A Bloodhound Surprise

Starting this post I have only been up less than two hours but I have seen more change and surprises than I have in a month. What is in store for us today for the rest of the day? Will sitting on the couch duplicating yesterday afternoon and last night be a factor? I can't imagine seeing as much as I did this morning in less than an hour ... I hadn't had my second cup of coffee yet !!!!

It didn't matter the bedroom was filled with bright sunshine. Heidi was on her dog bed in the far corner of the room where the sunshine through the east window streams right on her. I may have had a different schedule this morning but she didn't.

I can tell it is spring, even if it's only been official for a couple of days. I can see it in the field across the highway and I can see my yard turning green from front to the back. It's time to drag the lawn mower out of the shed and make sure everything is ready for the first mow. Do you notice the two Sassafras saplings are not in the lower part of the picture?

I had not stepped off of 'Winston's Patio' when I knew immediately that the world had slipped off its axis and Stella was going to dictate what was going to take place. I cannot remember how many months it has been since he started her morning walk and did not take the path into the field.

When she kept ignoring my calls I knew there was no hope today. All I needed to do was 'buckle up' and enjoy the ride because Stella was behind her wheel of stubbornness and anything I said wasn't going to mean a damn thing.

She did stand at the property pole at the corner of the yard before she took off down the return path. She turned to look at me as I stood on the normal path, soft with a lot of saturation. She looked proudly at me, acknowledging my "get over here" ... then turned and walked away ... as you see here.

As I slowly walked back into the backyard toward the return path I wondered what the hell was going on today. With Stella's new ideas for the walk this morning combined with all of those very weird dreams that kept waking me up last night, I could tell the earth was having its own case of vertigo.

By this time I had stopped saying a word to Stella because I knew from past experience, when she gets this way it will not matter what I say or do. I could have gone back into the house and she would have continued on like nothing was off schedule. I am sure you have picked up through all of my drivel since December, that I like things in order. I don't like change that much ... well when you start walking the opposite direction taking the return path first ... how much change could I handle ??

As I walked up the path, I see Stella now meandering back to the middle of the field between both of our worn paths I really wondered if our walk this morning would amount to anything more than just walking in circles. I wasn't sure we would get to the first corner, let alone finish the half mile path. See how I like things to remain the same ??  LOL

My one cup of coffee at this point had done nothing to calibrate my brain cells. I had gone back to bed as the hounds were eating their breakfast kibble. Watching basketball games, sometimes two or three games at once on the split tv screen evidently wore me out. I was out of March Madness shape. I had a problem though.

During the day, I before the games, and on the way to buy more food, I stopped by the library to pick up the two books I had ordered through the state library system by Dr. Michael Greger. "How Not To Die" and his recipe book that went along with it.

Off of the "New" shelf I took a book named "The End Of The Myth" by Greg Grandin.

After reading a few pages of each, both books were so good I couldn't put them down. So I turned off the sound on the tv and would glance up from my book on occasion to check the scores or any action I needed to watch. IF it was a close game, I'd put the book down, turn up the sound, bring that game to the full screen and watch the last five to seven minutes of the game.

I was wrong to suggest the other day that Dr. Greger might have been influenced with bias, stressing a plant-based diet is the way to eat because of his position as the director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the US. He loves animals just as much as I do but he has the scientific proof that the plant-based diet is the way to eat. He also has proof that eating that way DOES reverse heart disease and many other diseases. To me, scientific data to back up his recommendations is the key factor in all of this.

It was his grandmother who influenced his diet thinking and his career path. I'll not go long on this because you can read her story in the first two pages of the preface in the book. Basically she is released from the hospital at 65 years old in a wheelchair, told by surgeons she has weeks to live and there is nothing more they can do for her. She has already had by-pass surgery. She signs up for the Pritikin's Study and showes not only signs of heart disease reversal ... but lived another 31 years to the age of 96 !!!

It's a book you will find hard to put down once you start reading it.

While going the opposite direction, not quite to the first corner, Stella turned and looked at the neighbor's house like she does every morning on 'the way back'.  LOL ... funny hound.

The other book is a great lesson of US History, something I wish I would have spent more time studying in college. I've only read the first 75 pages of the book but WOW ... what a story. Was I taught all of this in past history classes and forgot how this took place?

It starts after 1750, describing in detail the strategy, the famous men in charge and the movement west in the USA. Early in the book there were hints describing how our country got to all the racial tension today, the polarization that pushed Trump to the presidency. The last comment on the book sleeve, just inside the cover states ...

"The border wall may or many not be built, but it will survive as a rallying-point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism."

I highly recommend this book and that is based on reading only a few pages.

As you can see Stella decided on her own that taking the walk backwards was not good for brain cell health. She made the short crossover to our normal path, then over to the edge of the wooded area like always. Even I felt better after she moved back to our normal routine. Whew ... close call.  :)

Can you tell between these two pictures which is on my manual settings and which one is taken with the automatic setting? Which one do you like?

With underground water seeping up the sides of my hiking boots, Stella was also aware of the wet path and walked along the edge of it in the taller grass to keep her paws dry. Rain, snow, sleet or ice ... she doesn't like her paws getting wet. Sadie would have charged through just to show me how high she could splash the water.

I surprised myself yesterday at the store and how I felt throughout the day and night with my changed eating habits. With March Madness it use to be sandwich material, liters of Pepsi, huge bags of tortilla chips and large jars of salsa. Not yesterday. My 36 oz jar held cold water. I munched on carrots and broccoli with no salad dressing to dip into. Later when I ate dinner it was another large salad and two cups of 15-bean soup.

Was that the cause of my weird dreams last night?

Stella wasn't done wandering ... I let her go. She knew what she was doing and where she was going ... I followed the path while keeping an eye on her. She hasn't run off to the north woods since the time that Sadie decided it was a good time to lead her to new frontiers. They sprinted away from me that day in a playful run, hopping up high enough to see over the tall hay as they ran north.

What's this ??? She is going to cross in front of me while I follow the normal path ?? I couldn't believe she was in the same area of the field as I was after all of the changes she had this morning. I glanced at my watch and it was hard to believe, we were on time for the walk. It had not taken any longer than following the normal way. Once again I think Stella is trying to remind me to 'lighten up' it just life ... relax. Go with the flow.

Of course with the change of direction in my eating, the fat content has dropped a lot. I am alway below my recommended 1,850 calories per day although both Dr. Greger and Dr.  Fuhrman say counting calories is not important eating a plant-based diet.

So is it Vegan or Vegetarian? I would have thought it would be one or the other. Last weekend I could not figure out where the term "Whole Food Plant Based" diet came from. I had been a Lacto-Vegetarian for 8 years many years ago, I had never heard of that term until recently.

After reading the past three to four days on this diet plan I finally figured it out and it was something that Jeff over at Respectful Living told me this past weekend in an email.

To many Vegans and Vegetarians still eat processed food, bags of chips, sugary sport drinks, pastry with tons of sugar, candy, etc ... all because it was meatless, possibly dairy less. The Whole Food Plant Based way of eating does not include any of that type of eating. Basically it is fruit, vegetables, beans and legumes.

I am still not getting enough protein. Taking my weight x .4 tells me how many grams of protein I need per day and with this meatless diet I am not getting anywhere close to that. I AM seeing more positive results in the nutrient content of the food I am eating. Like both doctors say it is not the quantity of food you eat but the quality of food, optimized nutrition. Cronometer tracks your food intake right down to the very last mineral.

>Unless I shock myself, I still think there will be times I'll grab a pizza at Mother Bears in Bloomington or a strom at Nick's, even a Five Guys cheeseburger. The neat thing about Five Guys, I no longer have to fight traffic to drive to the other side of Bloomington, then south out of the way just to get to a cheeseburger, because they have built a new store next door to Nick's on Kirkwood Ave ... perfect.  :)

Right after I took this picture my camera's battery icon started flashing red at me. With a morning like this mornig why was that not a surprise? I knew it would be touch and go the rest of the way if I was to finish the walk on film as we usually do. I started turning the camera off and on to nurse it back home and still get a few pictures of Stella as she finished her walk ... like nothing out of the ordinary happened today.

This time last year I had already mowed my yard once. Not a chance to mow for weeks from now unless some hot sunshine shows up and makes it grow faster. I look at this picture and thank my lucky stars for what I and the hounds can walk through every day. Compared to the current pictures of Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska with water up to the roof line of all the houses ... two different worlds. I feel for the people going through all of that.

I have wondered about my recent blogging activity. Twice per day ??? Really ?? I know it has only been a few days but I like doing that early evening post of Heidi's afternoon activity with just a short paragraph and all pictures. This morning post seems to have evolved into a step by step narrative of Stella's daily walk. I find it hard to decrease the number of photos since there seems to be some sort of story following her through the field. Her post doesn't look right with few pictures.

It doesn't bother me blogging twice per day. Jon Katz at Bedlam Farm, posts multiple times per day but has only one photo each on each post. So each blogger has their own way, which is fine.

With my late start this morning I have not taken the time to look at the news online nor have I turned on the tv. By the time I finished my first cup of coffee and read all of my email, Stella was whining to get started. She is a great house dog, minus her occasional bouts of anxiety when I am gone. It is hard to believe that both hounds will be ten years old this summer.

I forgot to mention one interesting thing about following the recommendations from both doctors ... if I were to follow the amounts of fruit and vegetables to eat, I would have to go to the store to buy more fruit and veggies everyday and no longer than every other day. I tried eating the recommended amount of vegetables yesterday and could not do it ... I was full and didn't have any hunger cravings at any time.

Probably this weekend, after the NCAA field will be reduced to 32 teams from 68 teams, I'll spend one morning raking and picking up all the loose tree bark, sticks and a couple of limbs from the yard and add to the burn pile. My huge bonfire is scheduled for early April. It might be my biggest fire ever.

Stella may have started her walk off entirely different this morning but that didn't mean she would end it that way. Right after she passes that last tree on her right, she veers down the slight incline toward the house and follows the edge back to the carport. How long will it be before she changes that routine ??

A beautiful day this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Snow Flurries Start The Week

I could tell by Stella's reaction after her Sunday lunch, that we were not going to do too much. The weather couldn't make up its mind if it wanted to snow or rain, so it gave us just enough of both to keep us inside for most of the day. I did make a run over to Super Walmart for some food. Stella added another day to her streak for not trying to break out of the bedroom that her and Heidi share while I am gone.

Heidi didn't hesitate after her Sunday meal to go outside and kept on the dry mulch which is covered by the roof overhang. Smart Basset.

While Stella and I waited for Heidi to do her lap around the house exploring some scent with light rain, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do besides return a book about Howard Schultz to the library. Plus I was craving sandwiches, which I had stopped eating when I was trying to cut carbs. So right there was a plan, plus it would get me out of the house, a nice 12 mile drive over and another 12 miles back.

Heidi sniffing every inch of the way ... slowly ... light rain did not bother her. See that corner bank? I made the mistake a couple of years ago of cutting all of that back and planting grass seed thinking I would make it like the yard. For erosion prevention that was a bad move on my part. Last March on a warm weekend I planted more grass seed only to see snow the following weekend, killing the opportunity for new grass.

My plan is let it grow back to what it was. I am going to throw in some wild flower seeds this spring to add some color and a few other plants that I have read are good for preventing soil erosion. I will let the grass that is there grow think and tall, to keep that bank where it is. Of course I could also put in some stone or large rocks by hand to do the same thing.

I am also going to do something with all of the river rock along the back of the house. I am not sure yet but I'm thinking of digging it all up and either go back to the original arrangement of grass right up to the house foundation or fill it all in with mulch with potted plants scattered along the back. All I know is, I don't think the river rock will be there much longer.

It will not be the first time I moved it. Originally all of that rock was in the front before it was replaced by Cyprus mulch.

Stella was thrilled when Heidi showed up. She never got off the carport while I picked up new twigs in the driveway to add to the burn pile. After a few steps back inside, Heidi sprinted to the living room, did a few laps around the coffee table and then jumped on the couch for her afternoon siesta.

Stella has never played with her, nor had Heidi tried to get Stella to chase her. A little strange since I have always had bassets and bloodhounds attempt at some sort of playing with each other. Maybe it's because they are both nearing 10 years. Heidi's age is only an estimate since

After another night of poor sleep, numerous wake ups and some of the weirdest dreams imaginable, Stella and I had another late start this morning . After her breakfast Heidi ran to her dog bed that Sadie used and waited for me to throw the sleeping back over her for the morning siesta until lunch is served.

It's not the first time but I was dreaming again of writing blog posts. That is always a bad sign, especially since I could remember exactly what I was going to say in those blog posts after waking up. That reminds me of the days soon after I retired, where I was dreaming I was at work and could remember in detail what I was doing after waking up.

So as Stella and I stepped outside around 9:30am for the morning walk, it was freezing cold, light snow flurries and strong winds from the southwest. This was about all the snow I could see from last night. Between my roof and the roofs on the neighbor's houses it looked like it had lightly snowed for quite a while but none of it was sticking.

You would think with freezing winds and temps below freezing I would not feel the soft mud under the leaves on the path but I did. My only hope this morning on this walk was that Stella woiuld keep moving in the same direction as I did without a lot of 'verbal herding'. You don't understand just how much different these walks are now without Sadie leading Stella.

I could always count on Sadie moving in my direction, completing the walk while having the freedom to explore. As I have said more than a few times, Stella is totally opposite and if I didn't say 'come on' or walk over to lead her by the collar back to the path .... she would never move. A few summers I tested out that theory. An hour after returning home, I drove the Toyota FJ out into the field to find her .... she was still up in the far right hand corner of the field where I last saw her.

So I am admitting, with the way that Stella does this morning walk, many days it is almost like work. Basically a pain in the ass, but really she is just being a typical bloodhound. She is stubborn, ignores me and has to be lead by the collar or leash too many times to return to the path.

Days like the last two where she does complete the walk without a lot of words from me, are nice. I have no doubt that she would always return home if I were to leave her in the field but  with that high speed highway 80' in front of the house or a 120' in front of the field ... I just can't a chance of any kind, that she might end up there. She never has gone near that highway but it would only take one time, for a terrible result.

I continue to make sure she and I walked in the house at the same time after the morning walk.

I think you can tell by the photos today, no matter how cold the wind is blowing ... she is 'strolling' and is not concerned how long she takes to do the walk.

At this point in time it is just damn cold ... no other way to say it. She doesn't care.  LOL

After only one application of the Wounded Warrior first-aid ointment on Stella's ears yesterday, I could see improvement this morning. That stuff is powerful and works for anything dog related, from bare skin hot spots, cuts or other skin issues. No, I have not tried it on the two bare spots on her hips back by her tail.

I wanted to give you some idea how strong the wind was this morning, which in this area of the field, the wind was coming from the NE. It is supposed to move back to the 40's to 50's on Wednesday. It's been a much different winter this year compared to last, where over 30 straight days it was below freezing and half of those days were below 15° for high temps. I guess we have traded those extreme freezing temps last year for all the rain we have had this winter.

There are times during this morning walk when I wonder if we will get back to the house before noon or late afternoon. Yet after checking my watch stopwatch when we finish, we are never gone longer than 20 minutes. Some mornings it feels like a lifetime

The sound of the small yapping dog in the distance stops Stella in her tracks. While I walked all the way to the backyard, she never moved from this position. I always wonder when I hear that small dog if it is cold and wants to come inside or is it yapping because it smells another dog somehwere in it's environment?

The highway traffic or lack of, made this morning so quiet I almost forgot that it was Monday instead of a Sunday. I don't keep the 'holiday' box checked on my Apple calendar but I did click it today just to see if it was a holiday. See how out of tune I am with what is going on? I knew something was up since my working neighbor's truck was still his driveway.

I have followed Jon Katz's blog Bedlam Farm for many years. He is in his late 70s, and has millions, yes millions of blog followers. For him, his blog also had to produce lost income from his book business years ago. Maybe that was his motivation to write very open about all aspects of his life. He is not a farmer but a writer that lives on a farm in upper state New York.

I don't or haven't agreed with everything he has said over the years but there are things I have learned from what he has written. Even with millions of readers and probably thousands of emails he receives, he has always replied to the few emails I have sent him. We have had short discussions about certain things he has written. He too, has put a lot of dogs down over the years so we do have one thing in common.

His post this morning which is linked above, "Bedlam Farm" , is one I am going to have to read again in detail. He is explaining to a student in his writing class how he sees and gets through these days that some feel are total chaos. I'd like to hear some ideas on how to do that, so I'll read his post again after I publish mine.

If you do click that link to read his post or see his blog, you'll notice at the very start that he told his writing class: "I tell my students that if they want a successful blog, they must write often and openly, they must be authentic and share their lives as well as their work."

He does write multiple posts each day, sometimes very long ones or very short ones. He never has more than one photo with each post. He has had his blog professionally designed and it is not a WordPress blog but one that is a website and a server he has to pay for with the huge amounts of traffic he has.

Over the seven years I have blogged I have tried different ways. When I started I rarely had photos but at that time I was not writing so much about my hounds but more about my research on the RV lifestyle. In fact the first couple of years I didn't write more than 35 posts in a year!!!

There is one thing I have not done that he suggested .... writing openly. I have on this blog a few times since this past December. That is what readers wanted. At the time that is what I wanted. I didn't put any limits on foul language or subject matter. On each of those posts my blog traffic would triple in numbers. At the same time I lost some long time followers who let me know by email they didn't appreciate my cussing and a few others didn't like my political views. I knew before I wrote those posts, that losing readers could happen.

Jon has written more openly about his life than I ever would have. Just remember though he was needing to make income from his blog, I did not. I didn't want to be recognized walking down the street or in a store because of my blog. It took years before I even left hints of where I lived. I still don't know if I have ever mentioned the name of the town but some readers that are interested enough could have, or have figured it out by the photos I posted in recent years.

Jon had such a response that for a while he was having two open houses per year, fall and spring, Blog readers from all over the USA would come to his house to see in person what they had read about. I would never ever do that. I like my privacy.

I don't even like seeing people pulling into my driveway just so they can talk on their cell phones. They do that because there is nowhere on the highway to pull off on the side of the road to do that safely. I even feel a bolt of adrenalin when I hear tires moving across the gravel driveway while I am hidden back here in front of my computer. I have a window that looks out into the carport and the top of my driveway but it's closed most of the time during the winter.

So having hundreds of people showing up at my house twice per year for a day of sharing, where people have to come out and direct traffic .... just isn't part of my blogging plan.  LOL

I will try to write more openly but there is always that one little bit of hesitation tapping me on the shoulder when I feel like rambling honestly.

I wrote more at the end than I wanted but it's okay. As I glance up to the right hand corner of my computer monitor I see it's past noon already. What happened to those mornings in December when I was writing blog posts at 4am and posting them by 6am, right in time for you to read with your hot cup of coffee????

I have yet to hear from anyone that knows what happen to the blogger "RetroRoxi". Her blog is deleted on WordPress, her domain name is 'parked' at GoDaddy and the gmail address she had has been deleted from her Google account. Her disappearance is strange to me since he blogged regularly, made comments on my blog multiple times per day and we exchanged a lot of emails about coding, html, blog design, dog photos, music etc.

That happens sometimes. Bloggers disappear for some reason and never return. I just hope she is okay.

Well after reading the latest book on Howard Schultz, I do not see him being a serious contender in the next Presidential election, if he even runs. He has a lot of good ideas. He did some amazing things with Starbucks, admitted the mistakes he had made along the way such as selling Seattle's NBA team to an outsider and then watched the city lose their team as it moved to Oklahoma City a year later.

Joe Biden??  Really??

Whatever happens, it will be fun to watch these next two years. In the meantime I am going over to Jon's blog and read in more detail how I can help myself get through these days of chaos that at times piss me off more than I like. Luckily I live alone and I never take it out on the hounds. I do mumble to myself a lot, sometimes even outloud, but not at them.

Another week closer to Spring, here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.