Stella Gets Her Morning Walk

With rain from Friday afternoon until yesterday, moving us up over 52" of precipitation for the year,  and 10" over the annual average, Stella had not been able to walk the field since Friday morning. I was surprised how warm it felt at 36° but wasn't about the amount of water coming up from underground surrounding my boots.

I noticed even before Stella had her breakfast that something was wrong.

She wasn't her normal energetic self, excited ... no thrilled, she was going to get to eat. The first sign was this morning as I started to get out of bed in the dark when I noticed a dark still shadow like a sphinx at the foot of the bed. She was beyond quiet, staring at me.

As she and Heidi followed me to the door for their first trip outside, she didn't trot, she walked slowly, behind me not out in front leading us. Back pain? Did she tweak her back sometime during the night?

Well it wasn't soon into the walk I could tell she might be hurting a little bit. She didn't trot toward me to catch up like she always does at the start of the walk.

Since Stella didn't get in any walks yesterday because of the rain, I decided today I'd give her a little freedom and we would move her at her pace. I didn't see a lot of deer scat being eaten but she was into gathering information with her nose pressed to the ground or in the taller grass.

Once that happened then should could file the name or have one of those automatic searches of her database that would tell her who had been there and when they had been there as long as two weeks ago. The bloodhound nose is amazing.

Along the back edge of that field is heavy deer traffic, showing many of those small paths that move to the fenced area where they jump over and head to the empty field behind this one. It's been 13 months since I last saw deer in this field. Those were great times when Sadie and Stella would chase the ones they saw, never catching them. It's times like those I am happy my camera caught all the action.

We spent a lot of time along that back edge of the field today. She was taking her time, plus she is never in a hurry on these walks. Today it took us 22 minutes to cover a little over a half mile.

Facing the woods to the north ... smelling or hearing something?

Same spot every day ... food or the mysterious large stray field cat?

Back on the hunt, right down the middle of one of those deer paths.

Nothing to do now but a late morning nap until lunch is served. She will take an afternoon siesta on the couch while I watch the Colts - Cowboys game.

Of course Heidi did not go with us and  this was about the best I could do for fining her presence. There wasn't anything visible except her tail.

Maybe a gross picture to some but one any dog owner has seen. Why is this on a blog post? Well a few reasons really. One, it was just late September that she had her teeth cleaned. Since that time she has been getting a daily OraVet Dental Hygiene Chew that the vet staff had good things to say about the results they were hearing, preventing plaque build up.

Do those small spots show the plaque is breaking up? Yet since I last checked there is new plaque on that front tooth. Plus it looks like a build up along the gum line. I have a tooth tool that would remove that but the biggest problem is all the bacterial that would be involved if I chipped it away, possibly leading to an infection. I'll leave it there.

Recommendations?  Yes, I have a child's tootbrush with dog toothpaste but I admit I have not been brushing her teeth every day, but some.

They were not too interested in hitting the yard later ... both headed back inside after some deep thought.

Although I am getting use to the way Wordpress's new editor works I am still not happy that I have to insert each photo one at a time if I want them listed in an individual list. I could group any number of them in a gallery format but I like having the photos as big as the theme allows. I don't like the word "theme" either compared to template or design.

Some of you might have seen that I made a change last night back to having a sidebar on the right side. Different reasons for that but I think I have finally decided on a design I like. Since buying the Premium Plan I had a few hundred new 'themes' I could choose from but in the end I chose to keep the one I had.

After that dark and overcast morning I was shocked but happy that the sunshine popping out of those clouds as I finish this post. With nice temperatures and sunshine with no rain ... perfect day.

Since I am a self-proclaimed hermit, I don't get out much. Therefore I am not surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Christmas panic for last minute gifts. If I had not glanced at my calendar a while I ago I would have never known we are only 9 days away from Christmas.

For new readers/followers ... a little warning. Since I am a world renowned scholar I blog about a variety of topics on this blog. This post here is one reason I decided last Sunday to move in a different direction. This was a daily type post on our other blog. I always try to include 18-25 photos in these kind of posts.

When I wanted to expand a little inside my demented mind I knew the topics would be much different and more random. I am trying to keep it at two posts per day because with that expansion of expertise coming out of my overactive brain cells, I cannot fit it all in one post per day.

Since I felt most readers saw the post yesterday that I would be changing the domain name from bhounds3blog.wordpress .com to houndsandotherstuff .com, I went ahead and started that process this morning. It has not finished yet. GoDaddy says it will take 4-6 hours to propagate the blog with her new url. Yes, I did put a space before the .com on purpose, in case you were wondering.

The blog title will not change ... uh, it might, it's probably best to have them match.

To see if this change will affect those that follow the blog by Wordpress Reader or by email, I too have followed my own blog with both of those options so I can see firsthand if there are any issues getting to the site or being notified of a new post after the change of the domain name.

I'll just say this about retirement living ... "its a dangerous job but I knew it would be dangerous when I took it." I still love every day of it, after 56 months of it.

The hounds are happy, I'm happy, it's another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.