The Year of the Chicken

I've wanted chickens ever since we moved out to the country, so we're going on six years now. This is the year, yea! I went in this morning and ordered my chicks and they'll be in on May 7th. I see a sign on the door of the feed store every year around this time about ordering chicks. They take orders for a couple of months and then fill the orders with chicks from a catalog hatchery. This benefits me because you have to order at least 25 chicks from the mail order hatcheries. I don't want 25 chickens, I want six. I'm so excited! I ended up deciding on two different breeds, the Araucana and the Silver Laced Wyandotte. The Araucana is special because it lays green and blue eggs. They are nicknamed the "Easter Egger". I just think that's cool. The other breed is the Silver Laced Wyandotte. They are excellent layers, lay brown eggs, resistant to really cold winters and just beautiful birds (picture to the right). I'm so excited to have fresh eggs every day. Have you ever had farm fresh eggs? The yolks are a deep rich orange and they taste so much better. I believe they are better for you as well. The research I've been looking at says to keep two hens for every person eating eggs. We'll see if six hens can keep us in enough eggs, we eat a lot of eggs!

We're going to keep the chicks in a pen with a heat lamp out in the shop until they are old enough for the coop. I've been telling Wesley we're going to get chicks and he seems pretty excited. I don't think he's ever seen a chick so I doubt he has a clue what is coming so it will be interesting.

I was debating where to put the chicken coop and finally decided on placing it in the horse pen. I had chickens growing up (along with ducks and pigeons) and lost a few of them to predators over the years. It's pretty traumatizing as a kid to loose a tame pet to a skunk or possum. I don't want my kids to have to witness that. So, with that being said, I want to place the coop in a location where the chance of a predator eating the chickens will be slim. In the horse pen is a good place. The horses are pretty aware of everything that goes on around them and I think they'd chase off anything that got in their pen (have you ever seen an angry miniature horse before?). Here's hoping anyways.

I told Sean I wanted to get chicks and he gave me "that look" and said "what do you want me to build." :) He's such an understanding husband.

Stray Magnet

I'm literally a magnet for stray animals. Tuesday morning I noticed two little pups hanging around our property. I didn't think much of it as we see many loose dogs around here. That evening they were still hanging around and were now tormenting the horses so I went out there to investigate. There yipping madly at Rocky were two little fluffy Australian Shepherd puppies. Just adorable little things. A red merle and a black tri. I couldn't just let them stay there so I took them, fed them and locked them up in the chain link dog kennel. Not knowing what to do next I started calling places. The neighbors, the local vet clinic (turns out you have to be in city limits for them to take strays), the Humane Society (costs $25 a dog to drop off out of county strays), then the city hall to see if anyone was missing two pups (nobody was). I figured they were drop offs. That's one of the "joys" of living in the country is dealing with other peoples unwanted animals.

I posted a lost and found ad on Craigslist but nobody seems to be missing these pups. Hard to believe since they look purebred. Since I'm just about at my wits end with our current animals I knew they needed to go so I posted an ad on Craigslist. A nice young couple came out and adopted the red merle pup this afternoon and I think I have a guy coming out to take the tri-colored one tomorrow. It's been an ordeal but I just hope they are going to have good homes.

Cute little things

Taking a back seat

I'm sorry to say that the animals around here have taken a back seat to the kids. I felt like I had enough time and energy for all these pets when I had only one child but when Greta came along there just was no extra time. Don't get me wrong, every mouth is fed daily and all the essentials are taken care of but the time and energy needed to love on the animals is just gone.

So over the past month I've been taking animals here and there for their annual shots and/or vet check ups. First it was Cody because he was too skinny, then the other two dogs went in for their vaccinations and to stock up on heart worm preventative. Then the tapeworm indecent for Cody. On top of that, Desi the miniature horse, started having tender front hooves. Whenever the ground froze, he would walk very delicately as if his feet hurt him. So I loaded him up into the horse trailer last Monday and took him to the horse vet. They checked him over for any signs of lameness and said other than needing a good trim, he was fine. He got his teeth floated while he was there since he's starting to get up in years (he's 13) and they sent him home with me.

Since I'm running low on time I decided to call a farrier out to trim up his hooves. This is something I would normally do myself but with him having tender feet I thought it might be time to turn that duty over to a professional. Now Desi is a fine little horse once he's caught, he just doesn't like to be caught. He has some trust issues with humans from when he was a younger, don't know what happened to him. It's a process to get a halter on him but once haltered he'll go anywhere with you. I didn't want the farrier to drive all the way out here and then me not be able to catch him so I brainstormed all evening last night about what I could do to make him easier to catch. If only we had a small corral to keep him in. Turns out we do:



Yep, that's a miniature horse in a chainlink dog run. Classy eh? Got him in there this morning and he was right there ready to be caught when the farrier arrived. It worked out great and I'll be using it the next time he comes out.

Here's hoping I can somehow gain more energy and time to spend with these attention starved animals.

Skinny Dog

If there was any possible way to toss a large piece of furniture into the washing machine I would be doing it right now. This morning I walked into the living room and was greeted, as usual, by the thumping of Cody's large tail. He's all spread out on the couch where he sleeps every night. I went over and rubbed his head and noticed small white specks on the base of his tail. Upon further examination I find that there are three small white worms near his rear end. Can I just say BARF!? I got a ziplock bag and put the little worms in the bag and put Cody outside. Quickly.

Let me mention that a month ago I took Cody, the black lab, into the vet clinic because I thought he was skinny. He was pretty skinny when we I found him as a stray back in July. I just thought he was young and possibly neglected in his former home. So now, after seven months, he's still skinny. You can feel his backbone and some ribs. I feed him nearly twice the amount of dog food that Sophie gets and he gets all sorts of tid bits in the evenings once he comes inside....yet still skinny and always starving. Anyways, I took him into the vet in January and they said he was in prime shape and that this is "what a lab should look like. All the labs you see anymore are morbidly obese." They said I could bring in a fecal sample and they could check for worms if I was still concerned. Obviously unconcerned, I took him home.

So fast forward to today. Guess the dog has tapeworms. Great. After $47 for two little pills, he'll be worm free soon. In the meantime, how do I wash a couch?

Like a kid in a candy store

Wesley has a little five gallon fish tank in his bedroom. A few months ago the light in it burned out so I went and bought a new bulb. I came home, put the bulb in and it still didn't work. So I did nothing at that point. The two little fish that lived in it sat in the darkness for several months. I felt this was no kind of life for them so I netted them out and plunked them into the 30 gallon tank in the living room. So there sat Wesley's poor empty dark tank in his room. Without a light it was kind of useless so I went and purchased him a new tank a couple of weeks ago. We set it up in his new bedroom and it's beautiful. The light works great and it's a wonderful night light for the kid. But, it's empty. I was waiting until this weekend so that it would have a week to age the water and be a good environment for a new little fish or two.

So yesterday morning once Wesley woke up we took a Mother/Son outing to the pet store. He was so excited to pick out a fish. This pet store deals in reptiles and fish...that's it. We walk in and immediately in front of us is a display cage with little teeny tiny tortoises in it. They are all happily eating lettuce and I'm just totally smitten. I'm pretty much a kid in a candy store when it comes to pet stores. These little guys were so cute, you have no idea. They are three weeks old and about the size of a chicken egg. I had lifted Wesley up to look at them when the store clerk came over and said "If you like those little guys you'll love the big one walking around the store." So we set out to find the "Big One". It didn't take too long, we turned a corner and there was this giant tortoise walking toward us down the isle. It was the coolest thing I've seen in quite some time. It was, literally, as big as the top of your stove. I squatted down and pointed to it and told Wesley to look at the tortoise. He's all "what tortoise?" And I'm all "The giant thing walking toward us that takes up the WHOLE isle!". You could tell he was looking somewhere else because he was walking slowly and then just stopped dead in his tracks. He just stood there and then said "We go somewhere else? NOW?" It was a hoot.

The tortoise was an African Spurred Tortoise and they get huge, fast. This one was eight years old and I could only pick it off the ground a few inches (I asked first of course). It had to be well over 65 pounds. When I was doing research on what species of tortoise to buy I seriously considered an African Spurred but decided on a Leopard Tortoise instead because they DON'T get huge very fast. Don't get me wrong, Cecil will hopefully get big eventually but over the span of 20+ years instead of 5 years.

It does make me want to get a baby African Spurred to keep Cecil company, I'm just afraid he'd outgrow their friendship too quickly. They aren't cheap either...the tiny babies are $160. The big adult that we saw walking around the store was $250. Oh how I'd love to have that thing, make a pen for it outside during the warm months and a pen in the basement during the winter. Sean, I'm afraid, has lost his sense of humor when it comes to pets though. Maybe I can revisit the idea once some of the hairy, four legged pets go to the big pet store in the sky. Anyways, it turned out to be a very neat visit to the pet store, one that Wesley won't forget for awhile. Oh and after all that, they didn't even have any fancy goldfish for his fish tank.

Isn't that cool?

Shockingly wonderful

You could say we've been having issues with our outdoor dogs and barking. They bark at everything, all the time. In fact, it's rare for them not to be barking. When a leave blows by they bark, when a bird crows they bark, when a cow farts a mile away they bark.....you get the idea. They've gotten to the point that they sit outside the bay window while we are eating dinner and bark nonstop because they want to come inside. It's beyond frustrating.

I started looking into bark collars about a month ago. I knew once the baby arrived they would be spending more time outside and therefore would be barking more than they already were. First I looked into the Citronella Collars. These collars spray a puff of citronella in the dogs face when they barked. It was supposed to be "kinder" than the shock collars. I read every review I could find and it was a mixed bag. Some people said they worked wonderfully others said their dogs figured out how many sprays were in a can and would empty the can so that they could bark nonstop. I also looked into shock collars and was on the fence about that whole concept. I didn't like the fact that it would hurt the dog but I also couldn't take the constant barking. Something had to be done or I feared the dogs would have to go live somewhere else. Sean was pretty much at his breaking point. I reviewed several different collars and found two different brands that had high ratings and weren't overly expensive. I remembered that Sean's brother had used shock collars with their three large dogs so I emailed my sister-in-law to see what she thought about the collars. I learned a lot about bark collars through emails with Becca and she even offered to mail two of their unused collars to us to see if they work.

Well, it has been two weeks since putting the collars on the dogs and it has been the most sane two weeks of my life (and with a newborn that's saying something). Do I feel bad that they get shocked? At first, yes, but that quickly disappeared. When we first put them on they both barked once and got a mild shock. I have to admit it was slightly satisfying watching them "learn" to stop barking (yeah I know I'm a horrible person). But they did learn quickly. Sophie learned with just one bark. Both collars are set to the lowest setting and they apparently are doing fine at that setting. They will bark on rare occasions when a neighbor dog comes to visit, apparently the shock is worth it. It's truly been like heaven, the peace and quiet is wonderful. I can't thank my brother and sister-in-law enough! Thank you Becca and Jeremy! I just want to smack myself when I think about how many years we've lived with the incessant barking when it was this easy to control. I feel my sanity slowly returning.

Random happenings

Some random things happening around our household.

• I blogged about our rabbit Nacho awhile back. Well Jessica bought Nacho's litter mate whom she named Pickles. Nacho and Pickles became inseparable and so we decided to keep them together. They stayed over at our house for a couple of months and now they are over at Jessica's house. We consider it joint custody. Today we went over to her house for our visitation period. Jessica set up a fenced in area for the rabbits to play in while she is outside with the kids. They sure enjoy running around and eating grass and the kids sure seem excited to be able to interact with them outside of their hutch.
  
  
  
  
  
• This past weekend was productive in the baby category. We moved some bedroom furniture around allowing room for the crib and dresser. I went out with the truck and picked up the crib and changing table from Jessica whom I'm borrowing it from (thanks so much Jessica!). I'm excited to assemble the crib and get everything set up this coming weekend. I never thought I'd have two kids in cribs at the same time, so it's a blessing that I'm able to borrow this stuff....buying another crib was not in the books (the checkbook that is).
  
  
• Sean has been busy working on a new project. When we went out to the old family farm the beginning of this month, Sean picked up an old Cub Cadet garden tractor. It's pretty old and had some mechanical issues that needed to be addressed. We thought it could come in handy around here with the implements that it came with. It has a snow blower, mower, rototiller and blade that attach to it. Sean also has plans to put a front loader/bucket on the front. He was told that the motor had seized up so he's been busy pulling it apart and de-gunking it. After rebuilding the carburetor and cleaning the rust out of the gas tank he fired it up and low and behold it runs! He drove it around the yard this weekend. The thing had been sitting for God only knows how long and Sean got it up and running in two weekends. Pretty awesome!
  
  
  

Thumper

I've mentioned before that I picked up a stray on the fourth of July. Cody has been with us for over a month and it seems like he was never not here. He's somehow fallen nicely into the void that Cisco left. He's an all around good dog but recently I'm picking up on some "quarks" that he has. For one, the dog is obsessed with me. If he's in the same room with me, he'll be sitting or standing within a six foot radius. If I get up, he gets up. If we are outside he is stuck to my side like super glue. I found this endearing in the beginning. Now it's just a little annoying. When I walk around outside he's so close to me that he steps on the backs of my flip flops. I don't know if it's because I took him in or "rescued" him if you will, but the dog loves me. I've heard some animals respond to pregnancy in different ways. I've never experienced this with our dogs before so I can't say for sure, but it might be an answer as to why he sticks to me like velcro.

We kennel our dogs at night. The two big ones sleep in their kennels in the basement. This arrangement has worked out just fine until about two weeks ago. One night Cody decided he didn't care for this kennel sleeping stuff and started barking. I assumed he needed to go outside so, at one in the morning, I took him out. We stood out there, Cody glued to my side, and he just looked at me like "what are we doing out here?". So after several repeat nights of doing this I just left him out in the house. He sleeps on the rug in front of the couch in the exact place and position that Cisco used to sleep. And at 3am every morning when I stumble to the bathroom in the pitch black house all I hear is the loud THUMP THUMP THUMP of his tail against the hardwood floors. It's oddly reassuring knowing he's out there keeping watch and saying hi to me on my nightly treks to the bathroom. I guess we'll keep the lovable lug.

Sean's gonna kill me

Sunday afternoon I had decided to go into town to order some balloons for Wesley's birthday this Saturday. I'm waiting for a train along with about eight other cars. Train goes by and we start driving forward. Then the four cars in front of me start swerving all over the place, some into the other lane of traffic and some into the ditch. Not knowing what the heck was happening up there I slowed down only to find a big dog trotting down my lane. This big lug was just lopping along into oncoming traffic. After seeing him almost get hit three times I pulled into a side road and turned around and drove back to where he was. At this point he had decided to take a break from committing suicide and went down into a ditch to drink some water. I opened the back of the car and whistled and he ran over and jumped into the back. The whole way home I'm chanting "Sean's going to kill me, Sean's going to kill me". I couldn't just let the poor dog get hit, after all it was the day after the 4th of July and he probably just jumped his fence from fright, it happens a lot.

The next day I took him to our local vet in the same town I picked him up and reported him as found. They also checked him over for a microchip with no luck. As of yet no one has posted a missing dog ad and as the days go by he's burrowing his way into my heart. He's such a sweet dog. From what I can tell he's a pure bred black lab, just a gorgeous dog. The vet tech thinks he's rather young, maybe around a year. He follows me everywhere and won't let me out of his sight. And the manners! I've never seen a better mannered dog in my life. He doesn't jump up on us, no counter cruising, he plays so well with the other two dogs and loves on Wesley whenever he gets a chance. It's heartwarming to see Sophie out running and playing with another dog. She hasn't done that since before Cisco got cancer. Is it wrong that I hope his owners don't come looking for him? I know, I know....like we need another animal now with a baby on the way very soon.

He needed a collar and the only one I had lying around was the goats old collar. It's just a standard dog collar with a tag on it that says "Goat Man" and our phone number. I told Sean we needed to give him a name even if we don't keep him just to make things easier when getting his attention. Sean, of course, said we should just call him Goat Man then we don't need to have a new tag made. I don't think we need two Goat Mans around here.
Who knows what will happen with him, but for now I'm enjoying the stray I picked up.

Isn't he gorgeous?

Weekend

It was yet another work weekend. It seems once good weather hits it becomes a race to see how much we can accomplish before winter arrives (or the baby comes in this case). Unfortunately summer seems to be racing in quickly which will slow us down in our outdoor endeavors. It's already in the mid 90's here, although it's not consistently that hot just yet. Sean has been outside all weekend playing with his new "man toy". Last week he bought a chipper/shredder to chip up all the piles of tree limbs that have accumulated over the years. Last spring he took the chainsaw out into the walnut grove, which consists of over 200+ trees, and went to town trimming the lower branches. We had no idea of how many limbs we would be left with after he got done. There are about 15 piles throughout the grove that have been there for a year now. We just had no idea what to do with them. We finally decided on buying a chipper and one happened to be for sale on craigslist last week that was the right size for the job. It's amazing how fast this machine will gobble down these large limbs. I think Sean's kind of enjoying himself out there, even if it is hot, dirty work. Don't ask me what we plan to do with the growing pile of wood chips, we haven't a clue.



I spent yesterday outside cleaning, disinfecting, sanding and painting Nachos new palace. The old rabbit hutch was pretty sad looking and not at all stable on its legs. Sean helped me brace it up and I took a hand sander to the old paint. After two coats of new house paint the hutch looks really good. It got moved to its new location which is right under a nice shade tree and in the fenced in backyard to protect poor Nacho from dogs. I took Nacho out there this morning and showed her her new house (yep, naturally Nacho is a girl. I wanted a boy bunny ended up with a girl bunny. Let's just say boy and girl bunny parts look very similar). She seems happy out there. A couple of times a week we'll bring Nacho inside to play and get a break from the heat.

Bunny hutch before makeover, pretty sad eh?


Bunny hutch after makeover, with a fresh coat of paint, new leg bracing and a good old fashioned cleaning job. We're even thinking about replacing the shingles.


Nacho enjoying her new digs


Wesley has become much more independent lately. He likes to run around outside by himself, I'm outside with him but he keeps himself fairly well entertained. It's a nice change. It allows me to be able to accomplish tasks again, something I usually only am able to do during nap time. Yesterday I was able to start scraping the old paint on the back of the house in preparation for painting next weekend. I had my wire brush and Wesley had his hairbrush and was helping me scrape. He's a very helpful kid. :) Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Meet Nacho

Usually when one animal leaves our place it's not a tremendous amount of time before another arrives. I'd like you to meet Nacho.



Nacho is a 6 week old Holland Lop baby bunny. As you can see he is just about the most precious thing ever. Seriously. He fits in the palm of my hand and will only be 4-5 pounds at maturity. His full name is Nacho Bell Grande (can't tell a pregnant woman named him eh?). He's Wesley's first pet. When Sean got home from work yesterday he looked at the bunny and said "Ah the first of many pets purchased in Wesley's name." See now I have another pawn in my love of animals. A child, a person that needs a pet to learn responsibility (and all that other crap). I can say "But Sean, Wesley really needs that duckling." When in all reality these pets are mine. I'll have to clean and feed and do everything else at least until Wesley is old enough. I'm ok with this. This morning Wesley came out of his bedroom and ran over to Nacho and said "Hi Nacho Rabbit!". He does this every time he passes his laundry basket, I think the poor baby bunny just about has a heart attack being yelled at by a toddler.

Yes poor Nacho is living in a laundry basket for a few days while I clean and refinish his hutch this weekend. This is a hutch that has seen a whole lot of bunnies in it's lifetime. My Dad and I built it when I was 12 or 13 years old and housed my one rabbit that I used to show in 4H. It then got moved over to Jessica's parents house when I moved off to college. There it was used to house several more rabbits. The old hutch is around 18 years old and I think it's kind of neat that it will house my sons rabbit now (excuse me, my rabbit).

Nacho sitting on my huge belly (I wish nachos were in my huge belly instead)

Buddy

What a strange day. Last week one of my goats, Buddy, decided to stop eating his grain. This is not a good thing since goats love food more than anything else in this entire universe. So when one goes off his food it usually means something is pretty wrong. He was still eating hay so I didn't think much of it. He started to get quite a bloated look a few days ago which made me think he had Bloat. Bloat is a condition that ruminant animals can get when they ingest too rich of foods and gases build up in their gut. This can happen often in the spring where there is ample amounts of fresh green weeds and grasses. This is usually not a huge deal. You have to give them baking soda and sometimes vegetable oil to break down the gases in their gut. I did this with no result. Poor Buddy was looking worse and worse each day.

Buddy is my favorite of the four livestock animals we own. He's a sweet, very tame goat. He was bottle fed as a baby and actually lived in his previous owners house because he was born early in the season when there was still snow on the ground. He's an all around good natured animal.

Today Sean took a day off of work so I loaded Buddy into our one horse trailer and took him to the vet. Amazingly enough I had a hard time finding a vet that would look at my sick goat. I assumed that most farm vets would do goats but I assumed wrong. My normal horse vet didn't but I finally found one that would take a look. The vet came out to the trailer and automatically commented on how wide he is. When an animal gets bloated their little sides just stick straight out. Buddy was about as wide as he was tall. She told me that fixed male goats (whethers) can often get a urinary tract problem where bladder stones get clogged in their urethra and will prevent them from being able to urinate. I'd heard about this but didn't once think that's what was ailing him. She decided to tube him by placing a tube down his throat into his stomach to release some of the gases. Before she did that she wanted to make sure that it was air inside his gut and not something else so she stuck a needle in his underbelly and withdrew a syringe full of urine. It seems poor Buddy got a clogged urethra which prevented him from urinating thus causing his bladder to burst inside of his abdomen. He was bloated from all the urine filling up his belly. It was awful. Poor goat.

The vet kindly said the most humane thing would be to put poor Buddy out of his misery. Sweet Buddy is now in the big goat pasture in the sky. It really was not what I was expecting. I thought they'd tube him and release the supposed gases and home we'd go, no harm no foul. It just amazes me how such a sturdy little animal like a goat can succumb to something like a bladder stone. She said it is common in goats and very common in fixed male goats. There wasn't anything I could have done to prevent this. Bye Buddy, I'll miss ya.

Buddy and I in 2006 when he was just a few months old

Buddy and Rocky 2008

Signs of Spring

I love some aspect of each passing season, but spring has got to be the best. Being able to get out of the house and soak up the sun (and let a toddler run off his energy) is just splendid. I thought I'd share some of the more obvious signs that spring is in full swing around our house.


#1. Cecil, the leopard tortoise, has moved to his outside pen during the nice sunny days. He normally lives upstairs in a spare bedroom during the colder months. I refer to his cage up there as a "coffin" for no other reason than it looks like an old time wooden coffin. Something out of a old western movie. It's open topped and he's got plenty of room to move. Pretty much he just lies about under his basking lamp and eats. What a life. He does enjoy the warm months and being able to go out and gorge himself on dandelion and cover.


#2. The water iris in the koi pond are in full bloom. They are such a beautiful flower. The two clumps that I planted two years ago have tripled in size and are starting to skirt their way around the pond. I figure at some point I'll have to dig some out and give them away so they don't take over.


#3. Today at the park Wesley and I saw so many baby ducklings. I've got to say there isn't anything much cuter than a baby duck. I didn't get any pictures since I was just staring at their cuteness and plotting a way to get a couple of baby ducks for our property.


#4. The cockatiels are laying eggs like crazy. I'm removing an egg about every other day now from their food dish. I learned my lesson on NOT removing the eggs. Four years ago I decided to just let my pair of lutino cockatiels lay a clutch of eggs and sit on them. I put a nesting box in there and she laid six eggs. Luckily since they were first time parents only one hatched. Anyone who knows me knows I can't get rid of animals, so it was a blessing that only one hatched.

#5. I'll be nice and not post a picture of the last obvious sign that spring has sprung. My two goats are in love with each other and every spring they show it. Mind you that they are both fixed male goats. I know I could do without their constant show of affection. Darn horny goats.

The return of the Pee Pee Dogs

They're back. It's been over a year since their last visit but alas they have returned. My folks have, once again, left for a week and a half to travel around Europe and we are watching their miniature schnauzer Dieter and dachshund Max. They have already made the rounds and peed on everything in sight. I hope now that the house smells like them they will stop. At least it's hard wood and not carpet. They also growl at my kid. I guess since the last time they were here he's started walking and talking (yelling) and has become somewhat scary to little dogs (this morning he chased them around with a whisk). They are feeling they must show their dominance over him. We'll see who wins this battle. Oh well, I'm happy we can help my folks out in this small way as they do a lot for us. On the up side, Chance is thrilled to have other little dogs to play with all day.

Max has fallen in love with the Elmo chair.


Here is the gang hanging out on the couch.

The little black escape artist

I am a self proclaimed animal lover. Sometimes I don't necessarily like my animals all the time, for instance when my little mini horse Rocky decides to try and kick the crap out of me but that's another story. Anyways, I do love the animals around me....especially our little terrier Chance. Chance is a 12 pound wiry little fellow we adopted from the pound five years ago when he was just a little 7 pound kind-of-puppy. It was love at first sight. My mother and I went in there and he just stared up at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen. I put my hand through the bars and he laid his head in my cupped hand. It was precious and he went home with me that day. He got along splendidly with our golden retriever, spending countless hours rough housing and chasing each other.

I'm building all of this up to explain how much I care for that little dog. So when last week he decided to squeeze through the wrought iron bars on the fence and take off I was freaked out (to say the least). I ran outside barefoot with Wesley (thank goodness it was not a freezing cold day) and immediately took off running and screaming his name. Luckily he hadn't gotten far and I scooped him up and ran back inside. Then last night he decided he needed to escape again. My new routine was to let them out and then go to the window and watch him do his business and let him back in. By the time I got to the window he had already shimmied his way through the fence and was gone. Did I mention this was at midnight? Hubby and I took off outside and walked the property with flash lights calling his name. We found him finally. Crappy little dog, doesn't he know how good he has it? Nice warm house, good food, great kid to play with. I feel like I should leave him outside sometime during a snow storm and see how much he likes living here. It might make him not want to escape.

So now he can only go outside with a leash on. Yeah!

Crazy hounds go to the vet

I spent the day running around tying up loose ends in preparation for our departure to New Mexico this Sunday. Every year I am amazed at what it takes to actually prepare for a vacation. Of course it's mostly animal related. Lining up people to take care of said animals, making sure there is enough food, installing de-icers in stock tanks, and today there were shots. The kennel that I take the dogs to require them to be up to date on shots so every year around this time I load up the crazy hounds and make my way into the vet clinic to hand over loads of cash. Today was no different.

Our dogs are crazy. The only one that was well trained died this year of bone cancer. Thus I am stuck with crazy untrained Humane Society dog #1 and crazy untrained Humane Society dog #2. You throw them both into a closed compartment such as a car and it generally spells disaster. Sophie, the retarded irish/golden mix has no manners. I mean NONE. And she's dumb as dirt (umm..did I mention irish setter?). She is 69 pounds of red terror and thinks she's a lap dog. The entire trip to the vet she tried to sit on my lap. When she would do this she would stand on my accelerator leg and would cause the car to jet forward until I could correct it. Needless to say there was a stream of profanities escaping my mouth. Chance, the little black terror sat in Wesley's empty car seat the whole trip. Wish I could have gotten a picture, it was actually cute.

We did make it there and back alive and they are now pumped up full of vaccinations and ready for their fun filled trip to the kennel on Sunday. There really is a reason we don't go on many vacations, it's crazy (but worth it!).

Kitties, pool and milk

We have one cat. Her name is Lady and as of today she is officially an outdoor cat. I think I wrote about the fun times I had last month ripping out the carpet in my workroom upstairs thanks to her unwillingness to always use the litter box. Well, after that she went to live in the upstairs bathroom that is unused. It's got linoleum so she won't use it as a toilet (she prefers absorbent carpet), but it's pretty small. SO during the day she would go outside and then in the evenings it was back up to the bathroom to sleep. Then Thursday night at 2am hubby and I awoke to the lovely noise of her throwing herself at the bathroom door. Over and over again. How it didn't wake Wesley up I haven't a clue. That was the last straw. So last night I moved her litter box, food and water dish out to the shop. In the evenings she will get locked in the shop and during the day she is free to roam the great outdoors. Good luck outside this winter kitty!



The pool demolition is coming along. Hubby gets out there on weekends when he has a chance and when it isn't too wet. It's actually flat on one side now. We have to remove the wrought iron fence on the other side before he can get to work on that side. At least we can now order some fill dirt and the dump truck will be able to just back right up to the hole and dump it. It was a year ago that I said "Hey maybe we should just fill in the pool" and ever since Sean has been working his tail off to get it done. He's such a hard worker...Wesley and I are lucky to have him.



Last week was a success at weaning Wesley off the bottle. He has gone this whole week (minus last night) without a bottle. He had a little remission last night when he just wouldn't go to sleep, so a little bottle of warm milk and off to sleep he went. He's got one straw cup that he just loves...it's a wonderful cup, it won't spill anything and he can't yank the straw out like most straw cups. Here he is with his favorite cup.

Little dog home

I'm happy to say that Chance is home after paying $320 dollars to spring him from the vet clinic. He seems back to normal. Poor dog has some sorta irritable bowel syndrome. The vet said it's something caused by stress or diet. Hmmmm....could it be the kid torturing him? Or perhaps the odd variety of food thrown at him from the highchair? The vet asked if there was anything out of the ordinary that Chance has eaten recently. I laughed out loud. Well, let me see...on a regular basis he gets tidbits of french toast, graham cracker, oranges, peas, globs of yogurt poured on his head, the list goes on and on....seriously he could have gotten this from eating anything. The vet is an older gentlemen, obviously doesn't remember what it's like having a one year old around the house. The dog is on AmoxiDrops and special food for the time being. Poor little dog.

Here is a picture from Saturday I forgot to post, our little happy family.

Next thing you know you'll be swimmin with the fishes

Dear Little Fleshy Human,
Please, for the love of God, do not:

•pull out my fur and then eat it
•chew on my ears
•sit, stand or crawl on me
•grab my flesh and squeeze until I squeal
•take my toys while I'm chewing on them and then offer them back to me like you're Santa Claus
•disturb me while I'm sleeping
•throw things at me, unless it's food
•believe that you are anything but a play toy to me
•pull on my collar until I turn blue
•scream at me...seriously, you're scary and I don't understand you
•suck on my paws

Sincerely,
The Dog

Dillweed and Mr. Ed

We have two new additions to our household this evening. Dillweed and Mr. Ed. They are Wesley's first pets, and certainly not his last. He helped me pick out two tetra's this afternoon at the pet store to go in his five gallon aquarium in his room. Dillweed and Mr. Ed are adjusting to their new home quite well, I hope they are still alive in the morning. I don't have a good track record with fish living long lives in that little aquarium. The big 30 gallon in the basement I can keep anything alive in, but the little one is another story. It's funny because they market the little tanks to first time fish owners, when in fact the larger tanks are much easier to keep balanced and therefore keep fish alive in. In our last house I had the 30 gallon tank up and running and purchased a tiny little baby oscar to go in. He was adorable (well as adorable as a fish can be). He wasn't much bigger that 2 inches when we got him. After two years he had grown to around 10 inches and was a huge fish that lept out of the water when you opened the top to feed him. He got to the point he was eating live food, meal worms and ghost shrimp. He was scary. I started having nightmares about him biting my fingers off and that's when he went back to the pet shop. Last I saw him he was happily swimming around with other huge fish in a 200 gallon tank.

While I'm on the subject of pets, I have to admit that the house is entirely too quiet with Cisco gone. I've decided we are a three dog family that is missing a member. I keep telling Sean we need to go get a puppy that Wesley can grow up with and he is being all responsible like and telling me we don't need another dog. I know we don't need any more pets but it's so weird around here without all the chaos. We kind of made a deal that I can have another puppy when he has a nice shiny corvette out in the driveway. Yea and that's not going to happen anytime soon. I just can't justify selling his nice reliable high mpg family man car for an overpriced two seater sports car. Can we say mid life crisis? Oh wait, he's wanted one his entire life. I figure he'll get one soon so that I can get my boston terrier puppy I've wanted for awhile now. It's a pretty good trade off in my book.