Along the San Pedro river

The school district was on half-days and I took a day off from going to the shelter since we are down to four dogs and three cats and adoptions are on hold for the next 13 days. Volunteer Heather likes to sit up front and she could easily handle that case load by herself. Yesterday, when I was at the shelter for 2.5 hours, I felt like there wasn't much to do besides clean the kennels, and that gets very old after a while. Washing clothes, walking dogs, those are things other volunteers (like Heather!) could be doing.

I wanted this afternoon to be spent with my own dogs but ended up looking at the shelter page on Facebook and reading about one of our dogs, that's currently in foster care, give birth to three pups this morning. One died of hydroencephalitis so she only has two living pups. Finding them new homes will be our next concern in two months, after their parvo/distemper shots. People donated to the vet bill and then some, all via social media.

The puppy ruckus finally died down by 3pm so I packed four dogs: Sammy, Sadie, Minnie and Zeke in Kevin's car and drove down to the river for a short hike as far as we could go north. The parking lot to the Hereford Bridge trail head was locked which meant I had to go north on the illegal trail. The dogs went nuts in the water but also brought back with them burrs all over their fur! This is the trail I'd taken Sara and Sammy on many times in their younger days, just a mile up and down the river, and usually encountered interesting birdlife along the way. Now that part of the river is heavily grown over with weeds. The border crossers that use the river as a directional cut deep swaths in the now dead weeds that poke and pierce naked skin. It's not really a fun hike off trail.

The burrs got so bad, though, that I opted to turn around. All the dogs had burrs on their fur, and many were stuck to my red Indiana sweatshirt. Taking the dogs to the river on this river trail was not a good idea. Next time I'll stick to the official path further away from the water. AT least the dogs had fun.