Monday

Toby decided to sit in the back seat facing backwards on the ride home from pet training this afternoon. Weird, right? Fortunately, he did great in training today. We were both relieved. Our trainer thinks he might have some bulldog in him, and she says that might be why he's stubborn sometimes. She's going to send us a coupon to check his DNA to figure out what breeds make up who he is. She said it helped her to better understand her own mixed breed dog.

Toby's a goof pot, for sure.

In this exercise above, we had to walk past another dog without the dogs touching or lunging at one another. Toby was perfect. The other two dogs, not so much.

We always struggle to balance exercise and fatigue, getting Toby ready for training. I think we achieved it today. We walked him in the neighborhood, fetched with him early in the day, and walked him at Highland Park. He got two long naps and one short one. Then one short walk before training to pee pee.

There was good cloud cover today.

We made it to our favorite Highlander Park sidewalk twice today. This evening, the temperature was still in the upper 80s, but for some reason, here in the shade with the breeze, it felt more like 75.

We lost power at about 4:30 this morning when a tree fell the next street over. Sleepless, we got up with the sun and took Toby for a walk, hoping the power would be on when we got back. No such luck. So we hopped on our bikes (exiting out the side door) and headed to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. By the time we got back home, the power was back on, so we put Toby in his crate again and headed for the causeway to walk, at our usual time: 9:30.

We spotted this kayaker above with a sail rig attached. That looks like it could be fun.

The temperature this morning on our walk was 77 degrees with a 7 mph breeze. The high was 89. Thunderstorms are predicted for later this evening. It was a normal summer day, without a heat advisory.

Yesterday, at the outdoor gym, a cute, thirty-something guy was watching me do dips on the parallel bars. When I finished, he complimented me on my form. I said, thanks. Then he said: "You never see old-timers doing a full dip." Ouch! Gotta laugh.

Our dermatologist sent us both a text saying that our biopsies came back benign for skin cancer. My black eye is better, too.

After our last walk of the day, we put the trash out on the street. Then I raked some leaves and put those bins out on the street. The avocados look almost ready to start sampling. We've learned that avocados from the same tree will become ready to pick at different times each year, and even different times on different trees in the same year. They never ripen on the tree, but only after picked. The way to tell if they are ready is to pick one or two and let them ripen on the counter for a few days. If they get soft, they were ready to pick. If they stay rock solid, they weren't ready. I reset the clocks and the sprinkler system after the power outage. When we drove off at 2:30 to go to Petsmart, the sprinklers had just come on, which is weird since they are programed to come on at 8:00 am. Then we remembered the power outage.

Miles walked: 10.0

Miles biked: 9.97