Henry Arrived Yesterday About Noon

Did Blogger read my post last night? This morning the photos loaded in the correct order using the same process I always use but I also see this morning when I hit the 'return' key for the next paragraph ... it sends my cursor to the bottom of the page. Henry left his ranch around 10:30am yesterday standing at the truck window howling and barking. It was to be expected and I could understand the reasons why. I had warned Walter, Heidi and Stella they were getting a new puppy this week ... I wonder how much they believed me?

We had just barely turned onto I-10 after 6 miles of dirt road where he found the most comfortable place to sleep for the drive home. He would move to different positions on his blanket during the ride but slept most of the way. He reminded me a lot of Winston at this same age, when we did the 5 hour drive home in my 1963 VW Panel van back in 2004. 

He walked from the truck through the open front door when we arrived. Heidi was the only hound to meet him since Stella and Walter were in their crates. Once Heidi saw him, she turned and trotted to the back bedroom where the other hounds were. She was not interested in the "meet and greet" for the new puppy. Henry slowly walked to the center of the room and let out a small basset hound puppy howl, then a bark. I guess he was letting the others know that I was telling the truth.

 

I didn't think it would be a problem with Walter or Stella. They both like other dogs. I was curious though what Walter's reaction would be. I think it was love at first sight because almost 24 hours later, he has not left Henry's side except the time they are sleeping. Stella was happy, wagged her tailed and did a playful hop back as if she wanted the pup to chase her.

 

Of course Walter was going to show Henry the 'rank and file' of the house, that he was the new owner. He never got aggressive with Henry but made a point of standing over him just to let him know that he made the rules of the house. It wasn't long that Stella realized she could get back to her normal routine and there was a good chance the bottom of her ears could heal now after Walter had chewed them so much.

 

Heidi wasn't so sure though. Anytime the pup ran at her, she would trot away. She didn't have any interest in meeting the new fella.

 

Once I saw that Walter was going to be okay with the new puppy I went to fix myself some lunch and let all the hounds, do what they wanted around the house. I did keep an eye out for Henry to catch him before he had any accidents inside the house. He was trained to use a doggie door at his kennel but I don't have one of those but the back door is usually open for them to go out when they need too.

 

While I was sitting at the computer answering some texts and emails I heard that puppy bark again. As I turned I could see he had decided to chase Heidi and was attempting to either grab her tail or bite the back of her ankles, whichever he could reach. She grumbled and went to hide in the bedroom.

 

I could tell that Stella was enjoying her new found freedom.

 

Henry had not even been here 3 hours when I heard him bark and then 'attack' Walter. Walter was so shocked with the offensive move and actually jumped a few inches vertically. That led into playing for over an hour. Walter was panting for air so much I thought he was going to have problems but he wouldn't rest.

 

It wasn't long before they both started slowing down and needing to rest. Walter knew where the coolest place in the house was. Would Henry?

 

After a short nap they were back at it. You'll see Walter gasping for air. Bulldogs don't have the same size of cooling parts inside their sinuses as other dogs. It doesn't take much for them to start panting.

 

For the second day in a row, Henry has decided the coldest place in the house is the marble ledge to the walk-in shower. His blanket is out of view behind him but he has laid in that spot a few times for me to know that he likes it.

 

By Wednesday night all the hounds were sleeping. Stella was not approached by Walter one time to play after Henry arrived. She caught up on a lot of missed sleep yesterday and last night.

 

This morning Henry fell into the normal routine of the others. He trotted beside all the dogs was we walked down the hallway to start the day. The sun had barely come up over the horizon from the direction of Tombstone. He walked out into the backyard with Walter and did what all puppies do when they first wake up. His breakfast was served away from the other three in the kitchen. 

As I finish this post around 10:15am, all four are sleeping. Henry is sleeping next to the bone he took over from Walter. Walter is snoring in the cool hallway while Heidi and Stella are in their corners of the computer room. It's pretty easy taking care of the 'army' of dogs.

It was a good day in the "Wild West".

Walter Keeping Us Active

Walter still fits under the coffee table but just barely. He seems to think that is the best place to cool off after playing with Stella or I. He does like the cool tile floor but I guess there is just something about sleeping on wooden slats that feels better. It wasn't soon after I took this picture that his snoring became stronger and louder. It shows again there wasn't much going on around here. Some baseball on tv and reading books ... plus a lot of time sitting outside enjoying the view behind my house.

I can feel my blogging moving a little later in the day compared to the past week where I was posting something around 8pm or so Eastern time. As the weather becomes nicer I am finding a opening a little after 7pm local time, where I feel like putting something together. Look for the posts to be about this same time of night on the days I post.

Walter is a big talker. More than any bloodhound or basset hound I've had in over 30 years. He likes to growl and bark at himself and many times when I look to see what he is barking at ... he is laying down about to go to sleep. He has learned to let Stella sleep after breakfast which means he heads to the bedroom and drags every one of his chew bones and blankets out into a pile and plays with that stack of things. He will run back and forth in the empty dog crates during this time. I can no longer keep the kitchen towel on the dishwasher handle otherwise he will drag that out to the middle of the backyard.

Heidi has seemed confused this week. She will make a million trips from her bed in the bedroom out to the living room, not staying long in either place before she turnes and goes back in the opposite direction she came from. If she didn't start her day barking and hopping in the air, I'd think something might be wrong with her. Appeitie is normal.

I shot this from inside the bedroom through the screen window this morning. This view never gets old.

While Heidi and Walter started their day I had a text from my friend in Indiana with some computer problems. It's weird because I had a strange thing happen to my iMac yesterday that made me wonder what had snuck it's way into my hard drive. For my compouter I ran Bitdefender to check for any malware and it found nothing. I run that program weekly just to make sure. Her desktop is a Windows PC and will probably need replaced based on what she told me it was doing. She could buy it online but had to make an appointment to pick it up locally at Best Buy.

Walter still is cracking me up when he has to smell something because he will tilt his face so he can press his nose flush with whatever he might be smelling. I have noticed his right front foot is starting to turn a little outward. No signs of any kind of skin allergies so I guess he does not mind his protein being chicken. He looks very healthy. He didn't mind having his ears cleaned with baby wipes the other day.

We are past the periods of rain for a while. I see nothing but sunshine icons on my iPhone weather for the next 10 days. When I say it's perfect weather, that's an accurate description. I like the hot afternoons and cool evenings where I can sleep with the window open.

Is that a litte rain I see down on the border? ... Bisbee to the left.

Last night after Walter and Stella had played for over any hour, wrestling with some chases from the living room to the computer room, Walter was trying to cool off. For a second I thought he was going to sleep on his back as he kept kicking Stella in the head as he tried to find the perfect spot. Once again it wasn't long after I took the picture the loud snoring began.

My friend and I finished talking about her computer problems and moved into diets. She was born a vegetarian and has been one all her life. The interesting thing is the book about Blood Type Diets says that is the correct way for her to eat based on her blood type. As I mentioned the book this morning she said she and her friend in San Diego was talking about the same book last night. A few years ago when I followed that diet I made a spreadsheet of course..

I listed in categories all the food it suggested I eat and colored the food highly recommended in blue. On the other side of the spreadsheet I listed in alphabetical order every food that I could remember buying at the store. It was a long list but I color coded the foods that give me indigestion. Then as I went through the book at that time, I greyed out those foods it told me not to eat. Guess what? It named over 90% of the foods I had already color coded that I had trouble with.

Did I need anymore proof than that?

There is no reason to shove a diet down your mouth if it gives you problems the majority of time. That does not mean I will be eating every meal at The Diner in town or at Sunny D's in Huachuca City, although I'd like to, but it does mean I can add lean beef, skinless chicken and fish back in my diet. Dairy is not a good idea for me and I can attest to that and agree with what the book says. I ate like this a few years ago and felt great with no digestion problems. I'll write about any updates I find in the next month as the way of eating goes into action. I guess I'll find out in 4 months when I have another bloodwork done and I can compare the numbers to last December.

Tomorrow morning I will be leaving early for a roadtrip of an hour and a half. It is out off the grid to a ranch that has the 10 basset hound puppies I am choosing from They will be 4 weeks old this weekend. Since its a reasonable distance I'd like to meet them in person, talk to the breeder and see what kind of reactions the two or three that I have picked out.

I might have mentioned in the past, when I did that with Sadie, I took Winston with me to see what he thought of a bloodhound puppy and what the one I had in mind thought of him. He was only 4 years old at the time. I didn't know it at the time but what I read as a good sign was not what it really meant. A professional bloodhound breeder told me a few years later why I was having problems with Sadie as a puppy.

I thought when she followed me and Winston everywhere we walked, that it was a good sign. The professional breeder told me that meant she was a tracker and would have been adopted out to search and rescue if it was her puppy. And she was a tracker as she explored that whole 7 acre field behind the house daily for the next 10 years. When I was at work, she would get bored and destroy things. She could bend those thick black wires on the largest dog crate like nothing ... I could not even bend them back with a set of pliers. When she was old enough to be left in the house, anytime I was gone over an hour I would return to a house that looked like it had been burglerized.

Another time I read things wrong looking at a young basset hound. He was always away from his littermates. I took that as 'independence' being a good thing. He would not be clinging to me all the time for attention. Little did I know that it meant for the next 13 years he would wander miles away before someone would call me and say that Harry was in their house sleeping. He would bark at the door until the strangers would let him in. LOL Luckily his dog tag was still attached with his name and my phone number.

The Out West Bassets breeder has told all ten of us that she will be able to tell us the puppy's  temperaments and personalities this week. Hard to believe there could be that much difference between littermates but there is. I'll post about my trip with some photos tomorrow.

My zip code is showing the number of active positive COVID cases has decreased a lot the past one to two weeks. We are back down to 47 active cases where it was 81 just a few weeks ago. The mask mandate must be working and at the same time there have been "testing blitzes" for an increase in tests done.

The hounds, the dog and I are fine in the "Wild West".

Was It Really Saturday ?

{This did not post as scheduled ... guess Blogger has more work to do}

I don't see them often but when I do they are climbing the fence to get back to their hiding place in my neighbors yard, probably behind his small shed. Will the one that I showed you yesterday on my shower curtain grow into this size?  LOL I am not sure what any of the three dogs would do if they were to find one on the ground. I had some plans for today, did some not others. As usual my days come and go with the flow.

I like sleeping with the bedroom window open during the night but evidently there is something that happens that disrupts my sleep a lot with the window open. My free app SleepWatch catches any disturbances right down to the minute and seems to be pretty accurate based on it tracking times that I can remember. So last night it was borderline on whether we sleep with the windows open or close them with the air conditioning on. It never rained but I had very little disruptive sleep with the windows closed. It's not rare to hear the coyotes crying loud enough to wake me up during the night. I believe that is one reason our neighborhood was built many years ago requiring all of use to have concrete fences.

Walter is always looking for action. If one of us doesn't give him attention he will just move to the next dog or me. Or he will take off and enjoy his time in the backyard in the mornings before it gets too hot. He seems to be looking at me for answers, like "what are we doing today?" Someone needs his toenails trimmed.

A few weeks ago snooping around Facebook I found they have a "Cars and Coffee" every Saturday morning downtown in front of one of the coffee shops. I took the 64 panel van this morning to check it out because it looked like it might rain within the next two hours that I was going to be gone. No one was there 10 minutes past their start time but I still had a nice early Saturday morning drive through town. I see a lot of old classic cars and trucks in this town.

Yes ... you do see Walter's mouth wrapped around the back of Stella's leg. Luckily he has his adult teeth now and those are not nearly as sharp as his baby teeth were. Stella usually puts up with him chewing her legs, ears and loose skin on her neck. He use to hang from those areas when he was 9 weeks old but not now ... he is gaining weight by the hour it seems.

Here are the two of many reasons I moved here. That view is why I chose this house and that sunny wide open sky is why I chose this area. It never gets old seeing that every morning or throughout the day.

My friend up in Phoenix sent me this photo today of her new mountain bike. She had gone up to Sedona to ride some of their bike trails. She later sent me a video of her falling on her ride that her helmet mounted camera caught. The state of Arizona is so beautiful, anywhere you go.

Late yesterday afternoon I saw these two sprint out of the house out the back door with Walter barking all the way. The doberman puppy next door was standing on its back legs looking over the fence. They have an elevated piece of dirt that borders the inside of their fence so no, he is not as tall as my fence when on his back legs. Diesel and Walter love playing when they are together and he does bite the doberman's legs to get him into action. They run around the yard until Walter is about to collapse. He is quite social with dogs and people.

Walter is looking more and more like a bulldog every day. His head will remain smaller until the last stage of growth I'm told. Then it will catch up with that body of his. For a puppy he has been very good and easy to live with ... yet there have been those times he lets me know he is still a puppy. I'll include those stories in his blog post.

This is their eating positions twice per day. I still have to play referee and stand between Walter and Heidi to prevent him but butting in and moving her away from her food. Most of the time he will finish his food and follow Stella outside while Heidi finishes her meal. Since she has so few teeth left I still feed her kibble but soak it a little in water before serving it to her. Walter always licks out their clean bowl just in case he finds one piece of small kibble left behind.

It was only 91° today after their lunch but Walter had already figured out it is cooler in the shade and those rocks are not as hot as the ones in the sunshine. You will see below that after he was finished, he turned and took the pavers back to the patio. Can they be that much cooler than the rocks?

Between June and September almost every afternoon those sunny skies will turn to something like this. There you see it raining in the mountains yesterday but it did not rain here. I don't mind the monsoons because they don't last long. It's not like the all day and all night rains I use to get in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.

If I wanted it cooler ... I can always wait for March like it was here in this photo.

I had just sat down this morning with my second cup of coffee when I received an email from the basset hound breeder at Out West Bassets. She was sending the two week old photos. Their eyes had opened but they are not walking yet. That will happen this week. She sent the same body/face combination of photos for each puppy. These are the five males I get to choose from. I am not sure what exact order I am in the choosing which puppy and really it makes no difference, they are all great looking.

I do have a name picked out but will not announce it until he arrives. As you can see they all have an early start on long toenails LOL ... it must come with the breed. It's just not the basset I am picking but the breeder is matching what each of us wants in a basset hound with what she is seeing there with personalities. Yes, they are different and I have personal experiences that proved that to be true. Funny stories.

Looking at Walter in this photo you would swear he has heard me on the phone talking or can read my texts, emails or this blog and hears something about a new puppy arriving.

I am not sure what the 'new' Blogger is doing. I thought by now I was supposed to be shoved onto the new Blogger format whether I liked it or not. When I open this up to write a new post it sends me to the old format which is good. If I reopen the post later to edit it, Blogger sends me to their new format. I know they will be working in the background for a while until they get it up and running. I am happy to see they have implemented some of the older ways of loading photos.

You might have noticed since your last visit, I have added some new blogs to the sidebar. A couple of the writers have been very very accurate in what they say the world has or is turning into. I also updated some "Pages" at the top with my new bicycles, the two new VWs and of course Walter added to the Hound page. By mistake I deleted the page of Favorite Photos but will try to build that back and add it later.

As much as I would like to change the look of the blog, I cannot find any of the new themes that Blogger supplies that I want to use. Wordpress had many more options but I am not paying for something that is free here and use to be free there. I almost changed this one back to having a sidebar on each side of the post. I guess that is somewhat in limbo and nothing as far as looks will change.

I have good cool air conditioned air that flows over my computer room and Walter's loud snoring (like now) but recently I have noticed for the first time in three years the fan on my iMac is running different times. That tells me the computer is overheating but when I check the hard drive activity nothing is running in the background nor soaking up all the RAM. My last iMac lasted a little over seven years and I hope this one lasts as long. I am still addicted to a large monitor so I will never move to just an iPad or laptop for all of my computer usage.

I mentioned a few weeks ago our mayor put the town on mandatory masks. That first day I saw a face to face fight between a customer and a Walmart employee when she was not allowed into the store. Our positive cases have dropped since that executive order but like anywhere else in the USA, that topic is pretty toxic and flammable. I am NOT going to go into the pros and cons of wearing a mask, it would just take too long.

Recently I have seen fewer and fewer people following those rules here in town. I have had business tell me I can take my mask off when I enter their bike shop or the tire store, etc. It has not affected my lifestyle too much because I am already "stay at home", somewhat of a loner and had groceries delivered last fall when I had surgery. I buy a lot of stuff online if I need it ... so not a big adjustment to COVID-19.

I will say when there is a forest fire they GO TO THE FIRE and work to put it out ... they DON'T drown the whole forest with water or retardant to do it to put those same fires out.

Blogging gets me back to taking more photos. About the time I think my iPhone is the best camera, my Nikon D3500 or D3200 or the newer Canyon SX70 HS pulls through with some good photos. The old beat up and used Tamron 18-200mm lens worked out well today.  I used all of those cameras for the photos of this post today.

That is about it for today out here in the "Wild West".