Posts from the not-best-of-friends have been removed.

My best friends have shed enough to knit a couple of more dogs this summer, and I'm sure this is a result of the extended extremely hot weather. I don't remember ever seeing so much for so long into the warm season, and I've resorted to keeping a broom and dustpan in the den and sweeping it into a pile I block against one wall with the broom (so they don't redistribute it). Twice a week on trash days I make one last pass through the area then sweep it all into the bag that is going out to the curb.

I work (as a contractor) for a landscape architect, keeping up his website and social media. He has a dog who is like a sawed-off pitbull, with many of the characteristics, but short legs. Add about 1/3 again leg-length and she'd be in the "normal" range for those dogs. (There must be some basset in there.) Her superpower is that she is a tree-climber. They have a huge old live oak (like this, though this tree is larger & at the Alamo) in the back yard with the typical rough bark that gives her claws easy purchase, and they have a lot of photos of her 15-20 feet up the tree and out on limbs. This is one of those trees with lots of horizontal or gently sloped branches so she can travel around up there. This morning he sent a photo of the raccoons she recently treed. As far as they know, this dog was dumped in their neighborhood, but she landed at the home of dog-lovers and has lived the life ever since.