Car Washing Day

This past few days I've been staying up after letting the hounds outside for their first time of the day. That is usually between 6:15-7:00 am. This morning was cool with a light fog and the high temps today were not going to get out of the 70's. That will soon change with the local weather predicting normal August weather to return this weekend with the temps coming back to the high 80's and of course possibly some rain since I washed both vehicles today.

If I need rain ... I just have to wash a car.

Since I missed doing it yesterday, I wanted to get both vehicles washed and vacuumed today. They now both look clean enough to put up for sale. That won't happen, I like both vehicles and they are breaking records for time of possession. For example last year I only had the Kia Sorrento for 4 months before selling it. I was never planning on keeping the car when I traded the H3 Hummer in but that is a long story that I'll not get into. It is an interesting story though.

The Mini Cooper S is pretty easy to clean because the hounds never ride in it. It is rare that it is driven in bad weather unless a storm blows in unexpectedly while I am out driving it somewhere. The Toyota FJ was a different story.

The FJ had all the dirt, dog hair, dog nose candy on the inside of the windows, dropped cup of coffee by me and one large DQ Blizzard that melted before I could get home, only 3 miles away. So I knew from the beginning the FJ would take a little longer. My side mirrors and the front of the FJ had a ton of bugs covering each of them. All of these things were from the trip in June we took to Colorado and Utah, except the ice cream which dripped into and down the side of the console.

I was going to just leave the FJ as it was since it would be our traveling vehicle and it will get messed up again. Yet, there is just something I like about a clean vehicle. The Toyota paint job is great quality and really shined up after the wash, no waxing was involved. There are a few dog hairs still attached to the seats or the material in between them but it's not bad since there are just a few of them.

The coffee and ice cream all came off easy as did the dog nose candy from the windows and dash. It's amazing the places you find dried bloodhound drool after a week of traveling. The rear cargo area mat and the two front floor mats were taken out, scrubbed and hosed off. Of course I had to have my two on site inspectors look at them, sniff them and walk on them, just to make sure I had cleaned them up to their standards. There was no advance notice they were going to do this.

After that, there wasn't much more I wanted to do. Heidi has been having an 'off' day today, so she had slept most of the day. The other two hounds gave me the look that they wanted to get back inside for their daily siesta. They were fast asleep within minutes of getting inside the house.

The Look To Go Inside

Life's Rough

Excuse Me? ... A Photo While I'm Trying to Sleep????

I mentioned above I've been staying up this week after letting the hounds outside to start the day. One reason is I've been getting a full night of solid sleep. A minor change to my nightly routine has made all the difference in the world.

What changed? No matter what time I go to bed, it's usually after midnight ... I'll turn off the computer. Instead of heading to bed and then tossing and turning trying to get to sleep, I've been reading a book that I pulled off my shelf. It's called Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. This is a scientific view of the dog species and will hopefully give me a new perspective on what my hounds really see, smell and know. I'll keep you posted on any information that is different than what most dog owners think is happening.

By reading that book late at night, it makes me sleepy, thus a good night of sleep. I had been reading books during the day and that also led to taking siestas.

Although I kind of fell off the diet wagon last Monday with the trip to 5Guys Burgers, I am still losing weight, losing fat and still not having any acid reflux issues like I did last spring. I do all my measurements the 1st of each month. I did glance at my weight today out of curiosity and I've lost 20 pounds since May 1.

I hope to lose a lot more than that but I am right on schedule.

A little side note about blog traffic during the 5 days of writing about my weed pulling project. I find it interesting that two different sites show my traffic was almost double those 5 days compared to normal posting like tonight and this past week. The subject for that 100% increase in traffic was WEEDS!!!!

I'm not sure how to take that ... I am laughing as I type this last sentence.

A Heidi Semi-Update & Many Hound Photos

I would have posted this sooner but like usual, I get distracted in the middle of something and end up going a different direction. In this case it was downloading only a couple of photos from my iPhone when I noticed just how little memory I had left in my 16Gb iPhone 5S.

I don't watch movies or play games on my iPhone so I never really considered buying one with more memory and will probably not upgrade next year from this iPhone 5S. It does everything I need, even with only 16Gb.

So after seeing just a few Gb's left of memory, I've spent the past couple of hours playing around in iTunes deleting apps, deleting all of my photos since they are backed up on my iMac plus an external hard drive and then synching the phone with the computer backup.

So this may end up being a pretty long post as I am in kind of a "rambling" mood. I have a lot of photos from today's walk and a few from Heidi's latest skin condition which seems to be getting better since her bath a few days ago with a different shampoo.

We will get to Heidi first. As you can see from the photos there seems to be some healing going on. There is also hair growing back in places where a vet told me in March not to expect it. It's hard to tell when a basset hound is energetic but she has been doing something different than the past 7-9 months of not feeling so well. A lot of these spots were red and raw just last month. These photos were taken after her bath on Sunday.

That starts with her going outside in the morning between 6 - 6:30am with Winston and Sadie. She has done that the past three days. She also goes outside with them mid day and has been laying in the sun in the backyard. I've been checking her skin after that to see if the grass is the cause of her skin rashes, so far it isn't. Her appetite has never been a problem.

With the change of shampoo and over 30 days of eating the Earthborn No Grain Great Plains Feast I have seen a change in the texture of her skin, less redness now 3 days in a row and she seems to less inclined to chew at her paws and rear legs. Since I wanted to check just these two options of the shampoo and food, I have not applied any kind of K9 Klear Up cream, no liquid Zinc Oxide from the vet, no diaper rash cream with zinc oxide that babies love, no benadryl spray ... just nothing but bare skin.

As of Wednesday night as I write this she does not need a bath since her last bath 3 days ago. Nails were trimmed back a lot or as far as possible without having them bleed. Winston rolled on his back to have his toenails done. Sadie and I are still in negotiations about cutting her nails but at least she getting her aerobics in by sprinting around inside the house just at the sight of those nail clippers.

After this bag of Plains Feast is finished, I am changing to a different Earthborn blend with Lamb Meal as the #1 ingredient instead of Bison. I am also making a dog food change for Winston and Sadie. In the past I have always fed the "large breed" blend of foods the whole time. I decided to move to a Senior Blend by Fromm. This has great ingredients with less fat and less protein.

Sadie needs to lose more weight which will be better for her joints as she gets older. Winston is in good shape weight wise but I wanted to treat him to some different protein sources in his older years as he moves to 12 years old next May. It will have Duck as the #1 ingredient, with chicken and chicken meal, some lamb lower down the list along with menhaden fish meal at #6.

Heidi barked yesterday when I asked if she wanted to go for a walk. She led the pack but I didn't have my camera with me. Today when I asked if she wanted to go on the walk, she thumped her tail in the curled up position saying she was going to take a siesta. I had the camera on the walk today as both hounds were off the leash the whole time. I did carry their retractable leashes just in case they wanted to run off on me.

Winston goes at his own pace. At times will fall way behind and then will come charging in a short burst of speed to catch up with us. It might be a game to him, I'm not sure. I'll list the photos with some captions.

On a side note for the past few weeks, 3-4 weeks in fact, I've been fighting off one of my demons .... rescuing dogs.

Shocked eh? Why on earth would I need or want a 4th hound. Especially since it would have been a large bloodhound. I will not go into the story why she is available but she looks just like Sadie and is a couple of years younger. I did a LOT of thinking on that, plus had a few sleepless nights. A few weeks ago it was a 6 month old male bloodhound that I wanted to help. A few weeks ago I was thinking of a basset hound from the GABR that is listed in the upper left of this blog.

I never know why I get into these moods to get another hound. I've been reminded more than once that "you cannot help every dog in need". I also knew or was pretty sure that if a 4th hound would be added, the chances of traveling would be decreased. I wouldn't want to travel with 4 hounds. It would be doable like anything else but very very hard to manage. Even at home it would be hard to manage.

This past weekend it was a 5yr fixed red female bloodhound. I have no doubt that her and Sadie would have made a great pair. But then again, Sadie knows she is the leader of the current pack so it might have been a problem with an additional bloodhound. So I went from telling the owner I was on the way to pick her up the next day, to having a sleepless night and a lot of 2nd thoughts the next morning .. so I knew it was not a good move. I let them know that I would not be taking their bloodhound off their hands.

Many people find out the hard and sad way that bloodhounds are great as small puppies. During their growth periods they get more funny (obnoxious), stronger than ever, and can out eat a horse. Then they want to get rid of them. I guess it's like any other breed though ... thousands all over the country needing a new home.

So anyway ... 3 hounds is what I have and will stay with. It's temping to help a hound out but in my case you can say a 100 rescued hounds is not enough and 4 of them is too many.

Here are photos from our walk today.

A Slow Steady Pace

Waiting For Winston

A Slower Pace

Waiting For Winston AGAIN!!

No Doubt A Deer Sleeping Spot

Just Cruzin'

Out Front On Her Own

Not Half Way Yet And Getting Slower

No Worries - I Caught Ya

Hold It - Something's Been Here

Go Ahead I'll Meet You Later

Full Out Basset Sprint - Ears Up All The Way

Sprint Is Over

Another Daily Walk Comes To An End

Here are a few photos of the trees starting to change color only in August.

I thought this photo was neat because with all the green, that orange highway warning sign to stop ahead stood out from a distance. They are rebuilding a bridge just south of that sign.

Another day of great weather is ending here in "the tropics".

After my dental appointment on Monday for full X-rays and cleaning where I had a report of no cavities ... I treated myself to one of these at 5guys Burgers.

A Lazy Weekend

With the winds between 15-20mph from the west, Winston decided the best sleeping spot of the day was outside behind the Mini Cooper. That is one of his favorite spots and one he uses when he is waiting for me to let him inside. He also likes to sit in the sun on that corner and watch the highway traffic.

He looks about the way the weekend felt. Not a lot going on. I've watched some NFL preseason football but never a full game yet. My Reds have finally dropped to last place in the Central Division as expected with a starting pitching rotation of all rookies now. Plus with trades or injuries they are playing 4-5 position players off the bench.

Today though I added the IRL Pocono500 to my viewing pleasure. So as you see it's been pretty anti-climatic once all those weeds were pulled last week. I have had a few sprouts start to come back. So far I can pull any new weed starts as I walk to and from the mailbox down the driveway. The ones like the one pictured have been pulled at the flat top of the drive while the dogs are outside and I am outside to get some fresh air and some sunshine. Whether I can keep up with those new wanna be weeds is yet to be seen.

For Heidi's bath yesterday I decided to pull an old shampoo off the shelf, bought from the vet last fall. It not only has Aloe Vera in it, but oatmeal. So why shampoo her with "grain" if I am not going to feed her grains in her dog food? That's a good question. I've read in some places that Oatmeal in dog food or in this case shampoo may help in spreading a yeast infection ... if that is what she has.

I just wanted a shampoo that was less intense compared to the medicated shampoo that seems to increase her skin rash after it's applied. Surprisingly today, after the bath on Saturday, her skin really looks good. There is softness to it instead of hard crusty and/or red and raw. There is little to no redness anywhere on her skin today. She chewed and itched her skin today a lot less than she normally does. I am going to wait a few days to see  if there continues to be improvement before I post any photos ... but I am encouraged by what I saw today.

Something I should have done a long time ago since I have a spreadsheet for everything else, I made one up for her. I listed the date, skin condition on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the best and dog food name with ingredients. I've gone back through photos and vet bills to fill in past activity onto the sheet.

I also found out this all started in July 2014, not October as I thought. I found an old Word Doc that I had started as her health journal in July 2014 when I started using the food supplement named Dinovite. This sheet will give me and the vet some sort of reference for future trips to the vet. I had taken notes before or made a point of remembering thing in my head but this spreadsheet will be much better to see when needed.

While I was sitting outside with Sadie, I noticed along the wall of tall trees there was a patch of leaves very high that had already turned yellow. They stood out among all the green colors. You might be able to tell from looking at the leaves that the wind is a strong wind.

The yellow leaves I speak about are towards the upper right corner, halfway between Sadie and the right edge of the photo.

Yellow leaves toward the upper right hand corner

Just barely left of center ... Bad editing by the photographer

As usual in late August things get pretty comfortable here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana. The temperatures start falling, the humidity decreases to levels that are livable and the thought of travel starts disappearing ... until ... you read a blog or blogs where people have broke camp and are heading for a different location or some people are making plans to head to their winter locations. It's readings like that make the fire still glow in the pit of my stomach.

The inner urge to wander takes over. The spreadsheet of options is opened again to look at the pros and cons. The thought process moves in between living comfortable or make and adapt to changes. Yet it's also hard to think of moving 3 hounds when you see them sleeping in their favorite spots on a floor, couch or bed that doesn't include dirt or sand.

Yet the urge to shut everything down and hit the road increases the excitement level ... more than staying comfortable watching football (my addiction), which starts in a couple of weeks.

I'm not sure what will happen.

The Weed Pulling Project Has Been Completed

That's A Lot of Weeds - Pile Over 3' Tall

Before I get started writing about the project today, I was up at 6:10am to let the dogs outside, while Heidi continued to sleep as usual ... that's way too early for her to get up by her rules. The sun was perfect for some picture taking so I went back inside to grab the camera. You know the one, the Nikon D3200 that I just had repaired a couple of months ago????

Well once again, I press the shutter button ... no auto focus. It tells me "lens is not attached". Okay, I can play that game, so I took that lens off and with my computer lint free cloth wiped the silver edge that connects or rubs against the back of the lens when it is connected and attached a different lens.

Same result ... "lens not attached".

Now I know I have claimed to be a night person, that I am not a fan of getting up early .... and not having any coffee in my system yet, I must admit I could feel my blood pressure rising at a rapid rate ... I had a split second visual of throwing that camera as far as I could ... which wouldn't be far with a bad shoulder for pitching. Add on the fact that I am not a fan of a camera that doesn't work again. Let's just say that I wasn't real happy at 6:15am, and leave it political correct.

I decided as I slowly twisted the lens off the camera, that first thing on Friday morning I would take the camera back in to Best Buy so they could send it to the Nikon service center for warranty work again. I had a feeling of calmness come over me with that thought. Just to make sure, I put the 18mm-55mm lens back on the camera and tried it one more time ....

It worked perfect and has continued to work perfect since then. Blood pressure immediately dropped.

Well after close to 20 hours of labor, spread over 5 days, the project of pulling weeds is over. The rain last night and during the morning before sunrise, worked out perfect for a final day of pulling weeds. Without that rain I am not sure I could have finished due to the right side of the driveway having a foundation of hard packed old driveway gravel. It would've been hard pulling weeds out of that hard packed soil.

Starting Point of Thursday

Finishing Point of Thursday

The difference today was getting some sleep last night. I was in bed before midnight and pulling my first weed of today at 9:30am. Email, sports news and a few blogs were read by then and topped off with two cups of coffee.

With the rains last night the highest temp today was 74° so I spent most of my day pulling weeds in temperatures below 70°. Even though it was easier pulling most of the time, I still wondered at times if this project was a lot like painting the Golden Gate Bridge ... by the time you finish it's time to start over ...

I had noticed walking around today on the drive there were new sprouts of grass, crabgrass etc. What I don't want is this to turn into is a daily thing ... but I have a slight obsession now. Even when the hounds were outside after I finished the driveway, I walked where I pulled weeds a few days ago and found new sprouts.

I have a Plan B for the future though. Twenty hours was okay, gave me something to do and it certainly looks much better than when I started last Friday ... but I'm not sure it is something I want to do on a regular basis. Mowing the yard close to every week is enough fun when it comes to yard work.

In the meantime the house next door that is for sale after 13 months of being on the market, had their yard crew of one person riding along the edge of their property on a ATV with their weed killer on the back and the spray nozzle in hand. She said my work looked great, she noticed the progress each day as she drove by ... but said ... "they will always come back, you need to spray".

So maybe tonight or tomorrow morning over coffee, I will be searching on Google for "chemical free weed killer". Feel free to leave comments if you have something that works.

The last part of the project was that section of gravel in back of the driveway, where I use to park my 1994 Chevy truck. I didn't think it would take long, it didn't. So I went inside and asked Heidi and Winston if they wanted to come outside ... they both ran for the door, while Sadie stayed outside as the Project Supervisor.

Before

After

I was happy to see Heidi laying the sun. Winston of course took only a minute to lay on the warm concrete and was snoring soon after. I have a feeling that warm concrete makes his old back feel good. He sleeps in the sun a lot out there and at times refuses to come inside if the sun is out.

Always On The Prowl

Legs Look Bad Today But At Least She Stayed Outside With Us

Nothing Bothers Him ... Nothing

The trash can that is from just from the driveway below. I had that completed a little after noon.

Thursday's Catch of The Day

With the next ten days of sunshine ... I think I'll only mow the backyard on Friday but before I do that, I can wait for the grass to dry from the morning dew by washing the Mini Cooper S.

I don't know the exact date for the renewal of my domain name, I'll have to check because I think it is in September. Reason being I am not sure I am going to renew the domain name this year. It's not the cost, it's the name. "rvs".

When I think of "RV", I only picture Class A or Class C's .. I do not picture travel trailers or 5th wheels. The largest number of searches are a result of people looking for information on the Lil Snoozy Trailer that I almost bought in September 2013. When I started this blog in October 2011 I thought at that time I was going to buy a Class A, then it moved to a Class C ... then starting last year in 2014 I lost the urge to buy either and wanted to buy a trailer.

So over time, I am not sure the domain name of "houndsandrvs dot com" is accurate for the direction of this blog. It is very likely I will just go back to the Blogspot name that I had when I signed up to blog on Blogger.

You might want to bookmark this site with www.bhounds.blogspot dot com. (don't use spaces, those are to keep the spiders away).

I will have time to think more about that change. IF I do decided to make that change I will remind all the readers 5-10 posts before the change is made.

Once again as it has proven most every late summer to early fall ... I become quite content at the house. The weather is great, one of the best times to live in Indiana. Yet by December and January I am wanting to get somewhere warm. We will see what happens but if I were to travel I don't believe I will be going anywhere until November.

I still don't know what to try to fix Heidi's skin problems. Today was one of her worst days. I have always noticed though when she wakes up for the first time of the day, her skin looks really good, nothing red, nothing raw. She gets a couple of handfuls of dog food, grain free, as her treat for the day.  In the morning she will go outside for a couple of minutes but only on the driveway gravel. By noon she is back to chewing again, no matter what cream, liquid zinc, K9 cream or just plain warm water is applied.

We will keep trying to keep her skin clean, keep applying K9 cream and wipe her with warm water after she comes back inside. Of course if the allergens are in the carpet, maybe her blankets, or the air ... then all bets are off on it being an outside environmental cause.

No matter what ... it's a beautiful day here in "the tropics".

Day Off From Pulling Weeds Today

Well it took longer than the weather forecast but the rain finally shows up a little after 8pm tonight. It was suppose to start last night at 1am and radar showed major storms to the west that looked as if we had no chance of missing them.

The two storms moved around us. By the time I hit the road this morning around 10am headed to Bloomington, it was blue skies and sun, with thunderstorms predicted at 2:30pm.

Those thunderstorms didn't happen, those storms on radar moved around us again.

Since I had another sleepless night I decided I'd take my first siesta in a while after putting the groceries away and feeding the hounds. Besides, I had declared the day off from pulling weeds.

Based on the fact the weeds that are left are in compacted, hard gravel mixed with dirt instead of just rooted in dirt ... that was my excuse to wait for the rains. Hoping the rains would soften the ground a little bit. Plus I needed to restock my groceries and use Heidi's $3 off coupon for her new Earthborn grain free food.

I had a surprise when I handed the cashier the coupon ... she handed me another coupon to be filled out and used immediately so I had $6 off on a 5-star rated food. In the meantime Earthborn has already emailed me a $3 off coupon for September.

Since Heidi is the only hound eating this food, she has quite a bit food left of her 28 pound bag. I will continue to buy a bag per month and stock up. I am really happy with the improvement of her coat. Still, about the time I am starting to see some improvement on her skin rashes either from the change in food or the K9 cream I've been applying, I check and she has chewed skin back to red and raw just a few minutes ago.

I'm at a loss for ideas on this. I am seriously considering an offer from a person that commented a few posts ago and take her to a vet a couple of hours away in Illinois where the vet's specialty is dermatology. She works for this vet and has witnessed some pretty amazing results the time she has worked there.

I am still positive it's an environmental allergy and not food related.

Anyway after buying her dog food, I drove down the block to Lucky's Market. It's fairly new in town, has very few stores across the USA but has great prices on fruit and produce with sales on Wednesdays plus additional ones on Friday. A lot selection of organic that is priced reasonable.

While weeding the other day I was thinking about going back to a basic phone from my iPhone 5S. Not sure why but I was serious enough about it to call Verizon and talk to them about my options. I felt I could use a basic phone for calls and emergencies on the road while using the iPad Mini for my data for weather, maps, campground searches ... things I do on the iPhone.

Of course I found out from my trip in June, Wifi spots are few and far between where I was. So I would need to buy a data package from Verizon. After looking at the different packages and the $35 package for a basic phone. After adding the costs I would need to use the basic phone/iPad Mini combo, it would be more expensive than what I have now.

Then I thought of everything I use the phone for when I am away from my home computer. What about all the photos taken when not traveling with my Nikon? All good features and well worth the single line package I have from Verizon.

As you see I am grasping for things to write about tonight, so I am going to close for the day and leave you with a few photos from the past or from my file that may not have been blogged before.

For starters when I starting thinking I am getting tired of hot weather ... weather that I like, I think of this photo from March 2014, last spring.

When I think it would be great to buy and travel in an older RV like a Class A or Class C ... I think of this photo that took place about a week or two after I bought the Class C Coachmen in September 2013.

This was taken last September 2014. It looks about the same as today, only the field has not grown back as high yet.

Pulling weeds for sure tomorrow. Mid 70's, some sun and close to finishing the job.

Day: 0 hours
Total Hours Pulling Weeds:  16.5 hours