Hounds Are Happy It's Friday

First of all thank you to all the readers that are veterans of the US military. They make or have made a lot of sacrifices to fill those positions.

Well it's been quite a week to say the least. I am happy to be back to just looking at news headlines and not reading their articles while I move my focus back to sports, hounds, blogs, and a little house maintenance to prepare for winter.

I am sitting here wondering just how long can a blog post be, with it not being too long. I wrote a post yesterday afternoon with about 15 pictures, saved it with plans to add to it and then post it around 6:30pm. But the afternoon changed and I forgot about the post until this morning.

This morning started out as always. Yet it was about 10° warmer this morning but that didn't mean the hounds stayed outside any longer. They know how important coffee is to my start of the day so they didn't stay outside very long.

Once I saw the temps rise above 50°, we headed out for a walk. They didn't wait on me either ... they were off as soon as their feet touched the field.

They had already dictated they were going on their own pace and I was fine with that. I was enjoying the clear skies without a cloud anywhere, no humidity of coarse and the temperature felt about right.

With Stella staying pretty far behind Sadie and I ... it was quite a surprise to see her running to catch up with us. I'm not sure what her reasons were but she sprinted fast enough that my camera could not keep up to catch all of her sprinting.

Sadie took another look in back to see if Stella was coming or not. As soon as she saw that Stella had stopped again, Stella took off for the right corner of the field.

Then again ... Stella came running to catch up with us. I'm glad that every day is different with her.

During our afternoon walk yesterday I caught this.

Earlier while at the computer on Thursday morning, I heard the warning beeping sound of a truck backing up. I went out to the large window to see what it might be. Due to yesterday's fog I could barely see a State Patrol car blocking highway traffic but could not see what was backing up due to the thick fog.

It looks like this might have been some of the equipment on the move. It would have been too long to make a left 90° turn but with the dirt road going the opposite direction to the old bridge across the highway, something that long can make some 3-5 point turns to back in that road to make the left hand turn.

This is an AT&T tower that has been there for around 15 years and it will be interesting to see if they are going higher or just adding more equipment to the tower. It's strange that I my house is that close to a tower but when I had AT&T a couple of years ago I could only get 3 bars max for signal strength. Even a couple of weeks ago I was told by AT&T they could not offer any wireless internet in my package.

This is what I saw this morning so there wasn't much change. Maybe it is waiting for the next phase of either repair or installation of new equipment.

Once I mentioned getting some 'food' to the hounds when we got home, they both were pretty motivated to get home.

Yet, there were enough places to stop and identify before moving on.

I'll implement some of the post I wrote yesterday afternoon and take a chance that I have not make this blog too long. At least for those readers that just scroll through to look at the pictures (nothing wrong with that), they will have more to look at.

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Heidi made a rare appearance outside to walk around instead of just long enough to pee. Her skin is actually getting better with the places where she has bare skin or little hair, is becoming softer. More hair is trying to grow back on all of her legs and paws. It's been a while since that has happened.

She will be getting a bath today (Friday) and her nails cut.

Lunch had been served with the normal routine of going outside right after being fed. Something that was done when house training Sadie when she was a puppy. Heidi and Stella were brought home when they were older dogs, so I am not sure if that was their routine when they were puppies.

I was going to let the bloodhounds wander the field and keep an eye on them but I saw 'the stare' ... the one that Sadie gives me when it's time or she wants to go for a walk ... which is all the time.

Once she saw me walking toward the field with my camera in hand she came running to escort me on the start of the walk as she always does. She will actually try to grab my left hand with her mouth as she is hopping up and down in excitement.

I tried to keep the walk moving and Stella came with a little coaxing. I am sure if I had not said anything Stella would have stayed back for most of the walk.

Around that first turn and we were headed to the right corner of the field.

Today I decided I'd join them in the area of that right corner where there are a lot of signs of deer activity. While the hounds stayed and did what they normally do, adding protein of some kind to their diet, I walked toward the gully.

You can see the tall brush that has been mashed. I know nothing about deer so I am just assuming they might spend time here sleeping, not sure.

I have taken pictures before trying to show just how steep and deep this gully is but I'm not succeeding to many times.

On the way back, Stella gave me a look that she had seen the neighbor. He was out on his riding mower sweeping up leaves in his yard. Their clothes were out drying in the sunshine so I thought she might take off again since she seems attracted to their clothes line.

Thursday afternoon turned out great with temps getting up near 60°.

College basketball starts officially tonight with regular games on tv instead of the exhibition games. Football of coarse continues through the first few weeks of January for colleges. I think I have my own little NFL boycott going on as I have been watching it a LOT less than I have in past years.

Another great Friday so far here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Hounds Had A Huge Surprise

It's been a week where I keep forgetting or get mixed up on what the day of the week it is. That could be from staying up lately past 3am on a regular basis.

The air had a feel of rain this morning but the forecast showed it wasn't possible until after midnight tonight. The winds were pretty strong from the SW - S, strong enough where I had hopes it would blow what leaves I have out of the yard.

Sadie and Stella inspected the backyard and the field this morning, since they had some major excitement last night a little past 7pm. We had gone outside and it was so nice I decided to take a break from the baseball game on tv, pulled up a chair to enjoy the last part of the day.

The mistake was, I changed my camera lens back to the Nikon 55-200mm because I wanted to see if it was really giving me more color in my photos compared to the new Tamron. Once again the intermittent performance of the lens cost me in some great photos.

Why? ... the hounds had an unexpected deer chase.

Sadie was standing beside me while I rubbed her back when all of the sudden her head pointed to toward the field with her ears cocked up and her nostrils moving really fast ... I looked to see what got her excited ... a deer was not only standing but actually walked from the edge of the field by the woods towards us. I started trying to take photos of that but the Nikon LENS DID NOT WORK !!!!

By the time the lens focused the deer was almost back into the woods.

Of coarse both took off after their surprise. The deer turned and headed for the woods once she heard Stella baying as she ran. That is Sadie leading the pack but by the time they got to that edge of the field Stella had beat Sadie to the spot.

Stella made one final inspection to make sure the deer was gone.

So, this morning both of them had to double check and make sure that deer had not been near their yard while they slept last night.

After their lunch we took off for the first of two walks today. Heidi was barking to go outside but she didn't want to walk and stayed back to do her own inspection in the yard while we were gone.

I am assuming moles are pushing the ground up in the field like this ... am I correct?

With the wind blowing from the south, it sure felt like rain in the air. As I glanced back to see where Stella was (on the left) I could see the skies in the west looking like rain was near. Looking at maps when I got back home, the rain is in the center of Illinois so maybe our local forecast is correct.

About the time that Sadie and I were on our way back to the house ... starting the 'last half' of the walk, Stella had picked up a scent and was moving across the field at a fast pace in front of us but going in a direct away from us.

I was actually surprised that she stopped, turned and headed toward us when I yelled "hey Stella".

As we made the last turn I asked Sadie "where's Heidi" ? She immediately took off further up the path to see if Heidi was waiting like she does at times when she comes on the walk. I knew that Heidi was back at the house but wanted to see Sadie's reaction.

Of coarse when Sadie took off running, Stella had to also just in case she was missing something that Sadie was getting.

Sadie stands looking for Heidi.

Sadie is double checking to see if Heidi is behind us. Still no sign of Heidi.

She then turned and started trotting toward the house trying to pick up Heidi's scent.

When she saw Heidi in the yard, she ran over and touched noses like she always does. The camera caught a moving semi truck in the background.

Heidi is becoming more active each day. Her nails have been cut back shorter than they have ever been, could that be the reason? I have also changed her dog food.

Heidi is just making sure Stella is who she says she is.

One last scratch in the yard before we go inside.

If you remember from a few weeks ago when they cut the hay field for the 2nd time, they left the corner of the field by my yard uncut because it was all giant ragweed. I was going to clear it out but had not made up my mind which way I was going to do it. The neighbor who owns the field stopped by a few weeks ago as he toured the edge of the field in his pickup truck and mentioned he wished they had cut the field further back close to the wooded area.

In prior years they have cut that area all the way over to the edge on the far right side of the photo above but it was never full of ragweed like it was this summer. I like it being cut because that gets rid of all of those small burrs that not only attached to the hounds skin but my shoes, shorts, or shirt when we walk. The hounds also like eating those burrs that are attached to the ragweed or the brush it is mixed with.

I decided a few weeks ago to start the process I'd cut all of that ragweed with the Echo Weed Eater that had the steel blade and could cut saplings up to 2" in diameter. When I couldn't get the Echo SRM-225U started after a week of trying ... I pulled out my manual tree and shrub trimmers.

The plan was to cut the giant ragweed, let it dry out in the field and then take it over to my burn pile. That was a slow process, so I decided I'd continue to cut and let it dry in the field ... only burn it right where it laid. With Stella supervising my work, you can tell there were a lot of delays in the job.

You can see that even after I made my first cut with the manual pruning shears there was still a lot left. That is when I decided I'd wait for that to dry out and then burn it with my water hose nearby so I would not catch the field on fire.

The problem was ... the burrs ... the hounds were bringing them inside, they were eating them and were getting stuck in their coats. While I was cutting everything they were in my socks, on my shirt, wrapped among my shoe strings ... so I became a little more motivated to get rid of that brush. Plus I didn't like the way it looked.

I kept cutting and then dragging the tall stalks to my burn pile but that wasn't working as well as I had planned. My burn pile was getting taller and on the edge of being unsafe, since the flames will get 15'-20' high.

Yesterday I cut more and started to rake it over to the burn pile but the brush was too thick for a garden rake ... so the thought of burning it where it was even a better idea.

A new day brings a new idea. Now not wanting to burn it and taking a chance on catching the field on fire I decided that my small mower set at the highest level ... could turn into a small brush mower. I took the shrub trimmers and was able to cut the brush and ragweed pretty close to ground level.

I raised my mower to the highest level and mowed over all the dead brush along with any of the green stuff I had not cut yet. I later called my neighbor (owns the field) and told him I had made "a command decision" and had cut the brush back ... something he tried to do with his riding mower last spring.

So before:

And after:

Not bad for a small 22" Sears Craftsman 6ph push mower. If I could only have it get rid of my yard moles, things would be perfect.

As much as I would like to use Firefox as my browser I have already moved back to Google Chrome .. in fact, I changed the browser in the middle of writing this post.

Firefox started today by having all of my websites zoomed to less than 100%. The highest I could adjust the text and screen was 125% but it would jump back to less than 100% ... which is too small on my 27" monitor. Once I started this blog and loading all of the photos ... which I load all the photos first and then type commentary between them (the fastest way to write on Blogger) ... Firefox would get to the last photo and never load it ... just set there working trying to load that last photo while hanging up my screen.

I saved the blog post, opened Google Chrome and went back to the blog post to finish it without any issues loading photos nor screen size.

In my "Activity Monitor" I am also seeing that Google Chrome uses less data than Firefox does in the same amount of time doing the same kind of web surfing and writing a blog post.

Speaking of data again ... I called AT&T last night out of curiosity. I had the most recent flyer in front of me, giving me all those great bargains to come back to AT&T for my wireless internet and phone.

Where the customer service rep I talked to a few nights ago was ready to place the order and everything in my location checked out on his AT&T computer ... trying to get me to make the decision that night .... it was a different story last night.

The AT&T customer service rep checked out my location and told me that AT&T wireless internet was not available where I lived, nor was streaming tv on Directv through the AT&T system nor was their U-verse television service. The only thing available was AT&T cell phone service.

Just like I had assumed when I got the flyer ... I was not going back to AT&T when I have dependable service with Directv, Exede Satellite Internet and Verizon for my cell phone.

Well I have to go ... Sadie is giving me the "stare down" to let me know she would like to walk now before the rains show up.

The wind is blowing the leaves off the trees today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.