Stella's Condition Update

It's been about 6 months since Stella started losing a lot of weight, getting down to 65 pounds in April. Since that time she has gained some weight but could gain more. Kelly commented on the public blog a few weeks ago that she thought Stella looked good. Stella's energy is normal. Her water intake and appetite have never changed ... they are normal.

All of her coat is course and has very little black hair mixed in like her tail. When I got her in August 2015 her coat looked like Sadie's in color and a soft texture. You can barely see that inside her lower legs there is a loss of hair. It's not mangey or raw but looks dark like some sort of skin infection.

She loves eating deer scat and spends more time doing that than anything else. I hate that habit. Recently I have had to tug her at the collar to pull her away from the scat. She does not resist me like she has in the past.

She doesn't run like she use to. She will trot but no full speed running.

I have thought of buying a different kind of high protein dog food just for her. It is sad to see how much she has changed since August 2015 or even this time last year, a year ago.

I will keep monitoring her health for any improvements and document them here.

Stella Didn't Want The Afternoon Walk

The day started out so bizarre a little after 5am, that I'll get to that later in the post. It ended a little 12 hours later with Stella not wanting to go on the afternoon walk as I was about a step away from the field and Sadie was hopping up and down with her "let's get going" energy.


We waited this morning for the storms to pass through before taking the first walk of the day. When it comes to getting  your shoes and legs soaked walking in the early morning field, it doesn't matter if it's from heavy morning dew or what the strong thunderstorms left ... it's still wet. Stella actually trotted from the carport to the field and then right past me. I'd never see her with that much early morning energy in quite a while.

These bright orange flowers will not last long. I expect as soon as the field dries out with the 4 straight days of sunshine we plan on getting, they will cut the field and start baling it by next weekend.

This afternoon was a different story for her though. Around 5pm Stella, Sadie and I headed outside for the final walk of the day. It had just rained but nothing was left on the weather radar that showed we were in danger of getting rained on. Stella got no further than the six red blocks at the corner of the house known as "Winston's Patio", where she stood and stared at Sadie and I like we were crazy.

These few pictures are all from this mornings walk.

I kept asking her "don't you want to go on a walk", she stood and stared as if to ask "can't you figure it out ...no". Finally when I asked her if she wanted to go back inside with Heidi, without any hesitation she turned and headed for the door.

She did not want to go on the walk.

She did something similar last week for an afternoon walk, but then after getting back inside she walked to the door wanting outside just as soon as she was inside ... then walked slower than she normally does.

I take each of these instances as signs that something is not good with her. Her days and nights are normal, no signs or sounds of pain ... but she would never turn down the chance to take a walk. Thinking back to past hounds I've had that ended up sick, turning down a walk was their sign they were sick.

I want to thank everyone for their comments and emails. I decided earlier today it didn't matter what those 4-5 people do, I don't care ... they'll be ignored.

Now for the story of the day that is too bizarre, especially when it's 5:02am after checking my watch while wondering what is going on with me.

I'm woken up with flashing lights moving around the top of my bedroom, with shades of red. LSD is not involved. It's the same type of lights I see at night when the local police or state police pull someone over on the highway in front of the house with their lights flashing.

I figured they had pulled over someone on their way to work so I decided to get up and look out the kitchen window to see where the cop was in relation to the house and what part of the highway they sat. This is the first problem of my day ...

There is no cop on the highway and there are no flashing lights ... but there is a huge light show outside with loud thunder just as the winds picked up and the severe thunderstorm we were warned about had started ... with a house full of open windows.

No need to stop reading yet, that isn't even the highlight of this story.

I return to bed and try to sleep for the next hour. So far my Garmin is telling me I've slept a little over 6 hours and zero of it has been deeper than a 'light' sleep plus I got up earlier and my total time of wandering around the house has been 23 minutes.

So I decided to start the day a little early. I get out of bed and make my morning coffee while all three hounds sleep through thunder and lightning. I can take advantage of 2 hours of internet data that is in that extra free 50Gb pot. It takes a lot of data to upload all of my photos from the previous day into Google Photo and Flickr, for online backups.

So to cut this thrilling story short, I'll get to the point. I have two cups of coffee (normal), take the hounds out for their morning walk (normal), then sat down about 9am to log in my meals into the app on my iPhone that is tracking what I eat with hopes of losing weight faster than I have been.

Bizarre #1 -- I go to "yesterday", enter the meals I didn't log in the night prior. When I go to what I think should be Saturday ... the app says it's June 17th ... which was on Friday. I even tried it a couple of different times just in case there was not a mistake with the synchronization between iPhone and watch.

Bizarre #2 -- I noticed the screen that breaks down my sleep from the previous night is on the wrong date ... it shows June 18. That can't be right I think to myself because it's the 19th and Sadie's birthday. I even go into the edit portion of the page and change my wake up time to 6:02am because the screen is showing 6:58am but I did that the day before.

After making the change I realize I was on yesterday's screen and it was right to begin with ... but why is it showing today as the 18th.

With the flashing lights to wake me up, the normal ration of caffeine and now this ... I am willing to let things go as is and forget about it. I am positive the Garmin and the iPhone did not finish it's synchronization correctly and it will fix itself later.

Then the the world came crashing down on me ... I couldn't believe it ... was I in the Twilight Zone?

As I sat down at the computer I glance up to the right hand corner where my computer says "Sun 9:38am" .... SUNDAY ????? Sunday???

You're right, for the short 3 hours I had been up I thought it was Monday morning, was sure of it, even though I thought the traffic pattern on the highway was a lot different than a normal work day.

Needless to say, I have spent today just a few steps off the pace. It's good that the hounds can't read a calendar.

To those I made famous yesterday ... blogging will continue here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Cooler Temps Gets Us Outside

I remember the first Spring that I was living here a lady abruptly pulled her car off the highway into my yard by the mailbox, jumped out and was frantic as she ran toward me. I had no idea what was going on as I was in the process of removing gravel down by the trees in front plus digging up old dead flower bed to replant grass. It was these purple flowers she was excited about ... they were all over the field.

She called them by name and wondered if it would be okay if she came back and dug them up to replant at her house. At the time I had not been here long enough to even know who owned the field in back and side of my house. Permission granted.

Sadie started her morning walk off with some very focused effort. I was more concerned with the hounds wandering over to supervise the early start of the tree trimming job than her interest in the woods.

Stella was on her own path and pace just to the right of my path, walking along the edge of the woods and field just in case Sadie had missed anything.

She wagged her tail and kinda groaned/barked this morning when I asked her if she wanted to go on a walk. Sadie was at my desk at 7:55am asking to go. With my 'free' data period over in a few minutes we have been walking in the mornings a little after 8am.

Over all Stella showed she had a little extra energy this morning. With a cool breeze it was nice and confirmed what the weatherman said last night, today was going to be about 12° cooler than Monday ... high 70's.

Stella got a little trotting in just as far to catch up to Sadie and I on the return path home.

Where Sadie will finish her high speed sprints by running by me as close as possible or running into my knee at times ... Stella was always slow up into a walk right before she reaches me.

I thought this picture was a good representative of just how nice the days have been lately here in 'the tropics".

With the sound chainsaws and a machine that turned large tree limbs into mulch shooting into the back of a larger truck, Sadie was more than curious about what was going on in 'her' neighborhood. I had to remind her to "stay here" while she watched the man work high in the tree.

I guess the third tree will either be coming down or trimmed back to the state of ugliness. I am not an expert in tree trimming but to me they are cutting them back too much. When I had my trees trimmed about 10-12 years ago, they left plenty of limbs with the leaves on them.

When I asked them about trimming my tall Sycamore tree next to the driveway they told me they could go up 85' and I told them they needed about 40 more feet to trim the top of my tree. I have a pretty good estimate to top and trim two Sycamore trees next to my driveway. He also gave me a price for cutting two of them down.

You can barely see the bright orange shirt in the middle of the tree cutting out a lot of it. It was bare by the time we poured out lunch time kibble for the hounds.

While I decided to mow the front yard an two inches lower to match the backyard, the tree crew were loading up their equipment. That great green Maple tree looked as I expected it would. Stella approves the lower cut but I am not so sure.

I guess if you are going to trim trees that last for a while there is no choice but to have them look like this after they are trimmed. Is the normal for trimmed Maple trees?

Yesterday when it was near lunch time the temps were around 88°. Today that was a totally different story so we took a hound walk right after their lunch. Wunderground was showing 73° and WeatherBug 69°, so I split the difference.

Stella was up to her old tricks of trying to sneak off into the woods. She had about half of her body inside that area but stopped when I yelled 'No' and hopped out like nothing was going on.

I could not believe how cool the breeze was at lunch. It was strong and felt great since I had just finished mowing the front yard about 30 minutes prior. I like the shorter cut but the grass is not as green. Like everything I guess, there's a trade off involved. Jon Katz on his blog today stated they had decided their yard experiment was over and they were going to let the other half of their front yard to grow like field.

Stella stayed pretty near Sadie on this walk for a change.

I didn't realize how many flowers there were until I downloaded this picture. That is Sadie with her nose to the ground. I have only seen a couple of bees so far this summer.

Stella was ready to call it quits and get started on our afternoon siesta that seems to be an everyday occurrence lately.

After a few hours of rest, I grabbed tall glass of ice tea and headed outside. Fantastic weather. Sadie slowly snuck off into the field, checking twice to see if I was watching her before she disappeared into the tall grass.

Is the grass too brown? Better taller and greener? Scott's Lawn and other online DIY sites tell me my type of grass in this area should be cut to 1-1/2" to 2". This is cut in that range. My front yard was 3" to 4" before I cut it today.

First glance to see if I am watching her.

Second glance to see if I am watching her but more hidden as if she is just walking in the yard.

A few minutes later Stella became curious and stepped out from under the shade.

She could smell where Sadie stepped into the field but continued to walk along the edge of the yard all the way to the opposite end.

With Sadie and Heidi wanting back inside I walked to the north edge of the yard and called for Sadie. I did not see her at all at first, then I saw her sprinting full speed on our return path to the yard. All my camera could catch was when she ran into the yard. She has been getting a lot of high speed running in these past few weeks on our walks, plus the one bird chase in the field.

Pretty amazing the best grass of the yard is over here in the shade section, where a few years ago this was all overgrown with wild thorny bushes, saplings, thick dense brush that was shoulder high.

What's best ... higher or lower ??

Heidi spent the same amount of time the rest of us did outside but was not interested at all in getting photographed. She hid in the front yard most of the time or at the door to go back inside. There is just a glimpse of the shorter cut front yard. As soon as she was inside, she was on one of her sleeping spots on the couch, Sadie was on her dog bed in the bedroom and Stella stretched out beside my desk chair.

With my activity today being two hound walks and mowing the yard, nothing else is planned. Sadie would probably go on a 3rd walk if I wanted but Stella is more interested in sleeping here at 5pm. So most likely it will be a few games of 2048, have some dinner and turn on the Reds game at 7pm.

It's fast paced today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella's Good News & A Snake Visitor

It was quite a day today and not the typical Monday. About the time I thought the day was over and the excitement gone, a certain visitor highlighted this typical hot summer day in 'the tropics'. Heidi let me know I still had painting to finish inside the carport.

All of us love hot weather when it gets here. Heidi likes it so much that she will dump tanks after lunch, sprint from the middle of the front yard to the driveway, then slowly inspect the driveway for any strange scent she can identify.

In the 6 years I've had her I have never seen her sprint up the drive nor even trot up the driveway but she arrives back at the door eventually. She looks very good for this time of year, when the pollen is out in full force for those with allergies.

The morning walk went fine, Stella was on her own and caused no problems, in fact she kept up with Sadie for most of the walk and then followed behind me the last 1/4 of the way. 

We were loading up the Mini Cooper for a trip to the vet. We were checking her weight since her last vet trip on April 21st and she was going to get a blood test to see if her organs are working properly and if her stats were good internally.

Her good news ... she has gained 5.4 pounds !!! The BEST news is that her blood work came back clean and everything is working as it should internally.

As we walked out to the car, just as I closed the door I realized I did not have my car keys with me, therefore I did not have my house key. I have not made a 2nd spare key to keep outside for times like these because that spare key that came with the new door knob is on my Z4 key ring.

I had locked us out of the house with no spare key. The car keys were inside.

The excitement didn't end there. After some clear thinking I was able to 'break into' my house without any damage. All the windows were closed due to the AC running, so they were not an option. But ... as I pulled out of the driveway onto the highway my warning light for the rear door came on.

I was certain I heard it latch, it did not look open from the outside and then I realized what I had done. I stopped as soon as I could in a parking lot to check it out. When the keyfob would not unlock the back door, or even click I knew the Mexican blanket I had put in for Stella to lay on was either under the door or in the latch. I found out at the vet, the blanket had moved over the latch when the door closed. Once I pulled it out, the rear door worked perfectly.

With the temps near 90°, all of us spent the afternoon inside enjoying the AC. It ice tea for me, water and naps for the hounds ... around 5:30pm Sadie was at my desk giving me her stare for "I want to go on a walk", even though it was 89°. Looking a few hours in the future it was going to only drop 2° so I thought we would give it a try.

All three of us walked right by, right over our late afternoon visitor ... a snake.

Sadie and Stella never stopped and headed straight into the field. For some reason I stopped to take a look what I just walked by and at first I thought it was a strange piece of wood that shows up out of nowhere. After a closer look I see that the snake is just as curious about who interrupted his nap.

It was 6" to the right of "Winston's Patio" red blocks. I figured that by the time we got back (hopefully) that the snake would leave and find another place to sun himself. That is the first snake I've seen in a lot of years around the house.

Both hounds didn't care about the snake and they didn't care about the temperature either ... they were leaving me behind on the walk.

Right after we got back from our morning walk around 9am, a truck pulling a trailer of equipment was parked on the side of the highway blocking my driveway. I thought they were having some mechanical problems but soon they were offloading their equipment.

I thought it was equipment that was used for ditch digging by the DOT. Maybe they would be digging a new drainage ditch in the field next to my property that would lead into my culvert.

I was wrong ... more trucks and more equipment were heading up the driveway of my neighbors house. Of course, I had to go over and check out what the plan was gong to be.

She told me the three beautiful soft Maple trees, transplanted from the 'homestead' when her husband's dad built the house in 1955, were being trimmed. She claimed they were tired of picking up all of the sticks that the storms would blow down and a couple of the trees had possible rotting tree limbs.

Not until I was on the hound walk did I see how ugly the trimming job turned out to be. When I walked over this morning, there were 3 full green maple trees just like the one pictured.

By the end of the day the middle tree had been cut completely down, while the one on the right was trimmed down to nothing. I realize it's a necessity at times but I always hate to see beautiful trees end up like this.

Still, Sadie was onto other and better things ... identifying scent.

Stella took the lead for most of the walk. She wasn't fast but persistent, almost as if it was too hot to walk and she couldn't wait to get back to the house.

Sadie was locked in with her nose to the ground and her tail wagging.

I was surprised that it did not feel as hot as the thermometer and my iPhone was showing. There was a slight breeze from the NE. It was nice and hot but not what I would call blazing hot ... there were no second thoughts about take the walk now instead of at 8pm.

What I would consider the halfway point, the hounds are feeling the effects of 89°. Their tongues hang out, their pace slows down and they stay near me on the path.

As we turned left for the final leg of the walk ... Stella stopped as always to scratch herself and then headed our way to catch up.

I am now feeding her 6 measured cups of dry kibble per day, split between breakfast and lunch. The vet was happy with the 5 pounds of weight gain and was encouraged by the clean blood work. I felt much better about her situation after seeing those two results.

Yes, I do think she would prefer to stay inside with the AC than walking in the afternoons. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow and just walk with Sadie in the afternoon.

Sadie finally saw some of the parked tree equipment next door and for a few seconds I thought she was going to take off in that direction to check it out a little closer.

With both hounds lagging behind so close to the end of the walk I was hoping they would keep themselves occupied so I could walk ahead and see if the snake was still there. If it was, I planned to pick him/her up with a rake and move him/her into the field.

I guess snakes would be something I might have to live with if I decided to stop mowing my yard and letting it look like the field. I'm not sure how it would look being that close to the highway amongst three other houses that mow their grass like a golf course fairway ... but it does interest me for some strange reason.

With the hounds still busy I hurried my pace to see if the snake was still there. I was happy to see he had left for a better place, wherever that was. I checked everywhere in the carport, behind the two trash cans, under the cars ... but the snake was gone and the hounds would not have any kind of confrontation on their return home.

With everything so green around here, this leaf stood out like a shining star. I always wonder if there is a message behind something like that when it happens, but that's just me.

I did not have to call the hounds to come in. As I walked back out into the yard Sadie realized that I wasn't around and started sprinting for the house. Stella looked up and trotted for a few steps behind her.

Sadie went straight to her early evening sleeping spot under the coffee table.

While Stella 'cruised' in and curled up behind my desk chair as I downloaded the photos from the Nikon, and put this post together.

For taking photos I like the late afternoon light much better than our 8am walks. I cut my yard last Friday but late Sunday I had an idea to cut it one blade adjustment lower. I didn't like what it did or looked so I left the front yard cut a little higher. I'd rather have it a little taller and greener than short and brown.

Turns out it did not matter that I bought my new iMac a couple of weeks ago. Apple came out with their annual announcement about new products and upgrades today. The only thing dealing with the iMac model is that they are making one for the professional user and businesses. So what I have is good for work here at home.

I can't picture another day as exciting as this one ... but I will focus on those house keys anytime I am driving somewhere. I'll also keep an eye out for our visitor in case he/she wants to come back and visit the hounds.

Beautiful weather here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.