So I spent the weekend having a lovely time petsitting for Lili the adorable corgi again. I can't recall when I last did this to find if/when I last wrote about the experience, but it's a lot of fun. Her house is gorgeous and very relaxing to hang out at--it's practically a retreat in itself--plus adorable corgi!

Lili is obsessed with water play. Her favorite thing ever is to be splashed in the face with pool water while she runs back and forth trying to bite it. Her second favorite thing is to get sprayed (mostly in the face again) by a water hose. While her mum does the latter for a few minutes, I suspect I'm the only one who does the pool play. The first time I went in their pool, she incessantly barked at me and ran back and forth and I couldn't figure out why she was so upset--afraid of me drowning? wanted in? wanted me out?--but nope, she just wanted a snootful of water in the face.

Possibly the one fly in the ointment about this whole thing, besides drought and feeling guilty about water play under the circumstances, was that I was in the Bay Area this weekend and it was...not so warm out. Which is to say, it's not so much fun to get splashed while the wind is kicking up and it's 65-70 degrees out, as opposed to normally doing this activity when it's like 90 out.

It was cold enough on Saturday that I refused to get in the pool, which disappointed Lili very much and she looked unhappy with me. I sprayed her with the hose a bit, but that was all. I also attempted to ask online if anyone had any suggestions for ways for a water loving dog to play without a pool/full bore incessant hose running, and got some great suggestions such as water guns and bubble guns. I was all excited at that.

On Sunday, I was home with the dog all day while Mom went off with her friend, and Lili was clearly Raring To Go In The Pool pretty much after Mom left. I went off to Target early-ish in the morning to get a water gun and bubble gun, but I am sorry to say that neither worked for crap. She was indifferent to/ignored the water gun, and as for the bubble gun, it actually drove her inside the house. I told Mom it might be good for getting Lili to go in after walks, but alas, we didn't end up actually testing that.

Anyway, only hardcore water IN DA FACE would do for that dog, lemme tell ya. Did I mention that usually the only thing that gets her barking is when she wants water?* It was slightly warmer/less windier on Sunday, so I sucked it up and we had some pool play off and on for a few hours. Which is probably the most exercise she gets like, all year. She takes breaks after awhile, and I'll get out of the pool and dry off and read until she's ready again. Except this time, if I so much as leaned forward in the pool, she'd get up all ready to go again.

* Yes, I feel bad doing this during a drought and shouldn't be doing it any more, etc. I admit it. But at the same time, I hate disappointing the dog, there is barking, and hell, it's not like they're doing anything else with the pool water like watering plans back there. Not that that makes it any better.

Oh yeah, and at one point, much to my surprise, she JUMPED IN to the pool--I've always wondered if just sitting in a tub/kiddie pool/actual pool would do it for her, but apparently not. She wasn't so interested in being splashed while she was in there, pretty much looked around and then hopped back out again.

But we only did that for a couple of hours this time (usually she'll want to do this kind of thing all afternoon), because I got hungry and I hit my limit on being cold because that water was tepid at best and after awhile it got to me. So I got out and put on clothes and shivered on the couch for awhile, and Lili hid behind the couch and looked at me unhappily, presumably for stopping the water play.

However. Eventually Mom came back home and it was time for doggie dinner and we discovered something horrible: the doggie was...worn out, in pain, something. She was having a hard time getting her back legs in gear and was generally dragging herself across the carpet.

Uh-OH. I forget she's an older dog when she's running around like that. Apparently so does she, but I've never seen her like that before--and that was after like 4 hours of her resting. I insisted on bringing her dinner to her directly, and she actually ate the arthritis pill Mom gave her voluntarily. She seemed a bit better for awhile, but she really didn't move much for the rest of the night, and we ended up loading her onto her never-used dog bed and moving her close to the back door so that if she had to pee, she'd have less far to go.

After awhile, I was all, "She probably hasn't peed since 2 p.m., usually she goes out once at night, uh...how are we going to handle this?" I pretty much kept looking for the number of overnight vets, in between getting up and opening the door and asking her, "Do you wanna go out? We'll figure out something if you wanna go out." And she'd stare at me and go back to not looking at the door, and otherwise not being interested in peeing. (According to Mom, she got taken out in the morning and was walking around like normal and totally fine.) She eventually just got up and walked into my bedroom, where she spent most of the night. Which was ...flattering, I guess?

And like I said, the next day she was totally fine again, and she was even trying to get me to splash her again in the afternoon. (I did not, though I did let her play with the hose for a few minutes.) But all things considered, either I'm gonna disappoint the dog again or we're doing this for a lot shorter period of time. Also, yeah, I probably should never own pets and am a horrible person.

In other news, we have family friends from Montana, Sandy and Tony, who live in my dad's old hometown and we used to see them when we went to Montana. We hadn't seen them since the last time we went up there (which was a very disastrous trip since Dad was very disabled and Grandma was really losing her mind), and now that the family has died out, we don't really have any reason to go up there on a regular basis. Also, they have always been all "We are NEVER going to California."

Well, surprise, surprise, there was a family wedding in Yosemite and they flew out here (followed by a crazy amount of driving, getting lost, GPS fail, ending up in Bakersfield, throwing up at 4:30 a.m. on the side of the road....) for it, and then stayed in our hometown because a nephew of hers moved out here. So we took them to lunch today and then on tours of the neighboring towns, including the fancy mountain homes and ye olde fancy-ass country club. The latter was particularly amusing considering that they had all these "Members Only" and "Country Club Attire Required" signs and of course they're in shorts and T-shirts and Tony's got his RV park hat on and I'm wearing a shirt with an anvil on it that says "I'd Hit That" (they loved it). Luckily for us, there was nobody inside. Hah.

It was a lot of fun, we got to hear crazy pet stories, crazy "my 15-year-old grandson stole 2 family cars and played hooky" stories, the aforementioned getting lost around Yosemite stuff, and my favorite, "my relatives are SO REDNECK" stories. Because really, there's nothing better than people from Montana being all, "I know I'm a redneck, but hoo boy, my relatives are REALLY REDNECK." It was delightful. I gather one of them wore this shirt during the wedding festivities and Sandy was all, "I love you, but COOL IT DOWN."

Anyway, S&T were really super impressed at our neck of the woods being beautiful and mountain-y/hill-y just like where they're from--they had the impression that California was flat, mostly because it sounds like the only time either of them were in CA before, they were in Modesto. Yikes. Anyway, they were very impressed. They'll probably never come to California again, mind you, but they had a good time, it sounds like. And it was delightful to see them. Too bad nobody lives closer to each other, because they'd be more fun to hang out with at holidays.

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