Summary of our Florida Trip

The trip down was uneventful. Going to my parents' part of Florida takes about 8 hours. This is the longest that Luna's ever ridden in the car at once. She did admirably. She slept most of the way, waking up periodically to try to get into my lap, and stink up the car with her dog breath panting. For whatever reason, her breath started smelling like fish on the way down, so it was like fish dog breath.

Somehow word got to my dad that Harmony is a very good flautist. He proceeded to bring her book after book after song after song, and she played them all. Eventually I got out a guitar played some basic accompaniment. At the request of my parents, we ended up playing hymns; they were singing and we were playing. Next time we visit my parents, I will most certainly bring a capo. Many hymns seem to be written in Eb. As far as technique is concerned, it is extremely simple to play in sharp and flat keys on the guitar. However, the difficult part is muscle fatigue in one's fretting hand. Anyways, this hymn playing happened on at least two nights.

Friday, Harmony and I were left alone. My sister had not yet come home, and my parents had gone to my dad's PhD advisor's funeral in Tallahassee. Since Luna had probably fully recovered from her spay, we wanted to take her to a dog park. Now Georgia dog parks are all taxpayer funded and you just bring your dog and walk right in. NOT the case with Florida dog parks. All the dog parks in that area required you to present updated shot records. They also required you to register your dog with the attendant. This may not seem like much to some of you, but we are used to bringing Luna to the park and going right in without any hassle. The one we tried to go to had an entrance fee even though it was already funded by taxes. Needless to say, Luna did not get to romp around at any dog parks during our visit.

I'd been toying with the idea of fishing in the backyard, since my parents have a canal front house. Not so much for myself, but for Luna. The softness of her fur seems to correlate fairly strongly with feeding of fish, so why not try to get some for free? So I got a couple of fishing poles and some frozen shrimp and headed off to try to catch some fish for her. Harmony joined me with the intent of just keeping me company, but eventually joined in and out-fished me. I didn't catch anything that day, but she caught four, I think.

Out on the dock:


Even though it's not red, I deduce that this is a young red drum, judging by the spots on its tail. This was the biggest fish that we kept (I caught a stingray, which was the heaviest, but we didn't keep it).


I believe this is a pufferfish. It didn't puff up at all, so it apparently wasn't that distressed, or it wasn't a pufferfish. This, BTW, is quite a rare catch around these parts. It must've taken a wrong turn, because it's pretty far away from the ocean. Needless to say, we didn't want to give this one to Luna, so we tossed it back.


I did end up catching two weakfish and the aforementioned stingray, which I threw back while the women fretted whilst thinking about Steve Irwin. (BTW, I survived)

Luna shows off her wonderfully soft coat, which will continue to be wonderfully soft with the five fresh fishies that we brought home for her.