Hounds Normal Routine After Lunch

These few pictures epitomize the daily routine the hounds have right after they finish their lunch kibble.

They are let outside to make any runs to the field, except Heidi, where they will dump their tanks. Heidi prefers the front yard to do that, under the Yews if it is raining. Sadie will wander in the field or backyard during rain, hail, sleet or snow and sunshine. If it's sunny, Stella will sleep either on the hot gravel in the driveway or in the grass. Heidi will cruise the front yard before coming around the house to the back.

Stella's thinking pose before every nap, inside or outside, then she flops to her side.

Unlike months ago, I can no long feel her ribs, hip bones nor shoulders. I still think she will be close to her original weight, 45 pounds, before the loss in June 2015. I did nothing more than feed her 3 cups of kibble per day but I saw the greatest improvement in her skin and coat after the last dog food change to Wholesomes SportMix manufactured by the same company that produces Earthborn Holistic Pet Foods.

The hounds are all asleep, time for my lunch and some Reds baseball here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Heidi Was Out First For Afternoon Walk

Normally I would have waited and included this in Sunday's blog post but I thought Heidi deserved her own post on her afternoon. There were quite a few readers that followed the blog when Winston was alive ... they were basset hound lovers. Since Heidi doesn't get out much there are only a few of those readers left and enjoy any kind of news about her.

When I announced that 'we are going for a walk' to Sadie and Stella, I heard Heidi jump off the bed and she went running to the door. Could it be true, that she wanted to go on the walk?

When she took an immediate right turn to the front yard I figured that might be all she wanted. Earlier today after lunch she spent over an hour outside by herself while enjoying the warm weather.

So I was somewhat surprised when I turned to check on her and she was slowly running toward me to join us on our afternoon walk.

Just 6 months ago most of that front leg was bare skin. It wasn't raw and sore like it had been the previous two years off and on but the skin was soft and supple, with no hair. With the recent change to SPORTMiX dog food, she has had more hair grow and growing on her four legs than any other time since October 2014.

Some of the other bare spots she was showing up on her rear have grown hair back along with the outside of her ears. There were a few spots on each ear that was losing hair for some reason. I think we are somewhere in the 3rd week of the dog food change and she has never looked better.

While the bloodhounds hung back Heidi took off on the path to gain the lead with her tail wagging and her ears flopping from side to side.

Stella finally passed her and took the lead. I think she tried to intimidate Heidi by walking as close as she could next to her but Heidi did not budge an inch and made Stella walk around her. Stella has even walked on my feet if I am in her way.

A slight uphill grade here and since this is only her second walk of the season I assume she is not in the best walking shape but even today Heidi would trot in different parts of the walk. It didn't take her long to regain the lead.

Does it look like she has gained some of her weight back?

She stopped to pose for the camera but once she heard that shutter pressed she was back to walking in a slow trot.

Sadie got a lot of running in this afternoon. She loves this field and loves her walks.

The best guess and that is all it is when it comes to Heidi's age, is that she will be 8 years old sometime this fall, maybe December. Since she was a runaway and not claimed at her local shelter, the basset rescue service did not have any of her birth records, or previous shot records when they picked her up from the shelter in June 2011.

She finds that walking on the path is much easier than the taller grass.

She looks quite a bit smaller than the bloodhounds but she is feisty enough to hold her own when one of them try to power by her. 99.9% of the time neither Sadie nor Stella will do anything to bother Heidi. I remember when I first brought Stella home, she wanted to get Heidi to play. Heidi wasn't interested and barked enough to let Stella know to back off.

So with a walk plus spending over an hour outside by herself today I think we can officially say it's Spring and we will be seeing a lot more of Heidi in future posts.

Another find day of retirement here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Stella's Monday Morning Walk

What a big difference it is to start the day off 25° warmer than yesterday morning. With the feel of freezing gone I didn't mind the overcast skies.

The hounds didn't stay out long on their first trip of the day, there was  a very light rain and they were more interested in having their breakfast kibble.

My daily coffee went fast, internet reading went fast, so the first walk of the day was about an hour earlier than normal. The hounds didn't mind. Both went on the walk this morning like always but after I had downloaded the pictures from the walk the majority of them were of Stella, so she got the headline today in the title.

I was somewhat undecided what the parameters would be for Stella this morning. I wanted her to have free range but I also didn't want her hanging way behind and then slowly venturing over to the woods behind the neighbors house.

She didn't take long to show me she was on her own schedule this morning and the words "come on Stella" were going to be the theme of this morning. Sadie and I continued to on with occasional glances back to check on Stella's location.

I wanted to test my auto focus setting on this next picture. I wanted  the bare tree limb to be in the background of the focused green bushes. I finally did something right.

At this point of the walk I knew I wasn't going to backtrack to hook her up on the leash. Sadie and I were too far away so I yelled 'come on Stella' and was shocked at her response ... she trotted our direction.

For readers that are unfamiliar with the bloodhound breed, the word 'obedience' is not part of their vocabulary. The words 'stubborn' and 'scents' are part of their DNA. Still it's nice to have them respond somewhat positive when I give a command ... otherwise I'd spend all of my time outside in all kinds of weather while they explored for hours and hours.

The word 'scent' became a factor on her trot toward Sadie and I. She needed to stop and check out something. I've been reading a couple of different books in hopes of gaining more knowledge on what is happening in that rock hard place between their ears ... known as their brain.

The word identifying or identification is the main reason for their intense sniffing and even eating strange material they find. In some cases they do it because they like it but most of the time it is just the process of identifying what animal has been in this field prior to their arrival.

No leash was involved this morning at any time. That word was never spoken to get her to respond because she continued to walk toward us whenever I called her.

Rarely is that a direct, route with her. Sadie is entirely different and basically needs no adult supervision. LOL

These next three pictures will give you a very good example of my command "come on Stella" and her responses. The pictures show exactly what takes place 99% of the time when given that command.

Yell #1

#2 - "come on Stella"

#3 - "come on Stella"

After that I gave up, turned around and headed along the back of the field while Sadie explored along the fence line. With my back turned, Stella had sprinted to the far right corner of the field.

For some strange reason she started heading our direction without being called. Her slow walk brought out her personality, which is funny and pure bloodhound.

There is no trotting in this sequence ... just one slow step at a time, you would think she was walking in slow motion. Out of all the hounds I have had since 1987, I've never had a basset hound nor a bloodhound walk as slow as she can.

I would pay any amount of money to know her thoughts when she has that frown on her face as she is walking.

After Sadie ran over to her, tapped noses together and then immediately turned to head back to the edge of the field, Stella followed her. She responds to Sadie better than she does to me.

Of course there is always one spot on almost every walk where both of them want the same thing. They share well and never fight over what they find.

Another walk is in the books, no winds blowing cold air today and I can see possibly three walks by the end of the day. With cold weather over the weekend it was the perfect time to do laundry and some house cleaning ... so the week is wide open for activity.

In the Apple Photo program you can edit your pictures after you download them from your camera, phone or ipad. Most of the time just one click on each picture named 'enhancement' will adjust the picture without anything else needed. Today though I clicked two other adjustments instead of the one labeled enhancement.

Can you tell the difference in any of them?

Slowly but surely they both head back to the house with a little coaxing by me. For new readers of the blog, yes I can leave them outside to let them roam the field on their own but this past summer, they kept moving the boundary out further ... too where they were too far away and in one case almost disaster.

Living 80' - 100' from a major highway, in a passing zone, I have to be careful on just how much freedom I give them when I leave them outside. They never go to the front yard unless I am there or if Heidi is in the front soaking up some sunshine.

When I looked at my blog traffic stats this morning it was funny to see that the word 'Idiot' in my blog title the other day tripled the number of visitors. I have a feeling that the stories I posted did not match up with their expectations ... as 62% of them were off my blog in 5 seconds or less.

It just wasn't that blog post for the rate of escape, that 62% is the overall average for all blog traffic. Then 29% of visits have this site turned on their computers or tables for over an hour.

I remember last year I tried writing one blog per hound, in their view, from a suggestion of a reader. That brought my total blog count up to 7 counting the two private blogs I write on regularly. It was fun writing in their point of view but way too time consuming so I deleted them and then let their domain names expire this year.

Again you will notice more blogs added to the left sidebar. Some of them might be interesting to you. A few blogs I use to list were deleted months ago when they became more political and controversial. I try to stay away from that here. This blog is more about the daily life of the hounds anyway and the pictures I take.

I mentioned last summer that I would like to take some pictures of my local small town showing the damaging effect of high unemployment, a new interstate nearby taking away traffic from downtown ... but at the same time keep my location private. It's hard to do and I am not sure how I am going to work that out, but I still like the idea of a little history.

After Heidi's walk in the field last week, she showed some irritation. Could it have been the field grass? The reason I am asking that question is, after months and months of not licking her paws down to bare skin ... the morning after her walk through the field, both of her front paws were bare skin ... she had licked them that much.

I almost forgot, on the right sidebar under 'Labels" I added 51 more topics. Those links are rarely clicked but useful. I basically added that many to even out the left and right sidebars since I went back to listing 4 posts on one page instead of just one post per page.

I think near the bottom of each post I am going to start listing an off topic thought, whatever is on my mind. I'm hesitant in doing that because it might show just how crazy I really am ... LOL

No ... I didn't watch the Oscars last night.

What will happen this week in the 'tropics' of southern Indiana?

Heidi Takes 1st Walk Of 2017

With DirecTv's 3 days of temptation (free movie channels) trying to get me to upgrade my account to the movie channels, it was a late night last night and a delayed schedule this morning.

By the time we got up, it was warm outside (60°), hazy and a change in schedule. The first walk of the day would take place before I even started any thoughts on coffee. I asked Heidi "do you want to walk with us today" and she went trotting to the door!

For readers that may be new and not familiar with Heidi's skin story, do a search in the upper right box "Heidi's Skin" and that will bring up her history, diagnosis and treatments. What might look bad is actually very good for her. Even better than that fence behind her, which I'll high pressure wash this spring when it's hotter and the sunshine can dry it out faster.

At first I was not sure if she just wanted outside to walk around or if she was really going to take her first walk of the year. It wasn't her liking of 70° but it was 60° so I thought there might be a chance that she would join us.

Getting closer to making up her mind.

Then ... she gets on the path with her nose to the ground, ears dragging not far behind and she was off for the first time this year. Why is that exciting? I think her last walk in the field was sometime last summer, I'd have to look that up.

She jumped out into the lead while Sadie and Stella started their normal routine. It was good to see her exercise her nose and show some interest in the hound walk.

Stella was a little behind but had plenty of things to check out.

Sadie seemed happy that Heidi was out. I couldn't catch her with my camera but she would run back to Heidi on occasion to touch noses with her and then trot away from her getting in front.

I have been feeding her almost 2x as much kibble as the bag says for a 35# basset hound for quite a few months but she hasn't gained her weight back. It was just a few years ago where all four legs and paws were bare and raw. The vet told me not to expect any hair to grow back on her legs, paws or stomach. At that time her legs were mostly raw skin up to where the brown color starts.

As Heidi followed the path, Sadie and Stella explored the edge of the field and I could tell they were headed for the far right corner.

I've tried all the grain free food over the past two years. I have a huge photo file, dated where I can compare her skin condition photos with the same days a year or two in the past. Her skin irritation seems to be seasonal and only certain foods make her skin to flair up into bright red, itchy and raw.

She has done the best on the recent change to Rachel Ray Dog Food, dry kibble with grains. Her coat is soft and shiny and not greasy like some of the other grain free food would make it feel. The skin that is bare is not hard and sore but very soft, supple and close to a normal skin tone.

Heidi and I continued along the path while the two partners in crime checked out their far right corner. They heard nothing nor saw anything as their faces were buried in the thick brush.

This next picture is just after Sadie had sprinted over, and touched noses with Heidi.

While we made the final turn heading back home, Stella was still in the corner of the field. About the time I thought I might have to walk that direction to get her, she started trotting our direction after I called her name.

Heidi continued to enjoy her walk. The camera doesn't catch it but her tail was wagging from left to right as she had her nose to the ground. At times she would break into a trot but stayed on the path most of the way.

I had noticed this morning she had an eye that looked like she had a cold, with some mucus buildup. I'll keep track of that in case we need to make a trip to the vet for some antibiotics. She decided to clean out her left eye on her own with some nice dried cut hay.

Her nose is as good as Sadie's and a little better than Stella's I think, just by the way she acts and the rabbits she has flushed out of the tall hay in the summer in years past.

The basset hound is suppose to have the top half of their tail white, so they can be seen in tall grass during the times they hunt for rabbits. The long ears dragging the ground will kick up the scent, keeping it in front of their nose. For those that don't know, she had a history as an escape artist (a runner) leading to a lot of trips to the animal shelter. Guardian Angel Basset Rescue, rescued her from the shelter and put her up for adoption after a detailed vet inspection in June 2011.

It's really good to see her out in the field today enjoying the walk. She spends most of the winter under a sleeping back or blankets sleeping her days away. So many hours like that where at times I wonder if she is healthy or not.

With no positive birth date since she was a rescue, best estimates say she was 8-9 years old this past December.

Sadie walked next to me most of the way home, out of camera range. Not sure what that was for but Heidi led the walk home and Stella wasn't that far behind.

It was so nice this morning I almost pulled out the high pressure washer to clean the fence and the house but I want to do that in April when the days are warmer so things dry out faster. We will probably get a couple of more walks in today, but that might just be the bloodhounds and I.

Too nice to stay inside and not enough to do outside as far as tasks ... might sit outside and read while the hounds explore.

Is it really February 18 in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana with weather like this?