The Hounds Explore

Just like Watson did at 8 weeks old, he does every morning at two years and five months old. He was born the day before we left Sierra Vista, AZ for Evansville IN. Is that weird? Of course back in early July 2021 I did not have the fence installed yet and that pole held a security light that I found out was installed here by a previous owner. To the dismay of my neighbor, I cut the wires, capped them off and buried them back in the ground then cut the pole down. I like a dark yard plus I didn't like the pole standing in the middle of the backyard. The neighbor is still not happy about that.

Hounds & Dog Move Into Fall

Unless I look at my date and time in the upper right screen of my iMac I sometimes forget what month it is. I have the time but no calendar, or date on my Apple Watch faces for either watch. The weather has been fantastic though as we have settled into our move that took place five months ago. The temps are dropping but are about the same ranges as Sierra Vista AZ ... the only difference or a few differences, is the intensity of the sun and the view of those Huachuca Mountains. The hounds and the dog love the patio here though and spend as much time outside as possible. With the patio door open most of the time, they can come and go as they please. Believe it or not in that photo, Watson is a week past five months old.

Freezing Cold Temperature Energizes Stella

If you look closely at the post title again you will see the name "Heidi" is not found anywhere close to the word "energized". There is a reason for that and long time blog readers recognize that Heidi as officially declared Winter 2018-2019 has arrived in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. She did go outside in the dark and freezing cold while I poured their breakfast but one second after finishing she sprinted for the dog bed with a sleeping bag and Mexican blankets.

Stella also sleeps next to her during her short nap after breakfast. It does not matter to her that she wakes me up in the middle of the night it seems, at 6:15am ... to go outside. As I open my eyes I hear whining and sometimes a wet bloodhound nose nudging my hand. But that signal is not that she needs to go outside ... she wants breakfast. So she will go outside with Heidi first thing in the morning but stands at the door looking inside while I am in the other room pouring out her kibble.

It's the first part of the walk where she relieves herself, in the field. I could tell a few steps into the field that she was energized this morning. The frozen leaves under my hiking boots were crackling with each step, that only hit wet soggy very soft ground underneath them. No wind makes a big difference when it "feels like" 29°.

She spent most of the walk out in front of me. Glancing on each side of the path in the heavy grass I could see fresh prints from either deer or bear ... I wasn't sure which yet.

When she trotted ahead of me I had a sneaky suspension that she might get away from me today or at least try. She didn't have time to stop and eat deer scat ... she was tracking scent and it seemed the freezing overnight temperatures brought out every deer in the local area.

We change time tonight at 2am ... officially Sunday morning but as I will just wrap up my last football game on tv (Pac12) a little before that, it will still be night to me. I've never been a fan of Daylight Savings time but I understand the reasons for it. For many years Indiana was one of the few states that did not change time ... then someone with enough power got stupid and their idea was passed as law.

Stella did a lot of trotting through the field today. I was late on quite a few shots trying to catch her running. I didn't think you would want to see blurred photos that were too hard for me to see after I downloaded them. Is the Cosequin working? She has almost completed her 3rd bottle.

This time tomorrow it will be 7:37am when the sun is rising to this point. I will guarantee you I will not be taking this type of photo of the sun rising until next spring. Maybe not.

Whenever Stella stops suddenly, perks her long ears up and stands as still as possible, I prepare to run as fast as I can. I am not in shape to do that but you never know. Could she be feeling that good that she would sprint from me like she use to? I don't think she is in shape to sprint either but running might be an option. If she ran I still would not be able to catch her.

She had almost taken off for the far right corner of the field as she turned the corner but made an abrupt left turn while hopping in the air to turn and headed away from me. I was too far behind her to do much but zoom the lens a little further to see her. She started running with her nose to the ground parallel to the back edge of the field.

I thought she was gone .....

When I saw this through my camera view finder I KNEW she was gone.

She was headed either to the field behind us or straight ahead to the north woods on the other side of the field. Sadie took off after her last year deep into that woods and found her. I was so far behind that I was not a factor in the rescue mission.

As she trotted/ran away from the 200mm zoom lens setting I relaxed, picked up my walking pace but did not run, knowing she was headed north to those trees ahead. There is a big vehicle path in that woods so it would be easy to find her ... but I thought I would give it one last desperate yell to see if she might feel sorry for me and stop ....

She stopped on a dime, turned and looked at me (blurred photo) and then went back to the ground to track scent. I was happy that she stopped and evidently my breathing didn't keep my hands still enough for the camera to catch her staring back at me.

The sudden adrenaline rush was over, my cardio work out was finished even without jogging ... as she stayed near the path investigating other deer tracks. There were markings all round us that deer had been in the area.

It's a strange pattern but when I leaned over and looked into those 'holes' there were fresh deer hoof prints deep in the grass.

You can barely see them here but by the way they were I am guess a group of them were heading in that direction toward the gully and the corner where Stella had turned earlier.

Her running was over for this morning. She kept her nose pressed to the ground the rest of the way home.

A different angle of those north woods and a slight touch of editing.

I might think the morning walks are over when I walk into the yard but I don't decide that. Stella had plenty of things to check out before she came to the house. I guess I need to splurge and buy a camera or two to mount somewhere outside so I can see what kind of animals are moving around the area at night.

The after walk routine for her when she comes back into the house goes like this. She will lay by my desk chair as I download the photos and lick her feet and legs dry after the walk through wet grass. Then she will curl up as close as possible to my chair and sleep for a few hours whether I get up and leave or not. Sometimes she is so close I don't have room to roll the chair back to get up away from the desk.

The leaves are going to need another day or two of drying out before I can do anything with them. The problem is there is rain in Monday's forecast. I will be using the mowing technique that I did a few weeks ago where I mowed in the same direction back and forth, blowing all of the cut leaves toward the field. That final path along the edge of the field and yard mulched all the leaves that were left.

I had a brain flash yesterday about how to backup my photos on the external hard drive. After I had backed up the large file I remembered that if I left the drive connected all the time, each day I could move my photos to that drive just like I moved them to Flickr. This morning proved that was a good idea. It worked perfect.

Therefore I decided not to wait to see if the Flicker CEO would change his mind as he participated on the Flickr forum answering questions. His tone of answers were like any good politician and I could tell any changes people were asking for were only a dream.

I had already deleted my Flickr account late last night along with the Yahoo email address I had to have to log into Flickr.

Today is one of those times I wish I lived in the city like those commercials I will see today while I watch college football.

Why???

I am almost out of food and between the time I post this on the blog and the start of the first kickoff at 12 noon for my college football marathon, I don't have time to grocery shop on a Saturday where the place will be packed and the cashiers will be slow.

If I lived in the city I could buy my groceries online and have them delivered within hours !!!!

I guess you can't have everything when you live in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Like Normal Weather

Stella and I went outside last night about midnight and it was still raining, but she had to go so she was quick. Finally this morning when we woke up the rain had stopped. Cold but no rain. Although Stella was up at 6:15am, sprinting to the field as soon as I opened the door. I could feel how cold the air was ... I knew I was going to whimp out today when it came to what clothes to wear.

To say that Stella was ready to take a walk would be an understatement.

Stella found the normal deer path that they take to jump over the hedges and the smashed fence into the field behind the field we walk in. This is the exact spot that Sadie ran to and jumped over the fence chasing her first deer in December 2009 as a puppy.

I glanced to the right to see if there were deer on the horizon, I was sure that Stella was about to run after whatever she was smelling, hearing or seeing.

Finally a little color this year. I thought those red leaves were dead a few weeks ago.

What does she smell or hear?

Smelling the field cat toward the neighbor's house.

It was the first time I have ever worn fleeced lined jeans. I bought a pair the other day and am finding out they were a good purchase. I expected the field to be much more saturated than it was so I was a little overdressed with the North Face snow boots. Yet it was good to see that I could still fit the boots on with thick wool socks.

I have been using Flickr for free since 2014. They gave me 1Tb of storage and with over 28,000 photos they tell me I have only used 1.0457792% of that 1Tb ... not even 2%. They dropped a bombshell on Flickr users yesterday but didn't notify anyone by email ... they posted it on their blog for people to see. Isn't that interesting how they broke the news?

For the paid "Pro" users they told them they would double their yearly fee from $24 to $50 after the new year. That is close to the Smugmug fees, who now own Flickr. I'll not pay anything to use their service and will have to stop using them as an online storage. I liked that they did NOT compress your photos when you uploaded them like Google Photos does, so they stayed as clear and sharp as the photo is in your camera.

Since I am a 'free' account, after February 5th they will start deleting all of my photos automatically as well as other free users until they get to the last 1,000 most recent photos uploaded in my account ... unless I pay for unlimited storage.

This morning I did the backup the old fashion way ... I just moved my large photo file (364Gb) to my external hard drive as a second back up to my Time Machine Apple backup that is also on an external hard drive. Both work well, as I found out when I bought a new computer in May 2017 and uploaded all of my files from the Time Machine drive to the new computer.

That is what happens when businesses buy other businesses, so it's not a surprise. Directv begging me to come back to their service and continues to bribe me with their $300 Visa Gift Card.

I found it hard to write much today so I posted mostly photos. Things are okay ... Stella and I are headed out for our 2nd walk of the day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.