No Leaf Left Behind

With a full day of rain on Wednesday the plan was to let the leaves that had fallen to dry out until Friday when the whole yard would be raked a final time. The rain that stared in the middle of the night on Wednesday morning, took most of the remaining leaves from the trees near the yard. So as we started our day out with our normal walk, there was nothing planned but a few household tasks.

It was still quite wet early morning and cold. I decided to do the walk with the bloodhounds before coffee was even made. I needed to make a quick trip to Bloomington to return the mop I had bought because I found the corrected refills for my older mop on Amazon late last night. I could drink my coffee on the way there.  Both of them were full of energy this morning. They took that first turn at full speed just like a race horse.

This gives you some idea of what the rain and wind did to the remaining leaves that were on the trees  Monday.

With today and Friday have fairly high temps in the afternoon I was pretty sure I could finished the Leaf Project for 2017. Then when the Z4 parts arrive next week I can jump right into that job before the month of December gets here and the temperature drop to where that repair work would be quite uncomfortable.

Sadie spent a lot of the walk this morning looking back to see if I was going to keep up with them or not. Their morning walk pace was much faster than normal. I was hoping they were not going to attempt to escape toward the north woods, I wasn't in the mood to do any jogging ... at any speed.

Along the back edge of the field is always filled with strong scents of something. Probably deer.

While Sadie and I were lagging behind this morning, Stella took off like she was out on her own solo walk. She even chose the path we were to follow.

During the time we had lunch nothing had changed with the plans. I had no intentions of raking leaves today. I wanted to do some house cleaning, cook some meals in advance and possibly a load of laundry. So with the dishes hand washed and set up to dry, Sadie thought it was the right time to take the early afternoon walk. She did an inspection of the backyard before we got started and noted all of the leaves that had fallen since Tuesday.

I could see that once those leaves dried out today it wouldn't be much of a job to rake the last of them from the backyard, the north side yard and for the first time of the year, the front yard.

With a 15° bump in temperature it was the perfect weather to take a way. The sun was out but wasn't hot and the interesting thing was ... I couldn't feel any kind of wind, nada, zip.

If you look closely at the next picture you will see with Sadie stretched out from running her ears are in a position I have never seen them before. Not only have the flipped upward but have curled back forward at the same time. Whereas Stella's ears in the above photo is just the normal flapping up and down while she runs.

Sadie had definitely locked into something and was moving non stop with her nose to the ground.

That is until she heard something squealing. I heard it too and like her I could not tell where it was coming from nor what it was.

Stella in the meantime had figured out that Sadie and I had left her behind. She sprinted from the first turn all the way up to the ATV path. I thought she might follow Sadies earlier path but Stella really likes taking that ATV path back to our final turn. She will take that path almost every afternoon walk, but not in the morning.

You would think that she could tell that Sadie and I are just to the right of her but she is acting and running as if she doesn't know where we are, like we really have left her behind.

Sadie decides to start home, with her nose and ears still active.

Stella is taking the short cut to meet Sadie ... as all three of us hustled our way back home.

This is what we are looking at to rake to complete Phase 2 of the leaf project. The longer I walked and felt no wind I kept thinking it was the perfect time to rake the leaves. I was sure I could get the backyard and side yard finished, then do the front yard tomorrow. My house cleaning was moved to Friday afternoon once Phase 3 of the leaf project is completed.

I know that is not enough leaves to worry about in most peoples eyes. But it's my DNA ... I have to have a clean lawn before the winter starts dropping snow. It's just like I cannot mow just part of the yard in the Summer. I have to mow all of it wether some parts of the lawn need it or not.

I prefer the yard to look like this. Raking also gets the dead grass or weeds out of the yard.

It was time to try the new battery operated toy out on the driveway, which was covered in leaves. By the time I decided to take a picture of it I had already blown the leaves from the top of the driveway and was starting toward the bottom of the hill.

It is not as powerful as my electric leaf blowers, nor is it as loud. It works well enough, it's extremely light and didn't take a lot of time to clean off the driveway. I think it will do fine for what I want it for. I moved all the driveway leaves along the fence. Tomorrow after my two 20v batteries recharge I will move those leaves up and over the spaces in the fence to where they will stay on the bank until next spring for the annual bank fire.

The total leaf job took less than 2 hours. Yet I could feel how good of a workout I got just with the normal movement of raking. Start time for the final leaf raking project will depend on wind direction and air temperature Friday morning.

Now that I have recovered a little from more yard work, I'll get that load of laundry finished before the NFL game or college basketball games tonight on tv.

The big surprise of the day ... Sadie was sitting next to my desk chair this afternoon. She ever does that when there isn't any food around. So I knew she was trying to tell me something was wrong. She had plenty of clean cold water. She had been fed and walked twice, so it was strange as she sat as close to my chair as possible.

I took a look at her closer and started petting her and sure enough ... I felt a tick, then saw another one that had attached near her ear. Those were the only two ticks I found. Once I removed them, she was hopping around acting happy as if we were going out for a walk.

It was another productive day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Still Get Two Walks Around A Thunderstorm

Stella decided to protest this morning when I caught her veering off in the direction of the neighbor's field. When I yelled her name, she stopped walking and stared at me. When I said "over here", words that she has been responding to very well these past few weeks ... she sat down and wouldn't move.

You may have noticed my front page to the blog has changed a little. Instead of one page with the latest post and 18-27 pictures all included ... I have manually added a page break. Then I changed my settings back to 7 posts per page.

I like the look of it and I am getting favorable feedback from a few readers that not only like the format but also tell me my blog loads faster and uses less data. 

I really think I will stay with this new format. I just wish there was a different way to add the page break to pasts post all at once instead of one at a time. With that process I have done 21 posts or 3 pages worth and may not do any more previous posts. The current or future posts will slowly push the older format further back in the blog.

I also think with the new format, it will be easier to see when I make more than one post per day. Sometimes there are more pictures in a day that can fit on one post or more topics floating in my head than can fit in one post. So be sure to check for multiple posts per day sometimes.

For some reason this morning I was more anxious to get the morning walk started than even Sadie. I had to asked both of them if they wanted to go for a walk, instead of the norm of Sadie standing and staring at me.

What a change it is to start your morning walk with temperatures in the mid 70's instead of the high 20's. Yes, I know that was months ago but I always remember those freezing walks. I am not a fan of cold weather.

Stella decided to take it slower than normal this morning. I did not bring the 6' leash and in fact it is no longer thought about when we start to go outside. Like I said yesterday, most of the time she has been walking with us instead of her making trips to the neighbor's woods.

Again, Sadie was always too close for pictures. I think I found out why as we made the final turn home.

Parts of the field are growing by the hour it seems, while other parts have grass that is no taller than an inch high. I forget that it's only April and we will still have plenty of time before the hay gets tall enough to where the hounds are hard to see.

When I turned around and didn't see Stella, I assumed that she had gone past her boundary and was either heading down into the gully or close to the edge of the bank. I couldn't see her anywhere until I downloaded the picture, made it larger. Then I could barely see some of that bloodhound red hair dead center in the picture.

I was happy to see when I called her name, she came trotting out of the thick brush.

As we made the final turn home, I noticed a tick on top of her hair on her neck. Then after closer inspection found one digging into her ear. Last April was so much worse for ticks that I had a counter up in the left corner of the blog with a current count of ticks pulled off the hounds and me.

If they were on one hound, Sadie probably had one too. She always acts different when she has multiple ticks on her. I think that is why she kept walking so close to me this morning that I could take pictures of her.

I don't know how I missed these ticks on her ears, but two of them on the outside of her ears had been there long enough to be a little full. The two inside her ears had not even dug in yet. When we got back home and I could use my "tick off" tool, I found 3 ticks on one spot outside of her ear.

She was more than happy after I pulled them off.

I decided to sneak out to Walmart before the hounds started howling for lunch. The rain/storms were not due until around 2pm and I wanted to make sure I was home when they happened so Stella had zero chances of freaking out. She has not made any damages while I have been gone in a little over 4 months !!!!

I made it back in plenty of time. The sun was out and I drove the Z4 over with with the top down. The more west I went the darker the clouds were getting. I was wondering if I was going to make it to the parking lot so I could put the top back up before it rained. I was only in the store long enough to make an exchange but when I came outside it had poured rain.

The further east I went the sun came back out and based on what I was seeing on the roads, it had not rained at all. Radar showed spots of storms in the Midwest. I just happened to hit one.

It was a different story at 1:30pm. The winds picked up, the smell of rain filled the air and Stella moved her sleeping spot over next to the big kitchen island to sleep under cover on the inboard side away from the windows. That seems to be a consistent storm spot for her.

The rain was hard, it came down sideways and was gone within 15 minutes. Cold air followed it and it was cold enough to put on a sweatshirt for a short period of time. It still looked like it was possible for a fairly dry late afternoon walk ... in the meantime I wasted my afternoon away playing Mahjong and enjoying my view from the kitchen table.

With every container of cottage cheese or yogurt, the hounds get to lick out what is left of the container and Sadie always gets the last chance. Sometimes she has to put the container in the prime spot to get the very last drop of cottage cheese.

By late afternoon the sunshine was out and it felt hot outside. The backyard grass didn't see that wet so we took off for our 2nd walk of the day. Sadie took off from the start with all of that added protein she finished an hour earlier.

Stella did many stops to either investigate or to scratch. I am not sure there is anything to scratch and that it might be a habit. I think the habit option might be real because she will stop in the exact same places in the walk to scratch.

She was moving all over the field this afternoon and at no time did I have to give her a verbal command to follow us, catch up with us or move our direction.

She slow trotted into the backyard, stepped on my foot as she ran past me and met me at the door wanting back inside. LOL ... she doesn't realize just how heavy that one foot of hers feels when being stepped on.

I can't see much more happening tonight but a little Cincinnati Reds baseball on FoxSports Ohio/Cin and more cold ice tea. We've had a good thunderstorm, two hound walks, lunches and a short trip to WallyWorld ... quite a day.

Retirement is good here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Sadie's Back To Normal

If I am writing this post now, it's pretty obvious the hounds and I have not hit the road yet to hunt down some tick prevention weapons as planned. The ticks are the worse I've ever seen in the 19 years I've lived here next to this field.

Sadie is just a firm stool away from being back to normal. Everything else was a was a good for her this morning. Great appetite, she was doing her normal 'hopping' in excitement before being fed ... but she did take her time for the 2nd day in a row when eating. I'll have to check the inside of her mouth and see if there is something there that is the cause for her decreased eating speed.

Heidi had 3 doses of the Wounded Warrior Ointment yesterday but I left it off right before she when to bed last night. She curls up when she sleeps and all of that irritated skin is not exposed to the air. First thing this morning her skin looked good, natural color, no redness, no chewed spots. Two hours later, a couple of chewed spots and all of her skin that she hides when sleeping, was red and irritated.

Consequently she turned down the offer to go on a walk this morning, even with my suggested leash tug. When the bloodhounds didn't move away from the house when we went outside I knew they were letting me know it was time for the walk, no matter how wet the field was. It was wet. With Sadie's stare down, I knew she was feeling good again.

Both of them went into their immediate tracking mode. I could tell by the way Sadie had her tail curled upward and her head buried in the ground while she walked that she was feeling normal again. Oh, she did wake me up to go outside at 3:30am again, but she was back in 5 minutes.

Stella found something so interesting during the first part of the walk that Sadie and I had made the first right turn before Stella even showed up. I turned around at the right time to catch her running to catch up with us.

The focus of the walk for both of them this morning was tracking scents, more than running. That is Stella with her head buried in the gully. Then Sadie found something that led her in all kinds of different directions. It was good to see her back to her normal self.

They both made it back home safe and sound, with little excitement but a walk they always enjoy. Now we are off for some generic vet recommended tablets for Sadie's diarrhea and some tick prevention.

Before making the 25 mile trip to PetSmart for the Seresto Collars, I called the 3 local vets ... all the vets carry that collar and all are sold out of that collar. It must be good stuff. 2 of the 3 vets recommended I use NexGard.

Of coarse I had to see the differences for myself so that led me to the internet to read product labels, customer reviews, and where it's in stock. It took hours. After all of that I am still not sure which direction to go. About the time I chose, there pops up a negative review that makes me 2nd guess my decision.

Otherwise ... it's perfect weather in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.