The Hounds Keep Me Busy

Sunday morning, 57° and the sun is trying to peek around the neighbor's tree and over the Mule mountains. It was another great day here today with highs in the 80's and the AC never clicking on automatically since the windows were open all day today. I hope I never get to the point of taking this for granted. Walter had all of us up bright and early but even he slept in until 5:10am. Once Henry knows that food is on the way he is a ball of energy with his tail going a mile a minute.

There was a lot of activity again on the far left side of those mountains last night. My binoculars picked it up perfect so the plan today was to drive down with a camera and investigate their border wall progress. I also so some car lights coming down Carr Canyon, yet they were on the Miller Peak there in the middle. The road at Miller Peak doesn't go that high, but it is the normal route that I would only do in daytime, not after midnight.

There are times Heidi likes exploring the backyard after breakfast. Saturday she was joined by Henry, who was more interested in her than the rock yard.

Standing next to Heidi you can tell how fast he is growing and how big he is going to be. Someone asked how big will he get? I think he will be a little bigger than Winston was, who weighed 62 pounds. Henry's dad was bigger than Winston but not by much. His feet are huge and his appetite for his kibble is even bigger. Following the label on the back of the bag he is eating 4c of kibble per day until the end of the month. He might now like the quantity decrease in his 4th month of life.

Henry also seems to think that all of his chew toys/bones need to be in the backyard. This is from the past few days. I'll need to start taking some photos of him when he carries they to and from the backyard.

Yes, at first I did too ... thinking that was the largest pile of crap I had ever seen Stella leave. But that is not her area to do that and I knew it was more than Walter could ever do. With a little coffee this morning and a camera lens I could see it was one of the older rope bones and I would not be picking that up later this morning. 

I knew that was going to be part of the job if I moved here and I did think about it ... picking up dog poop. Back in 'the tropics' they always went into the field, rarely in the yard. So I ordered a 1,000 small official poop bags off of Amazon and clear the yard twice per day after I let the hot Arizona sunshine dehydrate them in just a few hours.

So I guess the question is, how long with those bones/toys stay in the yard before Henry feels they need to be back inside the house?

Hard to believe he will not be a small puppy much longer.

We started our Saturday morning like this and again the temps were in the high 50s that early in the morning. I did something a little different in today's post ... everything from the first photo to here was done early this morning while the hounds and the dog were all stretched out sleeping in the computer room. Walter of course was snoring.

Later as I was typing I noticed I was short one hound in the computer room. I knew he was probably outside and I knew he was probably digging again in his favorite spot.

I found this as I stepped into the kitchen. 

Yes, some new yard work this morning by Henry.

He knew he was caught red handed ... dirty nose and paws were a dead give away.

I corralled Walter and Henry into the backyard and then asked Heidi and Stella if they wanted to go for a walk. A little after 9am and it was only 68°, no traffic, no noise, the perfect time to walk on a Sunday morning. I let them go at their own pace, which meant only as fast as their noses chose to go.

When we returned only one dog was at the door ... it was pretty easy to see what Henry had been doing the 20 minutes we were gone.

You'll notice a small piece of red rubber bone sticking out of Henry's mouth. He found out today that if he ran he could get away from Walter. Consequently they both did a few laps back and forth, with Henry taking the bone outside and Walter bringing the bone back inside. It was the first time I had seen Henry run at speed.

Then they decided it was time to wrestle to find out who gets that red bone sitting off to the side. It looks like I need to clean that door step next week, maybe today.

I knew with tongues hanging out it wouldn't be long before they were both asleep for a short nap.

All good sleeping spots but no way for me to sit on the couch and watch any football. I was going to wait until later to post this thinking I'd get a few more late afternoon photos to add but the hounds never woke from their late afternoon siesta. So I'll post this as is.

I found out yesterday that the doberman next door will be staying. It's one of the classic cases where someone buys the puppy but someone else in the household takes care of him, spends time with him and the dog claims that person taking care of it. As she said, "the dog is more mine than his" ... plus I didn't see any way that dog would be or could stay in an apartment where the husband is now living. Luckily not as much barking as before.

We are still good out here in the "Wild West".