03.07.13

morning run:
Godzilla
Molly
Daisy
Xmul
Mega
Petey
Steve McQueen
Hazel
(8)

Southern charcos: ~8k. Everyone was really up for this today. Since we haven't done a southern route in a while I thought I'd check it out over there; the salt workers have been hitting those charcos pretty heavily for months now and I had a feeling they have started moving farther to the north. This turned out to be correct: there was nobody around. The only person we ran into was on the way home at the bush with the blue bag on it that marks the turn west to get to the charcos north of the dead goat trail (thus the "blue bag" trail). Steve barked once and stopped when I told him to; Xmul also piped up once but I had her on the leash and she shut up quickly. On the way out I let Xmul off the leash when we were far to the south because I could see there was nobody working in any of those charcos as far as the eye could see. I left her off until we got to the Au Soleil Couchant road and let her off again just before the swimming hole; I only put her back on as we were getting close to the tortuga crossroads. I did all of that in part to test her to see if she danced away from me or gave me any trouble getting her back on the leash after I let her off and she was perfect every time. Other than a tiny bit of barking there was no misbehavior of any kind and the pace was high the whole way.
GRADE: A

morning swim:
Greta
Tori
(2)

Tori was excited because she didn't go on the run but she tired herself out in the water a bit; she now basically climbs on my head / shoulder to catch a ride with Greta on the way out almost every time. I made her get off the bus and swim around a bit a couple of times just to make her work a little more. The ocean is nice now but the tabanos are incredible; they made our position from the very first lap and seemed to do nothing but dive-bomb us from then on with reinforcements arriving constantly (I killed a few and it was fairly gruesome because they're so big). Even so Greta had a good time and the swimming is definitely helping her lose weight.
GRADE: A