So do you remember those chicks that I saved from their murderous mom? They left my living room this weekend. I'm kind of sad. I kinda like chicks in my house. The cute little peeps that welcome me when I come into the living room, their sweet little faces staring out from the little window. But alas they had become teenage chicks and weren't so little and fuzzy anymore. Plus they make a lot of dust in the house. No, they need to go join the flock and hopefully get along with their evil moms. They are being kept in a pen inside of the hen house until they are around the same size as the other hens. Oh and as for whether any of them are roosters, I have at least one....which I'm kind of excited about. I've been keeping chickens since 2010 and never had a roo.
On nice days they get to go outside.
Our little Bean is integrating nicely into the household. It's like she's always been here. She's already situated herself as alpha dog and bosses all the boys around. Every morning when I put my shoes on to take the kids to school she jumps up on me and waits for me to take her to the car. She sits between the kids when we go to school and rides on my lap on the way home. It's our little routine. I feel bad not bringing all the dogs be she's so tiny and calm compared to the others.
I tried to get a selfie with her and she went all "spazy" but it made for a funny picture.
Last month we had to pleasure of watching my parents dog, Dieter, for several weeks while they went and explored the South. Dieter didn't know what to make of Winston and all of his energy. Winston just wanted to play with everyone and all the other dogs are senior citizens. He finally, after a week, got Dieter to start playing with him. I'd sneak into the living room to find Dieter chewing on an upside down Winston. Winston enjoying every minute.
Wesley takes the pup outside every afternoon into the back yard to let him run and expel some of the never ending energy. Last week Wesley came running inside to tell me Winston had jumped up on one of the round hay bales. They are big bales and I couldn't believe that tiny dog could do it. But he did.
The fun part of play time in the back yard is that nobody can get the dog to come back inside. We have to nearly tackle him and then carry him in. Wesley's gotten pretty good at it.
The kids got some big bubble wands as part of their Easter baskets and were out on the deck blowing giant bubbles the other day. Winston was standing at the sliding glass window watching them and letting out the most miserable sounding little whines. I thought it was time to introduce the pup to bubbles. He thought they were great! Bouncing and leaping through the air and catching them in his jaws. The confused look on his face when he landed on the ground only to find there was nothing in his mouth. Silly little dog.
Winston had a big visit to the vet clinic the other day. Can you see in this picture that one nostril is bigger than the other? The big one is the only working one, the other is closed. So the vet recommended that when I brought him in for his neutering that they go ahead and use some of the tissue from the neutering to open up his other nostril. Apparently this pretty common with the smushed nose breeds (pugs, bulldogs and boxers).
He did great with his surgery and now he's slightly less noisy. He's just as crazy though. His new favorite activity is sneaking through the back door when anyone goes in or out and racing around the yard not letting anyone catch him. Good thing it's fenced. The horses and goats have always been intriguing to him. Here's one of my favorite pictures.
Did I mention we are getting some fabulous weather? Well we are. It hit 70 degrees yesterday and I just sat outside and felt the warmth on my skin for an hour. It was lovely. The kids and I spent some time on the trampoline with Winston. He's been routinely taken out to the trampoline since he was a pup so he's getting pretty used to it. The dog likes all of us but really has taken a liking to Wesley. Winston is pretty much his dog and it shows.
And this is what happens when we try to take a group selfie with the pup. Good times!
Sean's job is offering a health challenge to its workers. It's a website that keeps track of your daily steps, food logs and mental health tests and then gives you points for participating (10K steps = 10 points, food log = 10 points, and so on). Then when you reach 400 points they give gift certificates to Amazon. This is open to spouses too (lucky me!). Now I'd like to say that I'm super active and those 10 thousand steps come easily on the FirBit tracker attached to my hip....but it's not easy. In fact it's super hard to get that many steps in the middle of winter. I will admit that I'm a sloth in the winter. I pretty much hibernate all winter long curled up in a blanket on the couch while sculpting. I've come to terms with this. I'm super active in the spring, summer and fall. I love to garden, and mow and play outside with the kids. But not in the winter. So the problem I'm finding is how to get those 10 thousand steps.
Enter the land shark known as Winston. He's a five month old pup that reigns down terror on all that inhabit his land. He runs and leaps, he plays and fights all while gathering me those treasured steps.
He's a super pup. I shall repay him with a new toy (purchased with my Amazon gift cards he's earning me).
It's been three months since we said goodbye to Sophie and I've got to say it's been quiet. Too quiet. She was the instigator with the other two dogs. She ran in the backyard with Cody. She and Chance were best buds too, he thought she was his girlfriend (if you know what I mean). So for these past three months we've had two moping, depressed dogs. They just lay around and sleep all day.
So I started telling Sean we needed a puppy. The conversations started like this:
Me: "I think we might need a puppy around here." Sean: "No way, no how. There will be no more dogs, two is plenty." Me: "Come on Sean, it would be fun! The kids would love it, it would liven up the other dogs." Sean: "It's so calm around here, I like calm." Me: :(
So it went on like this for about a month. I'd keep inserting a puppy into conversations, wearing him down. It finally worked. It took a lot of convincing but finally I got a "if it would make you happy, then get a puppy." I have the best husband ever!
So I signed up for all the local puppy pages on facebook and looked up breeders in the area. Finally, two weeks ago a local lady posted a litter of Boston Terrier pups on facebook and I fell in love. I've always had a soft spot for Boston Terriers. Not sure where it comes from as I've never known anyone with that breed. But I've always loved their squished noses and compact little bodies. They are the perfect size, right around 20 pounds.
So last Sunday I took my Mom and picked out a puppy. Meet Winston, the eight week old terror.
He is a five pound ball of energy. He runs and runs around the house with a kids sock in his mouth and then crashes and sleeps upside down for 2 hours.
I love photographing him when he's sleeping. It's the only time he's still. Every picture I have of him awake is blurry, he's constantly in motion.
Potty training is easier than I thought it would be. He does pretty good about holding it in his kennel at night and when I have an errand to run. Problem is when I do take him outside he's so distracted by everything outdoors that he forgets to potty. There are cats to chase and leaves to eat. The wood chips around the trees are a constant source of enjoyment as are the chickens. He doesn't know what to make of the chickens yet.
I'd like to say that he's made friends with Chance and Cody but they can't stand him. He chews on Cody's tail and chases Chance around the house. They've given him plenty of warning barks and snaps but he's not getting the drift. I hope time will help their relationship.
Here is a video of the night they all met. Chance was pretty playful that night. Since then, not so much.
Last week we had to have our Sophie put to sleep. You might remember back in January she had a goose egg sized tumor on her neck that we had removed. We were hopeful that the vet got all of it and that it wouldn't return. Well, return it did.....and with a vengeance. We talked about our options and another surgery wasn't in the cards. The tumor had tripled in size from the original one in January and was growing very quickly. It was a very hard decision but it was time to say goodbye.
She'd had a good life and was nearly 13 years old. I remember the day I got her. I'd went into the Humane Society with my friend Jessica. It was common practice to stop in there and say hi to all the dogs and cats. The building used to be somewhat near me but has since moved to the other side of town (which is a good thing!). I remember seeing a beautiful reddish retriever sitting in a kennel. We already had one golden retriever and I thought it would be so nice to have another big dog for Cisco to play with. We brought her into the play room to get to know her and she climbed up on my lap. She was eleven months old and not a puppy anymore but she still thought she was a lap dog. I took her home that day and, boy, has it been a ride ever since.
She was good dog with our babies. This was one of my favorite videos from when the kids were tiny.
We had the vet come out Thursday and she was put to sleep in the back yard under a shade tree. We'll miss her.
Well I'm not exactly getting off to a good start this year with blogging! It turns out when I'm sick I don't do much of anything, including blogging. Imagine that. I'm on my tenth and last day of steroids in an attempt to get over the never ending cold I caught sometime last month. It's now traveled through the family and we're all hunkered down trying to recuperate. There's been a lot of couch sitting and Playstation playing going on. It's been relaxing and I'm happy to say I think we are all on the mend.....if only I could get rid of the dizziness.
Sophie has mended well from her surgery. The stitches were removed and the scar is hardly noticeable now that the fur is regrowing. She's back to her ornery self keeping all the crumbs licked clean from the table and barking us awake at 6 am. Fun times!
We've had some remarkably nice weather lately with it even hitting 70 degrees last week. I wonder if we'll get any snow this winter at all. I hope we do, at least once. With it being mild out I asked Sean if he'd mind doing a cleaning of the horse pen. We try to get it cleaned up every couple of months but it's all weather permitting. You don't venture in there with the little tractor if it's muddy, there would be no getting it out. I sure appreciate him doing that job.
Sometimes when you've been cooped up in your house for a long period of time it's nice to just get out for an afternoon. That's just what Greta and I did last weekend. She needed new gym shoes (growing like a week that one) and I needed a nice big ice tea from Panera. Greta got a giant heart sugar cookie and we took one home for Wesley. It was a nice Mother/Daughter time, something we don't get to do much these days.
Nearly twelve years ago I was out driving around one day and decided to stop at the Humane Society to say hi to the animals. This was a common practice back then. I'd stop in and go from kennel to kennel giving them scratches. I don't think I really intended on leaving there with a dog that day, but I did. In one of the kennels was a sweet looking retriever named Brandy. She was 9 months old and happy to see me. They brought her into a small room and she immediately climbed into my lap. She was fully grown so this was no easy feat. All I could imagine was her out frolicking with our golden retriever, Cisco, and so I brought her home. She never looked like a Brandy, so she became a Sophie. Sophie immediately assumed her role as Alpha dog and started bossing her new brothers around the second she set foot in the house. It's been that way for twelve years, except now she bosses all of us around.
She can be a real pain in the rear at times but she's part of the family. Over the years we've come to accept her idiosyncrasies. We know to guard our food at all times otherwise it will swiftly be plucked from our plate. There is a dedicated spray bottle full of water at the table for this specific purpose. A Sophie nose near your plate gets sprayed, oh how she hates the spray bottle. You can't leave her out in the yard or she will jump up on the window to tell you she needs to come inside. God forbid she's outside when neighbor starts shooting his gun (or canon) as she will break the window trying to get in. This is just the short list of nuances that come to my brain, but believe me there are pages I could write.
About a month ago we felt a lump on her neck. It was about the size of a chicken egg. This was right before Christmas and I told her we'd go into the vet after Christmas. Two weeks later it was the size of a goose egg. It was growing fast. So last week I took her in. The vet said it was most likely cancer and we'd need to get it off of her as quickly as possible if that was the route I wanted to take. The other route would be to put her down. The surgery was under $300 bucks so we signed her up to have it removed. He bumped her to the top of the surgery list and got her in two days later (last Thursday).
I've got to be honest, I didn't think she'd make it through surgery. In my head I gave her about a 20% chance of coming home. I cried when I dropped her off and said my goodbyes. The kids gave her a hug before going to school, we talked about what might happen. I prepared them so it wasn't a huge shock.
Then, by golly, she made it through surgery. They worked and worked and got it all. I love our vets.
What I wasn't prepared for is how she would look when she came home. For them to remove this giant tumor from her neck, they had to cut a lot off. The scar goes from the bottom of her neck to the top. It's gruesome. Greta was scared of her for about a day.
Sophie is slowly recovering. She sleeps a lot (as most old dogs do). This weekend she started playing again with Cody which was good to see. They love to go into the couple of acres behind the house and do their morning perimeter run. It made me smile to see her loafing along. We're not ready to be without our Alpha-Sophie.....although we might need to rename her Franken-Sophie at least for the time being.
This is an odds and ends post. Stuff that doesn't warrant it's own topic but still good to write down for some reason or another.
-Greta was the first in her kindergarten class to lose a tooth. Then a week later she lost another. We knew tooth pulling would be a far different story than it was for her brother. You see Wesley lets us lasso them with a loop of floss. He's so used to this painless method that it doesn't phase him anymore. I mentioned this method to Greta and she fell into a crumpled mess of sobs on the floor. The mere mention of pulling a tooth and she turns white and runs from the room. She gets the dramatic flare from her mother. I got my ears pierced when I was in 5th grade. Every time I tried to put an earring in I would nearly pass out. I let them close up and 28 years later got them pierced again. This time it "took". Once you get an epidural your fear of needle like objects goes out the window.
Anyways, back to Greta. Those two teeth were loose for a month before she pulled them out on her own in the bathtub. She was so proud of herself. You have to let that one do things on her own.
My Dad took this picture and I love it. I hope you don't mind me using it Pops.
-I got to do something I've never done before. I wrote out a police report. While driving home from picking up the kids
from school I witnessed my neighbor, who was preparing to turn left, get
rear ended. She's a sweet elderly woman who (thankfully) was in a
tank....also known as a Buick. A little Kia driven by a young mother
with several children in the back seat plowed into her. The mother was
distracted by her kids and didn't notice the Buick had stopped to turn in front of her.
It was quite the accident with air
bags being blown and the Buick being slammed forward about 30 feet. The
elderly woman wasn't hurt but rather shaken up. She didn't want to get
out of the car so I stayed with her until the police showed up. The young mom was very shaken up and had cuts all over. Her kids appeared ok although they were screaming so it's hard to know. She told me she was distracted by the kids before the accident. It was scary and could have easily been far worse. Thank goodness for airbags!
-I've been busy working on sculpture orders for customers. I just finished up the last big batch and got them shipped out on Friday. I do enjoy my "office". It consists of a reclining sofa, Netflix and a warm blanket. I pull up a TV tray and even paint the sculptures from the couch. But don't you have a work room to do all that in? Why yes I do, but it's currently housing three large desert tortoises and three cockatiels. The latter being extremely loud and obnoxious. No, I'll take the comfy couch. I like my work from home gig. It's a keeper.
My coworkers are pretty nice too. They keep me company and occasionally warm my lap.
Here is the finished batch of yorkies. The guy that ordered them is giving them to his grown kids as gifts. All the kids and their dogs will be together for Christmas so I hope it goes over well. They were fun to make.
