Puppy party!

Dempsey went to a puppy party Monday night, his first, since he missed Boston's party earlier this summer.

I have to say, I was quite impressed, not just at the sight of 10 puppies zooming around the yard, but at how polite and well behaved all the pups were. When you think about it, we had a quarter ton of dogs running around, and yet no one got knocked over, no food was stolen, nothing got trashed, and there were no fights. This is more than I can say for some of the parties that I used to, um, hear about.

The picture above is an example. Marie baked up some special doggie treats and was passing them out to the puppies. Everybody stood and waited patiently (more or less) for their turn. (That's Dempsey, BTW, sitting alone to the right.) It looked like feeding pigeons, though the puppies were much better behaved. And cuter.


Here's a picture of Angel getting the rope to play tug:




And here are Angel and Dempsey playing tug, without tugging. (Did I mention how polite everyone was?)

A pile of puppies. I've given up trying to ID everyone.

Dempsey taking a break by his favorite toy:

Angel (top) and Sawyer (bottom) taking a break:





Ooh, new arrivals!

After the picnic, we all headed down to the St Croix River for a swimming lesson. Dempsey, you may recall, was quite the aquaphobe, but I thought seeing his siblings swimming would help him get over his fear of water. It did not.

I finally had to "baptize" him by taking him into the river and dunking him. Dempsey did swim at that point -- straight back to shore.

I tried enticing him back in the water with a tennis ball, but no dice:

I told Dempsey he'll miss a lot of fun in the Land of 10,000 Lakes if he doesn't swim, but he disagreed. I think he likes being a fancy, city dog.

Thanks to Rugby for hosting the party! Except for the swimming, Dempsey had a lot of fun.