Monsoons Are Here

Today proved not only are the monsoons here but the tv forecast last night was correct ... it was going to rain today and it was going to rain hard, still might as I write this. She said we are a little over 2" below what we normally have this time of year but rain is in the forecast for the next 7 days. Between these first two photos, one was taken yesterday afternoon and one this afternoon before I sat down to write this. Those winds and rain have lowered the temps to the 70's so the ac was turned off and the windows were open all day while I read a book.

Walter shows no signs of being afraid of thunder or the hard rain. Stella still gets a little restless if the thunder is really loud but overall she has really improved with the storm anxiety she came with five years ago. Nothing bothers Heidi and she will sleep through most thunderstorms.

The thunder was rolling yesterday afternoon as we were out on the patio. They didn't know whether to go out into the yard or stay under cover. They ended up picking their own spots on the patio and staying there. The wind was cool and fairly strong. Do you need to wear a mask if you are out and it's raining? I'm not sure if that is a serious question or not ... or a joke. I just received word or a link that my previous home state of Indiana is making it a statewide mandatory to wear a mask.

Not until July 27th ... why not immediately or at least as soon as tomorrow morning. Some people here in Arizona are waiting for our governor to make the same decision but I must admit, it's a pretty fierce issue on that. Many feel you can't make them wear a mask and they are not doing it. If the cases are low in their area if any at all ... do they need to?

Stella is walking less and less and when we do walk early in the morning she has started to cut through a parking lot instead of walking to the end and around the vet building, making the walk shorter. Is it her hips or is it too hot even when it's early enough that the temperature is in the low 70's. I might have to buy my first harness for Walter if he starts walking with us because he is just too strong for a dog collar. I doubt he can walk the same distance as Stella and I walk.

This is him yesterday hearing the loud rolling thunder.

We've been lazy lately. Haven't done much but stay at home, read books, check the internet, a siesta here and there and nothing much more than that. Major League Baseball starts tomorrow so I'll tune into the two games on tv but I am not sure how interested I will be. So far I have not had enough interest to  watch the exhibition games they have shown on tv. It's weird watching games with no people in the stands and fake fan noise.

Walter was almost asleep, when he heard something that I did not even hear.

This is normal procedure when one of them finishes drinking water. Both are sloppy drinkers and from Stella's hanging drools or Walters soaked chin, they each have plenty to clean off the other.

Walter stood there and looked around the corner for his doberman friend next door but he didn't show up today. That is a true look of disappointing I see.

Just like that he walked back into the computer room and went to sleep for his mid-morning nap.

He hasn't figured out this "rain stuff" yet but today he thought it tasted pretty good after his first swig of rain water that settled on the patio. Luckily, unlike Stella, he walked AROUND the puddle and not THROUGH the puddle.

Heidi slept through all the thunder and all the hard rain. A cool breeze through that southern bedroom window is the perfect place to sleep.

A book a friend recommended caught my interest after it arrived from Amazon ... I couldn't put it down and finished it today around 3:30pm.

Below are some photos I pulled out of the "Favorites" file

Stella - October 2018

Winston - November 2015

Sadie and Stella - January 2018

Heidi - October 2019

It could be "movie night" tonight, since I have a few ideas which ones to pull off the shelf. It's pretty slow in the "Wild West" lately.

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".

Hounds Have A Spa Day

Stella was all set for another night of 'on call nurse' but within minutes decided that I was okay and decided to sleep instead. I am going to stop giving every day updates about my rehab since the first two weeks are over and it's another 4 weeks before my next appointment. There is not going to be a lot of different news until then. Yet, for the first time in a long time I had 6.5 hours of solid sleep last night, all because I could sleep on my side instead of my back. The hounds slept through the night until 1:43am ....

How do I know the exact time? The clap of thunder was so close and loud when I woke up from the sound I swear I was 3 feet in the air (joke). I had no doubt that lightning had struck the house or somewhere extremely close. Within that minute I hear what I think is a bloodhound trotting down the hallway on the tile floor toward the bedroom. It was Stella, who was sleeping in the computer room when I went to bed. Once she saw things were okay she laid beside Heidi's bed and slept the rest of the morning.

A little after 6am the winds were whipping from the SE and it was a cold 52°. I was wide awake at 4am while the hounds slept until 7am. It was going to be a big day for us today. I was going to get a lot of walking done inside the house without the walker and the hounds were going to be picked up by Sierra Dog Grooming at 10am so they could have a spa day.

I planned on alternating between the walker and my trekking pole inside the house but once that my neighbor saw that he said "wait a second, I'll be right back" ... a few minutes later he handed me a metal adjustable cane to use. With the curved handle I found it much easier to walk compared to the flat top of the trekking pole. By noon I had over 5,000 steps, almost twice as much as my biggest day.

Remember the doctor told me to walk as much as I wanted as long as I did not feel fatigue in my right leg or hip.

Kelly arrived right on time with a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I told her all about Stella and Heidi and like everyone else that has met the hounds, she loved them. Once she put my leashes on each hound Heidi started walking to the car while Stella wasn't so sure. Was she being given away again?

Heidi jumped up in the back seat like it was her car and with Stella's hips Kelly was able to lift her just enough to get her in the back floorboard where Stella stepped up on the backseat. Each hound was then buckled into their doggie seatbelts. I was going to be houndless for about 5.5 hours, for the first time since September 2018.

Right after they left I had my groceries delivered by Fry's Market and once again they pulled 34 items from my online shopping list and didn't make a mistake. That service is well worth the $9.95 service fee plus a tip.

I called the doctor's office to confirm that I could take a real shower. I had forgot to ask him yesterday during my appointment but assumed I could since he said the incision had healed very good and he took the surgical tape off. I had no problems losing balance or feeling dizzy. It is a walk in shower not one in a tub. It felt great to feel really clean again. With everything I  had done in the morning it was time for some rest, and a possible siesta.

An hour later I was vacuuming the house and then I put every jacket I brought with me in the washer to prepare for our winter. I can pull the jackets or any kind of laundry out of the dryer with the grabber.

So by the end of the day I was going to have a clean house, a clean me and two clean hounds !!!

Around 3:45pm the Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up in front of the house. Luckily it wasn't raining so I grabbed my cane and headed outside to grab Heidi's leash while Kelly got Stella out of the backseat. Within a few minutes Heidi knew where she was and trotted away as I let go of her leash ... right into the living room.

Once Kelly was at the side walk I told her to let go of the leash and Stella would run to the house, which she did. Both hounds were soft and shining with an added Halloween scarf around their necks. Heidi's nails looked shorter than I had ever seen them. Stella's were still short from her vet visit a few weeks ago.

Kelly took her time and explained everything she did for Heidi and Stella. She thinks that Heidi might be starting to have an ear infection. Both hounds were happy to be home, wagging their tails and checking to see if I had any treats for them. I asked how they were in the kennel and she said the both of them were the best dogs they had ever worked with. They stayed in the same kennel after they were cleaned.

Both liked getting a bath and both didn't mind getting their nails cut. She said that Stella loved having her ears cleaned and Heidi didn't mind it either.

I will definitely be using their service again, only next time I should be able to drive them to their facility myself. They say don't bath a hound as often as other dogs because it takes the natural oil away but I usually try to bath them when they start smelling like a hound.

There was some other surprising news this morning, adding another thing I can do.

My hound sitter/feeder MJ The Pet Nanny sent me a text this morning that she was going to be late due to an emergency with a client that has five cats. After that she had to take time to feed horses of two clients. Like she told me last week, horses are different than dogs when they are hungry ... they don't whine or bark, they kick down gates and fences so she had to feed them before she stopped by to feel Heidi and Stella.

It was getting pretty late, past Stella's breakfast time so I looked at the situation and grabbed an empty dog dish with "the grabber" ... no problem sitting it on the floor and picking it up to clean after their meal. Would I be able to bend over to dip the kibble out of the container into their dishes without breaking the doctor's 90° rule?

To make sure I leaned over on my good left leg while keeping the bad right legs off the ground  ... no problem. While the hounds were eating I had the neighbor watch me and confirm I was not breaking the 90° rule when bending over to get the kibble out of the storage container.

I had to try another thing. I grabbed the poop bag and headed outside. I like picking it up as soon as possible and knew I'd be doing this once I moved to Arizona. Stella would  no longer have that 7 acre field she like to crap in.

So once again I leaned over with my bad foot/leg off the ground and was able to pick up what I needed to without bending more than 90°. I was close to feeding the hounds again and cleaning up after them. Since I have been sitting things I need up waist level or higher around the house so I can reach them, I decided I needed to sit the kibble container on something a couple of feet tall so I would barely have to bend over to get the kibble out.

I had the perfect solution. I have a hard fiberglass case that I stored camping stuff in that was just he right height. I had my neighbor bring that in from the garage and it worked out perfect. MJ was giving me a discounted price for coming twice per day since I was here and could let the hounds out during the day and later at night. She loves Heidi and Stella too but she has a lot of animals to take care of besides all of the ones she owns.  I will also call her when I need her in the future to take care of Heidi and Stella.

So the hounds are shiny, clean and sleeping. I am clean and can do the majority of my walking with a cane and sometimes with only my two feet. Once again I feel stronger than yesterday, still following the rules for making turns and using the walker as an alternative. It's been raining again so I expect another good night of sleep and we start all over tomorrow.

Comment or email me if you have any questions about hip replacement surgery or rehab.

It's a rough day spending all of it at the doggie spa ....

It's cold and rainy here in the Wild West.

Great News At The Doctor Appointment

We have not had our typical monsoon this year so it tried to make up for it starting last night around 3am. By the time we got up at 5am it was in full steam ahead. My phone set off an alarm last night while sleeping for a tornado warning in Wilcox NE of us by 50-60 miles. So, we couldn't find the mountains this morning in my viewfinder. I knew I would be wearing shoes and a rain jacket to my doctor's followup appointing at 10:45am.

I had a good night of sleep but I noticed for the 2nd day in a row I woke up fining that big foam piece they gave me at the hospital to sleep with between my legs, had been kicked to the floor in my sleep. Was that a sign I no longer needed to use it? I'd find out the answer to that at my appointment.

I was "camping showered", shaved and ready to go by 8am. My neighbor was going to pick me up at 9am but since he was ready to start early, we left at 8:45am ... in the rain.

I had to stop at the post office outgoing mailbox and I needed to go to the City Dept to drop off a signed form and void check so they could take my trash and sewer payment out of my checking account automatically. They still do it the "old fashion" way instead of letting me set all of that up online. They were the last company I set up automatic payment. That will be convenient if I am ever hospitalized again ... income and all utility, tv/internet, water, trash, sewer are all paid automatically.

The more we drove around town the harder it rained. The city system of concrete washes were full of high speed water and one of the main roads out of town was having flash flooding. Twitter is great for getting those kind of emergency weather announcements.

The surprise of the morning before I left was being able to fit my swollen foot into my shoe without bending over. I tried both shoes at first with no shoe strings, pulled them out at the hospital the day I left. Without raising my right leg I put the big toe inside the tongue of the shoe, grabbed that long shoe horn they gave me at the hospital and shoved my foot into the shoe with ease ... a shocker.

I thought since my foot fit inside the shoe so easy, it looked like it would if I put the shoe laces back in the shoe ... so I repeated the process and got my foot in the shoe. Now ... how to tie it? Left foot was no problem since I could raise that foot up to my chair seat. I had to be careful with the right. No twisting, couldn't raise it as high as the left.

So I broke a rule for a few seconds. I bent over more than 90° while sitting in my chair and tied that shoe as fast as possible. I never felt any pain and took my time bending over to see if I felt any kind of muscle pull in my right hip ... none.

After adding the rain jacket over my t-shirt I was ready to hit the road.

I had time to stop in at the hospital to get a copy of all my records, x-rays included, for my two day stay at the hospital. I'll get them in certified mail this week because I did not want to have Gerry take me back tomorrow just to get them.

Luckily, like me, he likes to get to appointments early. I finished all of my errands so we decided sitting in the lobby was the best thing to do as the rain continued and was non-stop hard. He brought his golf umbrella and refused to let me walk anywhere alone even with my walker.

He is the type of guy that knows everyone in town, including the receptionist. He has had some past visits to this same facility. Of course there was a 'stack' of paperwork to fill out and by the time I did that, they called me name for some new x-rays.

During the time I filled out my paperwork I found something disappointing with my Apple Watch that was connected because my phone was right there. When I went into the watch to get some contact phone numbers I could pull up the information okay BUT it showed everything but their phone number !!!! That was the one reason I wanted to buy a new watch because last January I did NOT buy one with "cellular" model to save money.

With that performance I was very hesitant in upgrading my Apple Watch. I still am as I write this post.

I received a bill this morning for the ambulance run. It was 7.2 miles from my bike wreck location to the hospital. That only cost me $114.50 But something called "BLS Emergent" cost me $1,146.38 and only $31.40 for the supplies. I was pretty happy to see the total bill was less than $1,300 which my insurance will pay.

I cannot express in words how good I feel today. Yes the hip and leg feels better than yesterday and if I didn't see my walker nearby right now I would forget that I was hurt ... it feels that normal. Only 16 days after the hip was replaced.

So ... what did the doctor say???

He watched me walk with the walker and said I looked fantastic. My incision was healed and he took off the surgical tape. After asking questions about my condition the past two weeks he told me the exercises I had been doing were not needed at this time. ALL HE WANTED ME TO DO WAS ... walk.

He gave me permission to walk inside my house without the walker but to have furniture, a table or a kitchen counter nearby in case the leg fatigues and I could catch myself. He gave me permission to walk as far as I wanted outside or until I felt the leg fatigue with the walker. So now when it's sunny in a day or two I can join those morning walks again.

Can I take Stella .... not at this time ... I cannot take any chances that a 1 in a million event would happen and make me fall.

He was really happy with my condition and my walking. I am to return for a checkup in 4 weeks, which would be the magic number of 6 weeks, which seems to be a pretty consistent amount of time of rehab to get by to "normal LIGHT" activities, possible driving and possibly walking Stella.

He did say that he understand due to my mental make up and past bicycling that I might be tempted to do more, thinking more is better like any old ex-athlete would think but in this case it is not ... walk ... heal and then walk some more.

He did say that he sewed some muscle back together that was torn in the bike wreck plus the operation for the hip replacement but that my situation was different than others because of the trauma of the wreck that caused the surgery.

I can follow those orders pretty easy and I know now that even though it does not feel like much ... I am making the progress I need to make following his schedule.

We returned home in the rain ... the hardest of all.

I let the hounds out to take a break, drank a large glass of ice water and decided to take a nap to check out how nice it would be to be able to sleep on my side again instead of my back for the first time in two weeks.

As I sat down on the edge of the bed, Heidi trotted to her bed in the corner and Stella walked to the opposite side of the room to sleep between the bed and wall. I ended up having my best sleep in two weeks by sleeping on my side with a pillow between my legs and slept longer in one period than I had in two weeks. That's a major change.

It was cold and rainy but was about to take a break until in the middle of tomorrow morning when it will start raining again tomorrow morning. I guess it plans to make up for all the days it was suppose to rain but did not the past three weeks.

With all the rain, the hounds didn't do much more than this, pictured below.

I really feel good after this doctor visit and the way I feel physically. Funny that he wants to see me again at the 6 week mark and that is when I had marked on my calendar that I MIGHT be able to drive again and I MIGHT be able to do some stuff around the house, like feed the hounds and bend over to pet Heidi.  I still have to follow the 90° limit when bending for these next 4 weeks though.

As far as the new hip popping out of place, without asking him, he told me that was a 2%-3% chance of happening within the first two weeks. So things look good there but I was still going to have to remain cautious of my movements, turning and NO twisting.

It may have been raining all day but with this news it was one of my best days in the Wild West.