliss...

We camped at Salmon lake about 45 minutes past Merritt, BC. It was absolutely stunning! My brother and I stayed in a tent overlooking the lake while my mom and her "roommate" took over our brand-spanking-new tent trailer at the RV site. Our proximity to the lake proved to be a bit of an inconvenience when we factored in the water obsessed, ignorer of recalls...my darling Cooper. If I took my eyes off of him for a second he was off, down the hill and into the water before I could say "oh crap." Cooper takes swimming to a whole new level. When he first enters the water he will paddle out to the middle of the lake and then look at me to see if I will throw him any rocks to chase. If I don't, he proceeds to stir up the water by thrashing his front paws and creating bubbles which he then maniachly destroys. I perfected a couple of techniques to retrieve my frothing, stinking, glazed-eyed, Posieden spawn from the very weedy, algae covered lake. The most successful was to throw a series of rocks closer and closer to the dock until I could reach down and haul his skinny ass out of the water. Another, less satisfying ploy was to let him swim himself to exhaustion and then walk away toward my mom's campsite with Seven in tow. If Cooper thought we were going to leave him and have fun somewhere else he sometimes would abandon his compulsive bubble-eating and follow us. Once out of the water I could grab him, towel him off and shove him in his crate while he stared longingly at the lake.

Seven, of course, was an angel :-)

"hey momz, you forgots to pack my halo"

"look at me, I SOOO sleepy, I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone go swimming...why don't you have a little faith in me?"

"I woke up."

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..."

Cooper tried teaching Seven the proper way to obsess over water...But found his student lacking and went on to pursue bigger, better bubbles...

Next came the big tent fight sequence...

Eventually peace was restored...well, sorta. If you look carefully, you'll see that Seven is the only peaceful one here. Cooper is tensed up and on his toes, waiting for his release word. At the quietest "okay" He'll be off like a rocket into that sweet, sweet water.

In closing, I leave you with a short clip of Cooper and the effects of prolonged exposure to freezing cold lakes without an ouce of self-preservation.