It seemed like a good day to make the change since it's a Friday and starting a holiday weekend for those that celebrate Daylight Savings Time which also makes a change sometime around 2am Saturday night. I use to love that "fall back" when I was working but now it only affects the hound's eating schedules.
Stella has been starting her days off this week with some yoga while facing the west. I know she is in deep thought when her ears are laid back like that.
While Stella meditated, Sadie decided it looked like and felt like it was too cold and wet to be walking anywhere in the field and was more than happy to head back into the house, for me to drink coffee while they get a short nap in.
This past week had a couple of days of 10mph winds from the SSW. That was just strong enough to blow the leaves off the trees and out of the yard ... at least most of them. A little rain one night that week also helped clearing the trees. We are almost to the point for the last leaf roundup of 2016.
Stella has continued her habit of lagging behind on our walks. Usually by the third walk of the day I will carry the retractable leash with me in case she gets into a mode of totally ignoring me.
I could tell as soon as they made the first turn that the scents were strong and it might come to a point where I would have to make the trek north to bring them back out of the 'no fly zone'. Yet, it's Friday so why not let them do as they want and go as far as they want, just as long they don't head towards the houses which are near the highway.
This is when it became interesting as they both lock into something of interest and take off to the left, faster than I wanted to follow.
At this point in time I was pretty sure they were headed over the slight incline and were off to the races, following whatever scent they had picked up. I did not see any deer on the horizon but the noses of the hounds were certainly active this morning.
Sadie head over to touch noses with Stella signaling to her they need to get back. Soon after they both started running toward me. During this time I had not said a word, just kept walking along our path.
I've been pretty happy with the weight that Sadie has lost this summer. It's never good to have a bloodhound overweight. I'm sure the 2-3 walks per day help her.
Stella is a year younger than Sadie and has possibly gained a couple of pounds since she arrived in August 2015, but is still showing a trim waistline and is in the correct weight range.
From the 'far north' to the 'far right', they ran to their favorite place. They have both figured out the deer path that leads down into the gully. That gully is definitely off limits to them.
This picture will look about the same in a couple of months but it will be only 40+° colder and possibly white from a snow fall. I'd like for it to stay like it is ... high 60's, and sunny.
Just because we are on the last turn toward home doesn't mean that Stella stops with her purging of the field.
I slide the lens to 18mm to show just how far away she was from us. I turned to walk home without calling her to see what she would do.
When Sadie stood looking at Stella I knew things were turning bad. Stella was headed to the woods behind the neighbors house and that is outside the boundary for her. As I backtracked calling her name ... she eventually came running toward me. It wasn't that easy though, she didn't want to change direction.
The new 2007 FJ is doing great the few times I've driven it. I still haven't found the attachment to it that I had with the blue one. I guess I may have liked that 'radical' look better than the 'stock' look. Everyone likes the color of the new one.
There was still something bugging me about it, to the point I finally duplicated a side view picture of it, then blacked out the white lettering on the wheels so I could get a comparison with my vehicle instead of what I was seeing of others in Google Images.
I liked the black tires better than showing the white letters on the outside. I've never been a fan of white letters on the outside. I always try to buy all black sidewalls when I buy tires but in this case these tires were on the car when I made the trade.
So Tuesday morning I drove to the local tire store to have them flipped. It was good to hear the store manager's high recommendation for the Yokohama tires I had on the FJ. He considered them being a better tire than the Bridgestone Dueler AT that I had on my other one.
So I left Tuesday morning looking like this and returned home looking like the 2nd picture.
I like the look better. It does look like it sits lower than my blue one because the running board sits lower than the rock rails I had on the other. Overall I am happy I made the trade, it was a good decision.
My vegan diet continues. The urges for fast food runs, candy or ice cream are practically non-existent anymore. I had to buy jeans two inches smaller and will be replacing my current cargo shorts because they are falling off of me. The fat calipers showed on the 1st of November that just in the past 30 days I had lost 4mm of fat from my side, a few inches around my stomach and my weight staying the same.
I am thinking of adding yogurt and fish when I shop next time. I have also had some noticeable changes with that diet change on September 7 ... no sinus issues, no coughing, no indigestion waking me up in the middle of the night.
Where's Heidi you may ask? Sleeping, hiding out, staying inside most of the time. She did come out a few days this week to explore the yard while the bloodhounds and I took our walk. She has ZERO interest in walking in the field. She had a bath yesterday with Burt's Bees for Dogs shampoo. I've started wiping her legs and stomach with a cloth full of water/vinegar now 3-4 times per day instead of just on occasion to see if that makes a difference in her continuing skin condition.
She does wag her tail a lot but like in the next picture, the camera rarely if ever picks up that motion of her moving tail. She was wagging her tail standing there as we returned from our walk yesterday.
Nothing else planned out of the ordinary. Once the final leaves fall from the Sycamore trees and dry out, I'll rake and burn them for the final time. No Leave Left Behind program will be complete for 2016.
I almost forgot to add that those that received the private blog by email will continue to get this blog in that email. I am not going to add the RSS feed back to the blog but I have added the email subscription block to the blog. It will probably take Blogger a few hours before it updates this post on those blog's that have me on their sidebar. To those that couldn't read the blog this past week, changing my settings was something I had to do until some changes were made here due to my 'surprise' visit from a blog reader.
It's still nice weather here in the tropics of southern Indiana.
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