February 28, 2017

The Storm Came Early

With the current weather early this morning and the slim chance of the daily hound walks today, I decided to post early and include the photos from yesterday afternoon's walk ... Sadie was the featured hound.

I am not sure what time it was but it was still dark when the roar of thunder and a lightning bolt bright enough to light up the bedroom woke me up. It was almost immediately I felt a bloodhound muzzle trying to lift my hand up from the side of the bed.


It was Stella standing by the side of the bed wanting to let me know it's storming and to remind me that she is not a fan of thunderstorms. I was told when I picked her up that she hated thunderstorms but compared to my first basset hound, Harry, she is not bad at all. She whines a little and paces a little during these storms but isn't what I would call frantic.

All of us got back to sleep as the thunder continued to roll but I didn't hear rain hitting the storm windows so maybe that took place earlier while we were sleeping. Wunderground shows there is a pretty good chance of rain continuing from now until Wednesday at 10am.

Sadie was wondering this morning if there was still a chance to take walk in light rain even before the first cup of coffee was poured. No, there wasn't.


With Stella not interested in getting any further away from the driveway than this ... plus the light drizzle ... the morning walk has been canceled at this time. When there is standing water in the low spots next to the house, that means the field is too wet to be hiking through.


So with that in mind, I'll post some pictures from yesterday afternoon. It wasn't planned but Sadie turned out to be the featured hound of the walk All hounds were given free reign to go and do anything they wanted during this walk.


Heidi chose not to go on the walk and only took her back way out to the front yard long enough to relieve herself and then back inside for her afternoon siesta.


Stella stopped within 20' of starting the walk and didn't move, so I knew what her plan was and I wasn't going to stick around to watch.


It was Sadie and I enjoying the walk and the warm weather. There wasn't any wind, a lot of birds chirping among themselves and clear blue skies. It was perfect weather for a mid-day walk.


The way Sadie reacts every time we start to walk, I really think we could walk an unlimited amount of times per day and she would never care. In some cases Stella has a limit, where by the 3rd walk on some days she has zero interest and will take one slow step at a time to get through it.


This picture gives you some idea what Stella's plan was for the afternoon walk. You can barely see her just right of center.


Sadie on the other hand was intense in her exploration. She was in her own world enjoying every scent she could pick up. Her strong tracking instincts show up every walk, in all kinds of weather.



She started rolling in something before I could catch her. The only baths that I give her are outside with the hose in one hand and her tethered so she will not sprint away. I've tried before but there is no chance of her getting into the bathtub to get clean.


Luckily whatever she rolled in just smelled good to her and didn't leave any kind of residue on her back and shoulders ... too cold for an outdoor shower and not enough time to give her a bath.


While I was talking Sadie into getting away from that spot, Stella sprinted up behind us to checkout what all the excitement was about. By that time Sadie had walked away from the 'real good' spot to keep it hidden from Stella.


Once again Stella stayed behind while Sadie and I continued on.



I am not sure what the reason is or what she is thinking but on a lot of the afternoon walks, Stella will follow the path walking extremely slow, after she catches up to me, without the leash. She will do this up to the back edge of the field and then go into her search mode at a faster pace. Of course you will notice I needed her to keep up with us on the last half of the walk yesterday and I attached the leash as a motivating tool.


Sadie explored every inch of the field to the left of the return path home. Stella walked right behind me, out of picture range for the return trip home. I shut off the camera and enjoyed the weather the rest of the way.

It was a great afternoon with the temperatures just right.


Al over at The Bayfield Bunch has been having problems with a program called Live Writer that he uses to create his blog posts. He finally got the problem solved and is back to using it and as you can see is as happy as a kid in a candy store.

This has increased my curiosity enough about this Live Writer stuff that I am going to pour another cup of coffee while it is bad weather outside, then tear into Google Search and see what I can find out about this program. I am sure they will have a Mac version I can download to my iMac so I can play around with it.

I want to see what I am missing. About all I know about it right now, is that I could write a complete blog post with pictures, offline and someway it will post that to Blogger when I would turn on the internet. That sounds good for someone that is traveling full-time. I remember on our trip to Utah and Colorado in June 2015 I did not have an internet signal a lot of the time to where I could post on a blog.

This Live Writer also works with Google Photos. I only know that from reading Al's blog post this morning where he described how he fixed his latest problem. I use Google Photos daily as I upload every picture I take for the day into Google Photos to use as one of many picture library backups.

I took the two books I wasn't interested in reading back to the library yesterday and then picked up two more and started reading them when I got home, late into the night. So it must have been the subject matter I wasn't interested in and not the lack of interest in reading.

IF the weather clears up later today, long enough to take new pictures I might post again. Otherwise this post is it for the day while it rains outside.

It might be raining but at least it's warm on the last day in February in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

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