Day four

Day 4

We finish unpacking and apologize to our neighbours. They all seem cool, thankfully and say that our aircraft sounding air pumps and headlight pointing into their tent at 1am was fine. We don't really believe that, but they are very nice.

Off to the race meet in Delaware to pet whippets and gather buccal swabs. The petting of the whippets is very important to the study. It helps keep the researcher sane after extreme fatigue from the day before. Everyone at the event lets us sample our whippets. The whippets all come from a diverse area. There are a couple there that were born in Australia, one from France, a few from recently imported European lines, as well as some from the US but born as far away as California.

Drying the samples completely in this humidity might be difficult. I hope they are dry enough!

After we were done, had taken much “whippet spit”, admired whippets and snuggled itty bitty whippet puppies we took off to the beach. Darien had made friends at the race meet, which not only ensured he had a good time and kept out of my hair, they also told him of a nice beach that dogs were allowed to go to. The beach was very close on Delaware bay. The water was extremely warm and salty. The dogs LOVED it. Dekka of course was in there as soon as she could. Kat was enthusiastic to swim for the first time and even Smudge offered to go in on his own. Dekka has learnt how to fetch rocks from the bottom. She doesn't come up with the same rock, but she comes up a rock, which is impressive to me. She will even put her head under water whilst swimming to try to grab a ball that is being tricky.

On our way back we hit a pet store just to see what is in a US pet store vs ours. A few different lines of products, nothing major. We were surprised that things were the same price or even more than at home. We then returned to the state park and went for a walk on the park trials down to Chesapeake Bay. Some lovely views, I hope to upload the pics soon and will post them. Dekka fearlessly lept into the waves to get a stick and fought her way back up slippery and steep rocks so I could through it again. The water wasn't quite as warm, but that was really a good thing.

Back at the campsite Laura took off to find a pay phone to call her dad and let him know how things were going. In that time I found a tick. On me. AHHHHHH! The tick tool is in the back of the car... I had to be saved by the neighbours. Their family was very interested in tick removal as it was as much a novelty to them as it was to me. The tick was situated in the back of my knee, so here I was standing there with all these very nice non english speaking asians with their heads right near my butt staring at my leg. Glad to be an educational assistant! The tick was removed and was very tiny. Still ewwwwww. Darien had one too, but by the time he found it the car, and the tick tool, were back.

Off to go shower and to inspect myself vvvverrrrryyyy closely for more ewwww AHHHHH ticks. Tomorrow we are off to another whippet event to collect more whippet spit.