Stella Disappears

I was going to blog about Stella's disappearance on the public blog up until the time I downloaded the pictures into my iMac. I did not blog about her disappearance before, when she did this exact same thing last spring. I had to ask myself why blog about it? Am I just wanting to generate blog traffic? Am I wanting to see what kind of response I get or the comments it receives? Why am I blogging every day publicly anyway? So ... I came here to document the disappearance.


I am going back to commenting BEFORE the photos instead of after them. It makes more sense and is also easier today when I list photos without comments. Our walk this morning started out like all of the, except this one was around 9am. That's fine as we have been starting our walks later in the day this past week.

I wasn't going to take the camera this morning but I am glad I did after what happened. For some strange reason I thought about notifying Kelly and have her put the new blog on their blog sidebar. Since my story of blog stalkers and threats are not true, it would not matter if the blog was listed. Of course, Chinle might see it and then would be able to keep track of what the hounds and I do.

Since I am undecided about the future of public blogging, I'll not ask Kelly to add the Wordpress blog to the list. Afterall I have used 15% of my 3Gb of free photos before I would either have to make version 2.0 of the blog or pay a monthly fee for expanded photo storage just for a blog.

I am two days away from my Facebook account being permanently deleted. That means if I were to log back into my Facebook account AFTER August 28th, I'd have no history, no friends, no photos. I would have to go back and block all the people I don't want finding me nor have a desire to see their accounts. I do miss Facebook "just a little" ... the photos for the FJ Group were fantastic but mostly off road mods and rock climbers. I do miss seeing what a few of my friends are doing. But really they were just "Facebook Friends" that never really kept in touch with me in real life ... except for a couple.

Twitter gives me all the sports news and photos I need. Most of those people have duplicate info on their Facebook accounts. I never heard back from Stephanie concerning Stella.

I knew at this point of the walk that I would be letting Stella do whatever she wanted. Most of the time she is up near the first corner when I leave her behind and then she will wander over toward Haslers or behind Lueking's backyard.

It was this picture that I thought about later when I didn't see her anywhere in the field as got closer to home. Had she gone into the woods? That is the only place she could have gone because she was nowhere in the field outside of her normal places.

Sadie will always look back to see where Stella is.

The sunshine is out an hour later but from this photo you would think today was going to be overcast and cloudy.

Sadie took off looking for Stella as we came to the first corner. Stella was nowhere in sight along the horizon. I looked from the woods on the left, across the field and to the right toward Haslers.

Stella was gone ... I suspected she was in the woods to the left, where I last saw her with her nose to the ground.

In 20 years of living here I have only walked in this woods a few times, probably less than 5 times. It's always wet and muddy down below as I found out that time I was looking for Bertha. But today the ground was dry and it was really nice back in here. I should go back and explore more.

No signs of Stella anywhere. I called her name over and over, hoping to see her come running through the woods ... but did not see her anywhere.

I can see why Lueking's son and grandchildren were walking through this woods last December ... it's nice and easy to move through.

Just think ... this woods rebuilds itself naturally. For all the fallen, rotted trees on the ground, there are new ones growing, with tree trunks only 3" to 6" in diameter.

I was actually shocked I did not see Stella in these woods.

A final check of the field. Sadie and I walked over to the edge of Hasler's drainage ditch ... no sign of Stella. Luckily I did not see her laying by the side of the highway, although traffic is really lite for a Saturday morning.

Sadie was looking through the yard, ran to the carport door and then the front yard looking for Stella ... I left her inside and then drove the FJ back to the turkey farm behind us. Stella was nowhere in view.

I was gone for 8 minutes looking for her in the FJ. It had been 38 minutes since we started the walk. As I pulled into the driveway there was Stella in the carport, walking out to the front to meet me. She was happy I was home. She did her normal 'poking' me with her nose, smelled my hair and then tried opening the round door handle as Sadie and Heidi barked from the inside.

I'll not blog about this. But it's good to document it here. I hope I can find the "label" from the last time she did this so I can keep all of her disappearances together.

For not doing a lot except watering my flowers on occasion, they are looking pretty good. It will take 2-3, maybe 4 years before these plants grow enough to look good. I don't miss the large yews.

The hounds are sound to sleep. I've had my coffee but need some oatmeal for breakfast. Plus I need to start cooking a large pot of beans for later today and the next few days. My problem is, once they are finished cooking, they taste so good I cannot stop eating them. They don't last longer than 2 days.

I'm glad Stella's back. She acted happy that I came home.