Vacation update - we just spent 2 hours with Maggie at the Montrose dog beach. The second we walked in her tail was wagging and she was bouncing around. We weren't there 5 minutes and she was running around. The waves were bigger than last time we went which startled her a bit, but she was really brave and worked her way back in. We stood about 20 ft out in the lake and she'd come part way out, go back, come out a little further. Eventually she made a game of jumping the waves as they came in and she worked her way out to us. Her tail was wagging nearly the whole time. Later, back on the sand, she got into her "I'm going to play even if I don't know how to play with other dogs, so I'll run around in circles by myself"-mode. She ran with us a few times up and down the beach too. She really seemed to have a blast and so did we.

Again, we think it's building off of being around George and the other dogs yesterday. Any time we have time around other dogs in relatively close succession she kind of picks up where she left off from the previous day. We're really looking forward to this week. On the agenda: there's a beach that allows dogs about 20 miles north of New Buffalo that we've never scoped out, so we'll probably check it out tomorrow; there's a restaurant in Michigan City that allows dogs on the patio that we've heard about from others at the dog park; we'll try to hit the dog park in the evenings so we can get her some daily exposure to dogs during the week, without the downside of running into some of the sketchy characters that go there during the work day.

I'm sure she'll sleep like a baby on the way up to Michigan, she was on sensory overload at the beach today, and that's the most running around she's done in months.