Bloodhound Now Whining To Go On Walk

Stella was ready to go this morning for her walk. It had been raining some overnight but had stopped just in time for me to have a couple of cups of coffee, and breakfast for the hounds. By the time I was ready and stepped into the backyard Stella had started the walk and was in the exploration mode. She seems to be exploring more and more lately.

My hiking boots had not dried out from yesterday morning's walk. No sunshine means no dry boots.

I noticed a lot new spots of grass that had been mashed down overnight and some were showing distinct hoof prints.

She checked a couple of different places that lead into the woods and deep gully.

I think you can see we were in for another dark and overcast day. I had a lot planned for today inside. Clean, sorting and recycling the computer room closet the other day motivated me enough today to look at the hallway closet and two file cabinets packed with paper files back to 1993. The cabinets were only two drawers. The other cabinet had old CD's for Microsoft Office 2000, old printers and scanners I no longer had, back-up files, zip drives, and the old 3/5 floppy disc. Any CD's that had backup information I cut in two and put each half in a different bag of trash.

I tried some different settings on the camera this morning. After seeing the photos I will have to do a little more reading before I start changing settings again. In the meantime I'll go back to no flash auto focus.

I went through almost every sheet of paper in my filing cabinets, checking papers that had my name and social security number. Those went into my stack to be burned this fall with the leaves and brush. I filled a 32 gallon trash can with paper that was be recycled. Other stuff I put in the trash. So by 2pm I had made two different trips to the recycling center for my 2nd container of recyclables and two large bags of trash, costing me $4.

As you can see the field and my boots were pretty wet this morning, not halfway through the walk.

In the drawer with old CD's I found CDs and manuals for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, a F-15 flight simulator,  a F-16 Flight simulator called Falcon 4.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator 1998 and an all-time favorite game ... Sim City 3000. I will either bring out my old Windows PC and use that computer for the simulators and Sim City or I will look on eBay and Craig's List to see if someone is still buying software that old.

It has been a little over a week since I decided I was going to start using my 10 month old iPhone 8+ without a case. I like how it feels without a case. One thing I have noticed the past week is when it's in my hand or I am heading for the car I am more aware of the phone in my hand and also more focused in not dropping it. Yet I will get tired of it eventually and put it back in a case.

All through the walk this morning Stella seem to think there were deer in the area or we had just missed them.

There has been a cat, a squirrel or some sort of animal in her yard while she sleeps at night. Maybe a raccoon.

I even attacked the closet where the washer and dryer are. There are two shelves that have anything from paint, cans of spray paint, quarts of oil, car polish, leather cleaner, WD40, window cleaner, spare light bulbs, etc ... I pulled everything down, put new shelving paper (vinyl) down and then put everything back on the shelf in order with labels facing to the front. A lot of stuff was put in the trash, if empty it went into the recycling bin.

Maybe the red mum is going to make it even with cool temperatures and a little rain.

After lunch I let both hounds outside to wander on their own while I was finishing my last bit of closet sorting. Later Stella was standing at the door looking inside to be let back inside but Heidi was nowhere in the front yard and wasn't waiting with Stella.

I grabbed the camera and found her over in the north part of the yard where I think a field cat has been hanging out at night. Both hounds have the same interest in the same spot, two different times during the day.

I started calling her name but she didn't realize that I was standing by the field taking these photos of her. It looked like she thought I was calling her name from the carport door.

There is some basset hound speed right there.

By the time I was leaving for my second trip to the recycling center she wasn't moving from that blanket and was not interested in riding in the passenger seat.

Mid-afternoon Stella was walking around the house whining. That is the new way of letting me know it's time for a walk. It was a little earlier than we usually take the afternoon walk but if that is what she wanted to do, then we would get it done early. Evidently I understood her whining correctly because she trotted straight to the field.

She ran in a couple of different parts of the walk today.

The ears tell you how fast she is running.

I also took two large plastic tubs of Sports Illustrated magazine to recycling. 13 years ago when I was selling full-time on eBay I was making a pretty good profit selling old sports magazines and game programs. Then overnight a company loaded about 5,000 magazines and game programs with a set price less than $5 each ... the market for mine was gone just like that. I double checked the other day to see of some of them were worth anything. By the time I would take pictures, write the sales ad, load them into eBay, then package them and ship them IF they sold ... wasn't worth my time.

Cleaning out the computer room closet last Friday I found some boxes my mom had given me. She had kept about everything that dealt with my time growing up. In all of that stuff I found a bunch of old felt team pennants but the 1967 Boston Red Sox, the 1968 Detroit Tigers and the 1965 Cincinnati Reds pennants had color team photos built in. I'll list those on eBay.

During all of this cleaning I found photos that I thought I had lost, some of them were prints of Sadie when she was a puppy. Some way this box of photos got separated from the one big box I have with all photos and older 35mm slides.

I guess the next thing I will do is figure out what I am going to do with my 2010 21" iMac that has the bad hard drive and still sitting on my second desk. I would need a tool to take the front of the monitor off so I could install the new hard drive. I am not sure I want to spend the money for the tool and a new hard drive just to resell it. I am not sure I would even break even after shipping costs ... Brand new computers at the store are cheap anymore and it would be hard to beat those prices.

I have a few more things to look through and decide whether to recycle or throw away. The fact is these old family keepsakes would be thrown in the trash most likely once I die ... so why keep them around stored out of sight in a closet??

I got so much done today that I shut it down around 2:30pm today. The hounds slept for the rest of the afternoon. I went back to reading my books and watching some college football games from Saturday that were being played at the same times that I was watching other games. One tv show I really like watching is Dateline on Friday nights. I tape those episodes and usually watch it during the week.

I just remembered to get that old PC working, nothing is wrong with the hard drive, I need a cheap monitor and a keyboard that plugs into the computer. They didn't have wireless capability when I bought that Dell desktop sometime around 2007. Instead of doing all of that, I'll probably just recycle it. I have a lot of electronics to add to the recycle pile ... but everyone seems to be charging money to recycle electronics now, where a few years ago it was free.

It was dark and overcast all day but I got a lot done in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi Goes In Field Stella Escapes

It is not often I have enough to say and enough photos to put a blog post together 24 hours before it's published. This will be one of those rare posts and it all happened because of the shocking "historic event" of Heidi taking a walk with Stella and I in the field yesterday afternoon. I was so curious that I scrolled through her photos album and found out the last walk she took in the field was April 20, 2018 ... last spring.

She did stop two different times before she put a paw in the field so there were times she could have changed her mind and went the other way toward the house, but Thursday afternoon she didn't. After sniffing the air toward the field while standing in the middle of the backyard, she walked onto the path around Stella and led the way.

It was a beautiful 55° when we took off. Normally I would let her walk at her own pace and most of those times she would never finish the walk with us. She would spend time wandering in the front part of the field and would be in the yard by the time the bloodhounds and I would return. Not Thursday. I told her I'd wait for her to catch up and she kept walking.

Which camera took this flower photo? The Nikon D3200 or the Canon SX530?

Don't misunderstand Heidi's abilities to walk in the field and track scent. She probably had the second best nose in the house of four hounds at one time. Her specialty is flushing out rabbits. That is what any basset hound is made to do, flush out rabbits from heavy brush. Sadie had the best nose, then Heidi, Winston and Stella in that order.

So she does like taking her time on her field walks and checking things out with her nose.

With the weather being fantastic in the late afternoon I was in no hurry to finish the walk. There wasn't a sign or a bite from a mosquito anywhere, the winds were cool, no humidity and sunny. Perfect weather.

Normally at this point I would have kept walking and she would had veered off to the right toward the woods to snoop around but she kept walking the path and I stood there to wait on her.

I might have been waiting but her nose had found something interesting to check on further.

By this time Stella was rounding the first turn. I wanted to keep her within view today since Heidi and I would be walking further back.

So I have one hound in front of me and another hound behind me, both walking different paces.

Heidi jumped into a galloping trot to catch Stella, moving right past me without a wave.

I zoomed in to get this photo and was still surprised that both hounds were walking close to the same pace. In fact Heidi might have been walking faster than any of us.

Still with a good #2 nose, there are plenty of times she would have to stop and double check what her nose was telling her brain.

That meat at times Heidi and I would fall far behind Stella.

Both cruizin' up the path that runs parallel to the back edge of the field.

Interesting how both hounds make the left turn on their own as they follow the worn path.

At first I thought Stella was going to lead Heidi out to the overgrown ATV path. I wasn't going to stop them UNLESS they both headed toward the woods north of us.

This was the most 'nose exercise' I had seen Heidi get in a long time. It was like she was in a trance.

For a while I was beginning to wonder if she was lost and couldn't see that I was left of her too far to reach but close enough she would hear me calling her name. She kept walking straight ahead as if she heard nothing.

I was coming to a critical area ... I couldn't see Heidi ... you can barely see her in the photo below. This is why basset hounds have white tails on the end ... so they can be seen in fields when hunting. (true fact)

And ... Stella was getting too far ahead of me. I had no doubt that she would take this chance to wander over to the neighbors house. She had been looking in that direction for days, raising her nose to sniff that direction. There was something over there she needed to see or eat.

When I turned back toward Heidi and knew that Stella was going to take off on me, I knew it would be easier to catch Heidi later after I corralled Stella, who wasn't wearing her collar. You can barely see Heidi in the center of the photo.

I looked up ahead and didn't see Stella anywhere, even with the zoom lens.

I looked back toward Heidi and thought I saw something white moving but wasn't for sure.

Once she popped into view ... I took off running after Stella.

I guessed right. Stella had stopped to decide if she was going to cross the hidden ditch in front of her between the field and their yard ... or ...

let me know she was hearing me call her name and saying 'no' ... she kind of flinched trying to decide which way to go.

She decided she would come back to where she was hearing her named called. That was another surprise of the day.

With Stella just a few steps behind me, I turned to look for Heidi. I would walk up the return path toward her direction knowing I would eventually run into her.

But she had been running to catch me. Within a few steps I saw her running through the tall grass, almost hopping to get a higher vantage point as she ran.

Once she saw me she slowed to a normal walking pace as if nothing was happening, everything was normal.

She walked right by Stella, who was looking as if she wanted to go back to the neighbors yard.

It has been a long time since Heidi had to wait on us to finish the walk in the field.

Needless to say, after all of that exercise it didn't take long for her to jump up on the couch with the sunshine coming in the windows from the west for an early evening or late afternoon nap.

Stella was asleep just as fast, with probable dreams of getting next door without being caught.

I would rank this walk of Heidi's right up there with the times that Sadie and Stella would find deer to chase. Quite a surprise, exciting and somewhat shocking.

Some rain today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.