Riley Has a Baby Sister!

We mentioned in our last blog post that our next trip would be to Diamond Lake in mid-July and we’d let you know if/how we might extend that trip. Well, what we certainly didn’t foresee was that the first stop on this trip would be to pick up Riley’s new baby sister! TWO mastiffs in a 33 ft. motorhome? Are we crazy? Yes. No. Maybe! We’ve held off on getting a second mastiff for quite a while. It just seemed the timing wasn’t right or the puppy we wanted was spoken for.  And then there’s that TWO mastiffs in a 33’ box thing. Lol. Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the winds and take a chance. Late last year when Mai, who I know through the mastiff and dog show community, was considering breeding her gorgeous girl Kiska, I did just that. Fast forward more than six months and the puppy gods have smiled on us! Mai has done a fabulous job with the litter and documented her entire journey on Facebook. It was wonderful checking in every day (I refused to get out of bed before my daily dose of adorable!) and watching them grow. Please welcome Raney Leila Edington to the family! More details to come…

 

💖 Raney Leila Edington 💖

Fortunately, we haven’t spent the entire three months that we’ve been home swooning over puppy pictures. (We also spent hours buying puppy stuff and even more hours obsessing over puppy names! Ok, well I did. Lol.) In addition to the puppy-related activities we became Boondockers Welcome hosts in April. We’ve mentioned being members of Harvest Hosts and they joined forces with Boondockers Welcome to provide even more free camping opportunities. Rather than the wineries and businesses that make up Harvest Hosts, Boondockers Welcome are just folks with space to park an RV that open up their property and allow RVers to stay. Rog and I discussed it and decided we could do that!  

 

Our Boondockers Welcome site is called, "South of Seattle". Come visit!

Since then, we’ve hosted about a dozen Boondockers and it has been amazing! We’ve met some great folks, shared stories about travels and a happy hour or two. One of our Boondockers even agreed to come back and housesit for us! (Thank you, Jordan!) Two of our favorite guest families were from the UK,  friendly and fascinating folks with truly amazing stories. Sam and Andy were absolutely delightful and have been traveling with their two children in a 24ft van since 2019. Wow! Chris and Marianne are U-Tube Vloggers who ditched the 9-5 to try and drive around the world in their van, Trudy. They’ve visited 33 countries to date and were so much fun to talk to. Check out their channel here: TREAD the globe - YouTube   As you can guess, we’re really excited about being hosts and we’re equally excited to be staying at a couple Boondockers Welcome sites on this trip.

 

Our two UK families met up in Alaska. Such fun folks.
(Picture from Chris & Marianne's Tread the Globe Newsletter - check them out!)

So this trip… yes, I’m finally getting to that. But come on, I had to share the really important stuff (PUPPY!) first. Lol. We left home on Friday, July 1^st and arrived at our first Boondockers Welcome site in Hubbard, OR. The family runs a Hazelnut farm. Super nice folks who greeted us with a hazelnut goody bag. They have a lovely property and Riley and Raney have enjoyed playing on the huge lawn and napping under the shade trees.  

Our lovely spot next to the hazelnut groves.

Riley enjoying the lawn (before he had to share with Raney). 

What a gorgeous girl! Am I biased? Naaaah. 

Daddy with double the trouble. Lol.

HaHa - Catch me if you can!

Puppy free stack. 
(It's a dog show thing.)

Which brings us back to Raney (and more puppy pictures, Lol!). We weren’t sure for many long months IF we would get a puppy and didn’t know until literally a few days ago which one(s) would be available. There were 6 puppies in the litter, 3 boys and 3 girls with one fawn/two brindles of each gender. (Litter names were based on the Brady Bunch!) We knew that four were already spoken for – but we wouldn’t know which four until the stud owner made his pick. 

 

Loved the Brady Bunch theme. 
(Pic from Mai's FB post)

As it turned out we had pick of the two brindle girls (Cindy and Marsha) and to say it was a difficult decision would be an epic understatement. They were both so dang adorable! Their personalities were quite a bit different, with Cindy being much more active and feisty while Marsha was a lot calmer and more mellow. On our first visit, Cindy crawled into my lap, gave kisses and then tried to eat my face. Marsha seemed more aloof, but on our second visit she immediately crawled into Rog’s lap and started loving him up. We spent about four hours with the puppies over the two visits, watching them interact with each other and seeing how they responded to us. There just was no wrong answer. We finally decided that Marsha’s more mellow personality would be a better fit for our family. We already have one off-the-charts active, playful, sock-puppet mastiff (talking to you, Riley!). 😊 But talk about hard choices! Ugh!! (And no, taking both was not an option – I asked. Rog does have his limits. Lol) So Marsha became Raney and joined our happy home! (Her AKC registered name will be, Tundra R3's Can't Stop the Rain - Raney)

 

Marsha and Cindy
How could you possibly choose between these two beautiful girls???

My happy place.

Raney is coming home!

Some of you have asked about Raney’s first night and what Riley thinks of the new puppy. Well, she was an absolute angel baby her first night! Mai was giving the puppies a late feeding around 11pm to help get them through the night. But Raney crashed around 9:30pm and I decided to just let her sleep. And sleep she did! Not a single whimper or whine until she woke up at 4am! I got up with her and she pottied, had breakfast, played for about an hour and then went back to sleep until around 7am when Rog took his turn. Wow. We could not have asked for a better first night. As for how they’re doing together, Riley isn’t quite sure what to make of her. I think he was waiting for her to go home. Lol. He’s carefully checked her out and done the puppy bow a couple times. She is a bit intimidated by his size, but will approach him, kiss his face, and then run away. We’re not forcing anything, letting them take it slowly. That said, we are all cooped up together in a 33’ RV, so some degree of togetherness is a given. 😊

 

She'll kiss him and then run away. Tease. Lol.

First naps together. Mastiff bonding. Lol.

We spent two nights at Hazelnut Haven, leaving on Sunday, 7/3, for a Harvest Host location just 45 minutes away at Stone Circle Cider in Estacada, OR. Our drive to Stone Circle was far more adventurous than necessary thanks to the Garmin sending on a ridiculously circuitous route with extremely steep hills, winding narrow roads, and what we affectionately call asphalt cobblestone. Sometimes I think the Garmin (and yes, we have the version specifically for RV’s) says, “Hey, here’s a route than no one in their right mind would take in an RV. Let’s send them that way!”. Ugh! Luckily, it was a short ride, but still not the easy drive we wanted for Raney’s first adventure.  

 

Our little Road Warrior.
She did great in the car, the RV was a bumpier ride.

Stone Circle Cider was definitely a hit though. Great ciders, dog friendly and a nice outdoor seating area next to a pond. The parking area for Harvest Host guests is at the top of a hill, a bit of a walk from the cidery. So we pulled out Raney’s new combination stroller/bike trailer and took a stroll down to the tasting room. After Rog and I shared two flights of cider and the pups had a blast exploring, we left with a couple bottles of cider for later and some tired pups.

 

Stone Circle Cider was a hit!

Girlfriend is riding in style! Lol.

We all enjoyed the grassy pondside seating.
(Can you spot the puppy?)

Our next stop is waaaay out in the boonies. We stayed at Cottonwood Canyon State Park in June of 2021 and thought it would be a good place to get away from all the crazy 4^th of July bangs and pops. Riley is NOT a fan of fireworks. The only downside is we’ll have no cell service or internet connection, so you’ll have to go a few days before you get another puppy fix. Sorry!