Heidi Barking For Action

Here's Heidi in between her bouts of barking. Since I will never post a video, or a recording, you will just have to take my word for it. In the almost seven years I have had her I have found she barks for only two reasons ... it's time to eat or she is excited more than normal. Today she must have been excited about our return on our morning walk that was done four hours later than normal. I can explain later.

I could tell she was excited about today. Before I could even lift my camera into position she was already past the FJ. She never goes left but always to the right to relieve herself. So I was pretty sure she was going to join our morning walk at 11:30am. I can explain later.

As she strolled through the tall grass, even though it's been mowed every third day. I even raked that excess grass up the other day but once I had more on the mowing after that I decided I was not going to exert any more energy raking returning dead grass ... that will happen next fall in the 2018 Leaf Project. Yes, the field grew another 6" while we slept last night.

Okay, here's the reason for our late start to the day. Last night around 10:30pm I started watching a 4-star rated movie called Interstellar, filmed in 2014. I had never seen the movie so while the hounds were sleeping and I was wide awake after my three hour siesta in the afternoon, I decided to watch it ... not knowing it was going to take four hours with commercials. I thought about taping the rest of it so I could go to bed and then I could watch it later today ... but the movie was so good that I had to stay up for the end of the movie.

Sadie was hot after field mice?? Something was at ground level and she was hopping around faster than my camera could pick up ... why ???

Because Stella was taking off on her own walk at a faster pace than normal, while Heidi was inspecting the backyard for the perfect place to relieve herself. I had to keep an eye on Stella.

In less than 30 minutes after waking up, answering an email and eating a bowl of granola ... I had three hounds going three different directions ... this walk was was going to be hard and challenging. It's never a good sign seeing three hounds doing their own thing in three different directions ... ever!

I coaxed Heidi to return to the path off of the yard. I knew she would walk a little but based on what was taking place I was going to have to leave Heidi on her own and would not be able to linger back with her.  Why ???

Because Stella was moving out too far in front of us and picking her up pace. Sadie was nowhere close and I was still trying to comprehend starting my day four hours later than normal, maybe even four and a half hours later than normal.

I could tell immediately that Heidi didn't really want to walk the the half mile loop, she just wanted to check out the first 100' of the field and most likely would return home while Sadie, Stella and I continued on.

What is it that makes grass taste so good?

As Sadie and I were catching up with Stella before the first turn, Sadie had to make a quick dash to the left to hopefully get Stella back on the path but she was also in the middle of chasing small birds or mice in the field.

Those weren't deer tracks she was glued to ... something was trying to get away, running at ground level, so small that I saw nothing that could be leading Sadie on the chase.

So by this time I have Heidi out of sight way behind us, Stella was heading to my left and ignoring my calls to get back on the path. She had to be "temporarily" taken off her Freedom To Roam program, just for this walk. Sadie was pretty sure she heard me talking to myself out loud.

If you squint really hard you will see a little 'white' just off dead center of the picture ... that's Heidi enjoying her own exploration.

Don't be fooled by that photo. Stella did NOT come trotting over in our direction to join Sadie and I ... I had to walk over to her mumbling to myself, then leading her by her dog collar back to the path. She had no problem with that and actually trotted a little faster than I could lead her.

Sadie stops to check to see if we are really going on this walk or what is going on. Nothing has started smoothly on the half mile trek, yet she was fed breakfast at the normal time and lunch followed four hours later. She is ready to go just as soon as Stella and I are headed in the same direction.

Stella, as usual, cannot understand what all the concern is about so she reverts to her slower than slow pace just a little ways behind me and Sadie. With Heidi outside and in the field I knew it had to be below 80°, her threshold ... but with little humidity, the bugs, gnats and small mosquitoes were attacking me on my arms and legs ... I needed to get this walk over as soon as possible.

Yet we were not even at the halfway point. That still left plenty of time for the hounds to take their sweet time on this walk.

Once Sadie and Stella were finished checking out the back of the field, we make the turn for home and quickened the pace. Both of them walked the path right behind me, too close for camera range and we headed home. I kept Sadie moving by asking her "where's Heidi" ...

She took off running down the return path for the yard where Heidi had returned. Like always inside or outside, any time that Heidi returns inside or is there waiting for us, Sadie will always tap noses with her while on the run.

Stella and I were close to the yard and it certainly looked like Heidi was wanting to play a little bit. Whereas Winston would run or chase Sadie even with a big difference in size, Heidi has never done that with Sadie. I guess she found Sadie to be much bigger than the Greyhound she was living with when I rescued her.

With clean ears and no ticks inside them, it always feels good to a basset hound when they shake their heads hard enough to get some fresh air up inside the long ears. You can see that she is just starting the shaking process while Sadie thinks she is going to get to play a little.

Was Heidi barking because she was excited we had returned or because I left her behind??

Once she shook her head for the final time and then turned to sprint for the door, I decided she must have been barking because she wanted to go back inside where it was cool. Stella eventually showed up and she also trotted to the door to be let inside where it was cool. She was asleep behind my desk chair within minutes of walking inside.

You may have noticed a couple of slight changes in the blog post today. I wrote under the photo instead of on top of the photo as a description or the content that went with the photo. I also did not use small numbers if they were less than ten. A friend who had written a book, told me today that he found out from his editor that any number one through ten was to be spelled out and 11 or above could be typed as numbers.

I tried that here today but I cannot say that I am thrilled with that rule of the English language, so most likely I will revert back to breaking the rules on numbers and punctuation in the English language, starting with my next post.

Within two hours after starting our day, all of us were back on schedule. When it was 2pm it felt like 2pm ... so all is good. Once again it looks like rain but I am hoping it doesn't tonight since the Cubs are playing in Cincinnati. I will be back to my 'early to bed early to rise' routine starting tonight.

Even the shorter day is a good day in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heide Checks The Weather

The needle on the old thermometer may have been close to 40° but it didn't feel anything like that. Windchill was in the low 30's. Still, right after lunch Heidi thought she would give me her first pose with the new iPhone camera. She doesn't pose like this too often but she seemed happy doing it ... or maybe she was just cold?

While doing some laundry and cooking tonight's dinner, I continued to read more and play again about the new iPhone 8 Plus. This phone probably does more than I will ever get around to trying or using. I cannot say at this time I am happy with the photos that I zoomed at 10x but that might have to do more with my shaking hands than the camera itself.

Yes, it looks unstable as hell, about to fall over, but it doesn't move an inch in either direction. Years ago I had it straight as an arrow, planted in some solid concrete and ir would have lasted for decades. The the Indiana State Hwy Dept decided the highway needed to be dug out and new asphalt applied with new shoulders at every mailbox for mail carriers to use when delivering mail.

That meant they dug up my mail box and moved it to the current location, no concrete was used. Consequently after 10 years or so, I have a leaning mailbox. That is probably caused by the soil sinking, just to the right of it.

My idea of picking up sticks while the hounds were outside after lunch lasted all but 5 minutes. It was too cold with the wind blowing and I lost interest fast. Heidi lost hers to stay outside and beat me back to the door. She has been asleep under her blankets every sense.

After the laundry was put in the dryer and the stove looked like it wouldn't burn the house down while cooking dinner, we thought we'd give this new toy another chance on our afternoon walk. Sadie is always ready for a walk while Stella quietly agreed.

I've mentioned before that for the past 9 years and a  few months, Sadie hops up and down on two occasions every day of the year and year after year. Those two events are being fed kibble and going for walks. This is the best I can do catching her in that hopping up and down action.

It might look warm in that picture with the sunshine out but it's nowhere close to jacket weather nor t-shirt weather.

The phone does not have 'macro' capability but I wanted to see what it would do if I held it pretty close to the target of the photo.

Again, I did not do any editing to color, sharpness, definition etc ... but I did crop some of the photos.

I am down to one problem that might not have a solution yet. After the phone was all set up and fully operational, my Garmin VivoSmart 3 would not connect. That meant not only would it not download my activity, sleep hours and heart rate throughout the day to the phone but also to the other devices I have with that app.

I went to Apple Support and read. I went to Garmin Support and read about that model of watch and it seems connecting by bluetooth became a bigger problem than normal, after Apple did their iOS 11 update. I was one of the lucky ones when I was able to connect it to my 6s after that update. Garmin says they are working on a fix.

I forgot to mention this morning some of the other benefits I've seen in the short time of using this phone. My signal strength went from 3-4 bars to a solid 5 bars all the time with the same Verizon service. I had a call last night from a friend that was doing her walking for exercise while talking to me through her phone's mic ... the call was so strong and clear you would have thought she was in the same room ... much different that past calls.

I mentioned the A11 chip makes everything lightning fast and most of the time close to instantaneous. The battery life is so much better than the 6s I had. I've had it on since early this morning, have taken a lot of photos, surfed the internet, answered emails and I have used only 7% of the battery at 5:00pm.

My journal project is progressing okay. I am in the stage now of scanning old photos that I took during that trip and will upload them into my Pages document once the scanning is complete. I still like the idea of using a page on this blog because I like the formats of blogs more than I do documents. I am probably missing something in all the design options I would have keeping it in Apple Pages.

I thought the position of the clouds were interesting in this picture.  Once again, any blurriness is from my hands moving, not the camera.

It was about this spot right here that Sadie would do what Stella does ... ignore my calling of her name.

So I continued my walk home when she finally realized I was serious and wasn't going to stop. No zooming here, just trying to keep her in the center of the photos.

That gave her a workout for the day and to keep her in shape this winter.

Stella saws us walking past her so she caught up with Sadie and escorted me back to the house. On a day like today they both wanted to make sure I was around to let them back inside a warm house.

Another successful walk for the afternoon, the 2nd of the day and probably the last one due to me being a whiner when it comes to freezing weather. Cold weather makes me want to drink coffee in the late afternoon so I may pay tonight for the 12 oz of coffee I had this afternoon.

I guess if I can post one selfie I can do another. This was the very first picture I took with the new phone. I had just pulled into the parking space at Mother Bear's Pizza. I was honestly shocked at the quality of this photo and how real it looked.

On to more reading, researching plus scanning photos for the journal ... and a few games of Mahjong fit in between while I am on break.

How soon will the snow start flying here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana?