Popsicle Toes Are Always Froze

Summer finally arrived last week and it is capital-h-Hot. I'm not complaining, though, not one bit. Summer is a short season here in Vancouver so I will gladly welcome the heat and humidity.

The puppies have been less than impressed with the heat, however. Our neighbourhood is all cement sidewalks and gravel-filled dog parks - not very nice for rolling around in when it is hot and steamy - so I packed them off to the suburbs to spend the day in my parents' tree-filled backyard.

The puppies love my parents' backyard. It's big and shady and comes complete with a puppy! Toby's actually not much of a puppy anymore; he's old and arthritic and his hips are slowly twisting the wrong way, but he lets the pups crawl all over him and kiss his face. He's afraid of cameras (and has figured out that my iPhone is a camera) so I can only snap sneaky shots of him.

Since Stella's raspberry eating incident, my parents have erected fencing around their vegetable garden. When Stella discovered the fence, she was displeased. She spent a good portion of the day balanced on the edge of the garden wall, trying to decipher a way into the garden.

I didn't want the puppies to get overheated so I made them puppy popsicles. I mixed up about a cup of plain yogurt, a big spoonful of natural peanut butter (don't use the sugary stuff or you will end up with a sick pup), a mashed banana, a grated carrot, and a handful of chopped cranberries into a gloppy mix and then used my mini-muffin pan as a mold. They took a few hours to freeze into pucks of puppy popsicle goodness and then I popped them out of the pan and stored them in a bag in my freezer. The yogurt keeps them nice and chewable. The pups approve.

After hours of fun in the sun, I brought the pups home for a much needed snooze. Stella crashed for the entire afternoon, giving me a nice uninterrupted stretch of time to work on my accounting course (boo-urns to working on homework when it is nice and sunny outside.)

The ear draping over the side of the bed? Kills me. She is very easy to love when she is like this (you know, quiet and immobile.)