Stella Has Changed Routines

After Sadie was gone in September 2018 I always wondered if Stella wanted to walk in the field because she wanted to or because I wanted to. There were too many times I would have to practically beg her to join me on the morning and afternoon walks, causing me to wonder. She is always changing her routine but recently the change has been huge. This is her response 99.9% of the time when I ask her "you wanna go for a walk" and there's her answer.

Where she use to whine around 9am just months ago to take the walk through the wet field, only canceled by rain, anymore she is sound to sleep at 9am and will join Heidi in sleeping right up until lunch is served. With the hot afternoons I try to walk early evening but it doesn't matter to her. Here it is late morning and the response is the same. "I'm not going anywhere no matter how many times you say let's go"

With lunch served, if it's not raining she spends about an hour sunbathing. I can't help but think those warm stones make her hips feel better or her back.

Heidi enjoys her bed now being right next to the central air vent. With the temps in the 80's now, she will spend most of her afternoons here, next to the cold air. I have not caught her on camera but she still likes to go outside on her own every afternoon, do a little wandering and then lay under the sunshine if it isn't too hot. Otherwise ... right there on her dog bed.

I decided to watch Stella's walk one day. I was even prepared to follow her next door if that is where she wanted to go. I'd even go as far as two houses down if she wanted to check out the water temps for the neighbor's pool. So I stood and watched to see what she would do.

It turned out to be nothing more than the "new normal", her afternoon walk and only walk of the day for so long that I can't remember when it started to be this way.

Yes, the hay is that tall again, where you can barely see her tail. All the rain has been good for the hay growth but the fields across the highway are still not planted and it's raining again as I type this. About the time it dries out enough to get tractors and plows in the field, it rains.

While I was giving her the chance to go anywhere, she walked from the previous photo over to our return path and came home without a word of any kind coming from my mouth. She does that day after day and goes no further than she has to, to relieve herself.

She likes to shake off all the hay seeds and yellow pollen before she comes back inside.

And the "official" end of the walk by walking along the side of the house.

Sometimes her walks are not even what you have seen. They are not any longer than a quick search on the driveway and back to the house. A few times I attached the 25' retractable leash to her thinking that might lead her to the field ... she sits there and makes sure her 85 lbs are as low as possible so there is no way I can move her. Similar to a heavy rock you are trying to move.

Along with her changes to routine, I have seen and felt changes with me and blogging. I admit I love having the extra time to enjoy the day and I seem to get a lot more done around here without taking the time to put a blog together. I take daily photos but not nearly as many as I did in full blogging mode. Nothing official to announce but a post or some hound photos here and there are about all I can come up with.

Both hounds will be 10 years old this summer. Is that the reason for a slower pace summer this year? I think Heidi may be 10 years old since her age is really an estimate. When I picked her up 8 years ago from GABR they estimated she was around 1-1/2 years old but no way to tell. She shows no signs of older age except some graying on her nose and around her eyes.

Stella is so laid back in personality that there isn't a gray hair anywhere on her. I have noticed more crud around her eyes this summer than usual, from the pollen in the air. She still gets the hip/joint supplements 2x per day but there are times she looks like her hips are bothering her as she tries to lay down. No yelping of any kind but she takes it slow and easy to lay down.

Things are good in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Loud Explosion This Morning

It was a little past 6:30am when I sat down at my computer, with a cup of coffee in my hand. The room only lit by the light from my large monitor. I was on a mission this morning. I HAD to find a new blog design, which I will explain in full detail at the end of the post. ...... then BANG !!!!! It sounded so close to the house that Stella went from a curled position sleeping on the floor to standing and howling ... instantly.

I walked into the kitchen grabbed my hidden binoculars from the side of a bookshelf and looked out my large picture window toward the highway. A large pickup truck was pulled over to the side by the looks of it. I could only tell by its headlights that were still on and it looked like one of those new $64,999.99 trucks. I was pretty sure I knew what happened. It's not the first time in the 20 years I've lived here I've heard a loud explosion with the windows and doors closed.

Yet, at 6:40am it's very dark outside and I couldn't see anything in the highway or within the reflection of the truck headlights. Cars were still flying by this pulled over truck at 60mph plus. This is the main highway to either the interstate or the 3rd largest employer in the state of Indiana. They never slow down, even when I pull into my driveway.

This picture shows the weather forecast may be right this morning, rain by 9am, as if we need more water. It's better than freezing temps and snow though. BTW, it was a warm 46° this morning on our walk.

As I reached for my second cup of black coffee for the third morning in a row, it was light enough outside that I could barely tell what had happened. By the time Stella and I stepped outside to head out for the morning walk, I did not even have to zoom in with my camera to see ... the "annual deer hit". You will notice the black plastic auto pieces on each side of the highway. I'm sure there are a lot more than just those two pieces.

In the past these large deer have landed in my neighbors yard (last year) and all the previous hits before either landed in my front yard, in the middle of my driveway blocking my way out and more than 10 years ago one was actually slumped standing up leaning on my mailbox.

Sadie would have smelled the deer before I even opened the door and I would have had to really watch her to keep her from heading that direction. Stella??? Remember that Stella is basically a 'couch potato, not a 'tracker' ... she is only interested in food and sleep. So she walked outside like nothing was out of the ordinary ... just another day.

Within the hour that Stella and I returned, the state highway department had answered someone's call to pick the deer up from the side of the road. I guess you could stay they were standing by the "lounge water fountain at work", smoking cigarettes (not pictured) and taking a break before walking along the ditch picking up car pieces of that $64,999.99 pickup truck.

As I watched them walking north from where the deer landed. The point of contact between deer and truck was about 10' south of my driveway ... oh, almost every car, van, or truck that has hit a deer in front of my house in the past 20 years, are going 60mph or faster.

I doubt many of them pay attention to the highway warning sign as they leave town .... you know the one .... bright yellow, black trim, picture of deer and some words warning them that deer are in the area for the next EIGHT MILES. Anyway ... the $64,999.99 truck on a 8-10 year mortgage loan will need some body work done.

Any readers that are deer hunters will have to speak up on what I am about to guess. With the warm weather, high 40's and a million fresh deer tracks in the field right behind my house ... I am guessing the warm December weather is a factor in increased deer activity.

It was almost as dark this morning as yesterday with a 15 minute difference in time.

Now there are days where Stella follows her DNA and her AKC bio and she will track scent with the best of them. This morning was one of those days. I didn't hear any sounds like I would from Sadie's flapping jowls by inhaling deeply while she tracked but Stella spent most of the walk moving, with her head to the ground.

That is until now .... Standing 4-5 feet away I always start by "NO!!" ... she ignores me. Then I try my "Come On" ... she ignores me. Then I start my slow walk toward her hoping she will raise her head and take off running ahead of me on the path. ... she ignores me.

I slowly reach with my index finger and curl it inside her loose collar to lift her head away from that delicious nutritious but bad for her, deer scat. ... she no longer ignores me and takes off running ... sometimes crouching down like she wants to play.

It's just a game to her ... LOL ... she hears everything I say!!!

Yes it looks like rain is on it's way from the normal direction of the SW.

Still tracking ... I'm a little surprised at this part of the walk.

Like yesterday as we stepped into the yard, she stopped again, didn't move and watched me walk almost all the way to the house. By the time I sit down to download the photos from my camera to the computer, she is curled up sleeping so close to my desk chair I can barely move it out to sit down. That's her normal routine after a morning walk.

My ears have been ringing the past few days .... need more Vitamin D.

"You CHANGED your blog theme again!!!!!"

I had to. I loved that last theme I was using. After a week of looking it was the best one I found with one column and photos that were 6-3/4" wide if your monitor view was at 100%. Tablets and phones don't count since any theme is adjusted automatically for your device.

I didn't want to change that theme and even told a fellow blogger, friend, "I'll never change that theme no matter what." She laughed at me.

Around 6pm last night it only took one email from a long time reader to get me to realize something .... There were NO DATES near the titles of the listed blog posts!!!! There were no dates either at the end of the post where you will see categories, tags, 'make a comment' etc.

I went into the theme support page and didn't see anything about adding a date. Sometimes you will have the option of choosing the author's name, categories or tags near the title by rarely if ever the date. So I headed to the forum for that specific theme. I found my answer immediately ... dates will never be there and users cannot add them through the CSS editor.

I spent a few hours after the IU game I watched last night, trying to find a one column theme with dates but more importantly, photos that were as wide as the photos I had on the prior theme. Over 300 themes to choose from and by midnight I had not found one that would give me the design I wanted. I went to bed and had a solid night of sleep ... no worries.

After a sip of that hot black coffee this morning, before I did anything I added the 'archive' widget to my footer. I wanted to open that up and see if a date showed up. All it showed was the list of posts by month, for example "February 2018". I click on that month and it did list all the posts of that month, but they looked like the front page did ... no dates.

It's pretty amazing after the number of hours I spent this past week looking for a one column theme that had WIDE photos on the front page and individual posts, that I found one I had never tried ... all week!!!  Never tried, never even looked at.

What you see today is it !!!

The large Header Font ??? ... I have no choice. That font size also controls the size of the blog post title. It is one of the few if not the only font that fits my Blog Title into one line. IF I were to make that a smaller size font, the Blog Title would also be smaller and hard to read.

This design ended up pretty close to what I had before ... with WIDER photos !!!!

Things are getting back to normal again. No early wake up times. Blogging is also moving on it's own toward like I use to blog .... a post after our morning walk or sometimes late afternoon to recap the day. If I do one long post per day ... too many photos. (30+). So following my blogging plan of "writing when I want", I am pretty sure the first post of the day will be about the same time as this one, every morning, 9am to 10:30am range.(during the winter). A second post in the early evening will be optional, depending on how much excitement occurred during the day.

I'll also throw a short blog post occasionally where I have to get something off my chest, out of my head, whatever. Yes, I am still checking the tv news ... I eat TUMS while I watch any news channel. I see some interesting trends just in short time I have returned to the 'cesspool', that I will write about another day.

Blog followers by email ---- Do you get an email after every update I do???? (spelling & grammar corrections)

It's all good this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi Highly Motivated Today

For the 5 days of the 'arctic temps' here in the tropics of Southern Indiana recently, Heidi did this most of the time, along with Stella. But with a 30°+ jump in temperature today Heidi hopped off the couch and ran for the door to get in some exercise ... but not before stopping by her food dish for some lunch. She wasn't fast, or running but she went for an endurance workout today with walking a lap around the house.

I am not sure what Stella's expression means or what she was trying to tell me, but she is about to stick her tongue out. I think I just caught her at the end of eating something. Who knows?!?!

With the rain early this morning, Heidi waited for it to stop before she committed to coming all the way outside for any amount of time. Once she confirmed that the ground was wet and her paws were getting wet ... she hugged the house, the front steps and along the back of the house to keep as dry as possible during her walk.

Temperatures have increased but still cool enough to keep the small amounts of snow in tact.

The higher we climbed and as we moved to the back of the field ... there were more of these small piles of small pieces of ice.

With the AT&T tower almost submerged in the fog ... hard to believe it's in the mid 30's today.

No sign of Stella as my eyes scan from left to right.

There she is, shaking off all the burrs, thorns and any other kind of dormant brush her coat caught.

Again she walked right by me thinking she was going to start her walk for the day as Sadie and I was about finished. She couldn't believe I was telling her no and we were heading home.

Just because she turned to follow me and Sadie, didn't mean she was going to make it a quick walk home.

We might get in another walk later today with Stella on the leash and no camera with me. Otherwise the drizzle will keep me inside and I'll continue to prepare for the championship game tonight in college football by playing a lot of Mahjong, some 2048 and answer the email questions I get.

Happy about the increase in temperatures in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.