What??? 64° This Morning

I knew when I opened my eyes for the first time this morning and heard the wind howling outside that the weather experts has been accurate.

Along with some rain though were going to be 64° temperatures the day after Christmas, which is extremely hard to believe. Yet, no worries, it will be back with a high in the low 40's to high 30's by Tuesday morning. My iPhone weather showed 64° at 7am and the air that hit my face when I opened the door confirmed it.

There are always some immediate signs when I open the door for the first time to let the hounds outside. Yes, Heidi is up for that trip in the morning. The first sign was the amount of wind pressing against my door as I tried to open it. The next was a fully soaked and wet carport floor.

When there are small tree limbs from the Sycamore tree then you know the winds were strong while we slept last night.

I've always wondered if the low wet area in the back of the neighbors yard hinders their chance in selling the house. It does not always have standing water of coarse, just after heavy rains, but the ground does stay pretty soft in that area year round.

BTW ... the 'Picture Of The Day' award goes to the very last on in this post.

With a 100% chance of rain by noon and Intellicast radar showing the storm front about 100 miles to the west of us I decided it was time to get our walk in, since it might be the only one we will be able to take today due to rain and extremely wet field later this afternoon.

On the initial trip outside I checked the ground to see how wet it was and surprisingly it was not as saturated as yesterday because there wasn't any water rising to ground level when I walked. So I headed back inside for the camera and to change into the hiking boots in case it was wetter in back of the field. Sadie was thrilled with that decision and sat right next to me while I changed shoes.

In that picture above Sadie has crawled under a wild bush stem full of thorns pressing into her skin ... doesn't feel a thing. She did that a couple of times today and as usual, she just charged through any brush that got in her way. She is a very strong hound.

With the winds around 20mph, luckily it was blowing warm air. What a nice change that is. No jacket was needed today, just a sweatshirt.

Stella once again stays pretty close to Sadie for the walk this morning. They acted as if they had a lot of things to get done on this walk ... a purpose. They were in their 'serious' mode.

It never fails during these walks, where I wonder what actually had been in these places they are so interested in. What time of day was the deer or other animal around. With the soft ground it is much easier to see the fresh prints in the ground from a hoof of a deer.

While Sadie sprinted for the far right corner, Stella made a straight line sprint without making the sharp right turn.

As I walked over to see what Stella had found that was so interesting, there was nothing there to eat, she was just moving her nose under all the wet leaves.

They decided two noses were more powerful than just one nose in today's expedition.

Sadie powers through another stem of thorns.

Back to some teamwork.

It still amazes me that I have an AT&T tower this close to my house but they cannot offer me wireless internet service due to my location. Being a Directv customer, and with AT&T purchasing them last summer ... they are offering unlimited data where I could stream all my tv shows and games through Directv for free.

They do have a price for different packages but from the way it was explained to me, based on the package I pay Directv my AT&T wireless UNLIMITED data would be a no cost to me.

The hounds had just turned to me because they were sure there were deer in the cornfield behind them, but didn't see any. That is where I might see 10-15 deer at times grazing. Luckily the hounds have not seen them since Sadie was a puppy in the middle of deep snow. She scaled that fence and was sprinting through snow as deep as her chest after the deer she saw.

That tree line is where the hounds took off a few days ago that I blogged about yesterday. There is a fence that runs the full length of the tree line. You can see the camera did not capture all of it. It's good to see the past few walks they have not shown any tendency to go back to the new area they found.

Here come the rains.

It was not raining yet but the hounds were fairly anxious to get back to the house.

This afternoon I will return to my detailed house cleaning. Later tonight I will be going back to scanning old photos. I did 139 pictures yesterday but got off track in subject matter after I opened an album looking for any stray hound photos. It was mostly old people pics. I scanned them so I could send them out to those in the picture, if I had a phone number or email address.

I don't have 1,000's of pictures like some of you have scanned when you were downsizing but I found a few other packages, and a large Kodak box full of them last night ... so I have more pictures to scan than I had planned on and definitely in the mid 100's.

This issue is, I have packages, undated and in no specific order. I also have the small picture size, hard backed albums that are in some sort of date sequence. As I scanned 3-6 pictures at a time, I was trying to decide whether to scan all the hounds in the order as they came in the albums or scan by each hound individually after I sorted the loose pictures.

I do know one thing. For blogging purposes I will go through the stacks of each hound and the albums that contain all the hounds and pick out some of the best ones and upload them to the blog.

I mentioned yesterday I had a basset hound mixed up between Arthur in Washington and Barney. Once I ran into some other pictures where Barney and Harry had stayed a few months with my sister's kids in Indiana then were flown out to Seattle for me to pick up, then I knew it was Barney that was pictured with Harry the other day in my Whidbey Island post, and not Arthur.

Over the 29 years I've had hounds some of the names have been used over again. So in this case for naming my folders that are kept in my computer's Apple Photos, as well as Google Photos and Flickr ... Arthur has a state initial by their name, while Max and Sadie have either 'basset' or 'bloodhound' by their names.

I am not scanning these pictures to downsize and to throw away the paper copy. In fact my scanned copy is not nearly as good as that 35mm picture nor as good quality as that 35mm slide I have. I am only digitizing them to use on the blog plus I tend to look at pictures more on my computers, iPad or iPhone than I do looking through an album.

I plan to keep blogging about Heidi, Sadie and Stella but on occasion I'll add a 2nd post of the day to show and blog about some of the past hounds I've had.

I will say that looking back through all of these pictures, even the non-hound ones, brings back some memories I had not thought of in a long time. They were interesting to see and surprising just how much detail of that time can be remembered by just looking at a photograph.

I even found a couple of more cars I forgot that I had ... so the number of cars I've owned over the years still out numbers the number of hounds I've lived with. LOL

I can hear it raining outside, plus Stella is telling me to get off the computer because it's time for her to eat ... here is the reaction I got yesterday when I asked them "are you ready to eat"??  Stella was just beginning her howl.

A very warm day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

It's A Quiet Day For The Hounds

I guess this post this morning might be borderline rambling, nothing religious, nothing political ... I just feel like writing.

I know, it's Christmas Day and some may be asking "why are you blogging" on a morning like today, while others may be looking for something to read or pictures to look at over a cup of coffee sitting in front of their computer. They might not have much more planned than me.

There may be a few blog readers out there that are like me. Some call us loners, some call us crazy but millions of us just like privacy and live that way. Having pets is probably good in that situation. I know my hounds over the years have been great companions. They will listen to all kinds of conversations between me and them or just me, some rants ... yet they never voice an opinion.

They can get you through some of the worst and best times while teaching you many lessons if you are observant and open minded.

For some reason the hounds and I were up way too early this morning. We were up turning lights on, without any hesitation. It's the same routine for the 359th time this year. It never makes a difference whether it's daylight or dark, the hounds can go from a deep sleep to total excitement just over the thought of breakfast bowl of kibble.

To prevent any possible chance of them taking off in the dark while dumping their tanks after their breakfast, we always wait for daylight on the days we get up early. I will be explaining the consequences of not preventing that chance, later in this post.

So as we move outside with a camera under my arm and a cup of coffee in hand, Stella seems to be into her daily scratch every day and Sadie has found new ground to explore since I cut back some brush in late fall.

This is the normal daily routine for them.

Today though we changed the routine just a little. Since we had to wait for daylight before letting them outside to dump their tanks, what better time than to take the first walk of the day ... 40°, a dark foggy morning. With recent rain plus the higher temperatures melting the frozen rock hard ground ... the waterproof hiking books I broke out of my closet last fall were the perfect shoes to wear as the water rose above ground level with each step I took.

Also a little different than usual, the hounds were more into smelling instead of eating, if you know what I mean. They will always have their noses to the ground but it's better in my eyes when they are sniffing areas trying to identify something rather than finding unknown things to eat.

There must have been an increase in night time animal traffic because they were both stopping in places they usually don't. It looked as if there were just too many scents to collect all in one walk.

I also decided for today's pictures I would try to zoom in on them as much as possible, making each or both of them fill the view finder. Just a change in pictures I guess. I like seeing Sadie is showing a little rib on the sides. I like to try to keep the bloodhounds as lean as possible. It's better on their joints as they get older and less work for their hearts.

Stella had 'free reign' today and that is saying something after the story I will tell later in this post from our yesterday afternoon walk.

When I bought Sadie as a puppy, I was buying more of a 'red' than a 'tan' bloodhound. The hound she was replacing, Bertha, was more red but sometimes you never know until the pups get older which color they will be.

Sadie's dad, Clyde, was a big obnoxious loud bloodhound ... tan. I get that description from the times I went out to visit the litter of pups before deciding to take Sadie. Her mom was a laidback 'black & tan'. Later the breeder told me she was getting feedback from owners that the female puppies had the personality of Clyde, while the males were laidback like their mom.

I had to agree ... Sadie at the time in 2008 was the most obnoxious, destructive puppy I had ever owned. I'd have to leave her in the largest kennel they made for indoors while I was at work and she even bent those heavy black rods with her jaws ... trying to get out. I am not sure how she did it, except for jumping inside the kennel to move it by the time I got back home from work. Since it was just a few inches taller than her I am not sure how she could jump but someway she would scoot that kennel almost 12" at times.

Yet, she has turned into a great indoor dog and it has been at least 5 years since she destroyed anything of mine inside. I can't remember the exact year that I let her 'out of jail' while I was gone, but she, Winston and Heidi would spend time in the shut bedroom while I was at work ... with no problems.

Stella on the other hand is a great indoor hound, except when she has occasional bouts with separation anxiety. She will go months without doing anything and then about the time you think she has adjusted to living here she will do something while I am gone. I could be gone just 10 minutes or 4 hours, I never know what I will come home to ... at least she is barricaded in one room and does not have access to all of the house. That doesn't even work when I am outside mowing the yard for 45 minutes.

Wow, this conversation went way off track. I think this hound talk just started because I was noticing today how predominate the bottom half of her tail is 'black & tan' ... thus the reason her original owner named her 'Dipstick'.

You can see that distinct color change on her tail.

This picture did not turn out as well is the live shot looked. The camera caught what I thought I was taking about a second later. They were both intense while moving with their new found scents.

Today I decided I'd follow them up to the corner and hang out with them. They didn't want to leave but that NE wind was feeling colder and total opposite direction from the normal wind direction. I had to tell them "lets go".

And all of these pictures are them sniffing an area while eating nothing ... quite a change.

Those two paths that look like they might be from a RTV are nothing more than the paths of worn grass by deer traffic.

Stella followed Sadie the whole walk today. It was almost like she wanted to make sure that Sadie wasn't getting something she wasn't.

It's hard to tell from this next picture with the cold wind hitting me in the face how it's ever going to increase 20° to reach the predicted high of 61°.

Yesterday afternoon without the camera, our afternoon walk turned into something never done before. I've been doing this same path, give or take a few inches either way, since 1997 and never did we do what we did yesterday.

Like the day before both hounds had their noses to the ground right on the path we take in almost a full run. Once they got to the back edge of the field they lifted their head and took off on a full sprint, into their 'no fly zone' and I had not even made it to the back of the field yet.

I found out pretty quick why for some reason I didn't bring the camera but instead a 6' standard dog leash. I didn't start calling them by name, nor did I start running after them. I did not see any deer that would make them take off sprinting like that ... but I was pretty sure I'd find them once I crested the small hill, along the tree line on the north side of the field.

They would always be along that wooded area to the north, in the past ... but not yesterday. In fact along the full length of the field that runs perpendicular from the back of the field directly to the neighbors backyard ...

Neither hound was anywhere ... out of sight ... no barking ... no baying ... gone!! It was like the "no fly zone" had turned into the Bermuda Triangle.

I thought I knew where they were, at least I was hoping they had only gone that far because if they were not in the field past the wooded fence line we were screwed. Before I even got to that tree line I saw Stella through the trees in the lot next to the field ... but that lot was fenced in.

The only way they could have gotten into that area was either jump the fence or had entered it at the far end of the field and than ran half of the distance from the back field to the a different neighbors house at least 1/4 of a mile away from our house.

So now both Sadie and Stella see me and start to run toward me ... but confusion erupts as they cannot figure out what to do about the square wired fence that was standing 3' tall. Remember, this breed is not problem solvers ... they got in with no problem but had no idea how to get out. The looks on their faces showed they were stymied on what to do.

I walked along the fence line a little further east and finally found a place where the fence had been mashed down to about 3"-4" above the ground. Even then, neither hound would step across that fence ... but figured it out as I led them by Sadie's excess skin on her neck and Stella's collar.

They trotted along side me toward home acting very proud of their newest excursion. I hope that does not become a habit for them during the times they take off that far away. It may not, since neither has ran toward the neighbors house that they visited just two days ago when they were chasing the strange dog. They have not even looked that direction in recent walks.

I made good progress yesterday in my 'spring cleaning' four months early. I still have the bedroom and bathroom to go but I knocked out the biggest rooms first. I have rearranged some things and now feel like I have more room in my "tiny home" of 958 sq feet of living space. That in itself was quite an adjustment from over 1,600 sq feet just a few years prior to moving here.

I have lived in wooded areas in Washington, the mountains outside of Breckenridge CO and even on the beach in southern California but I have never lived in a place that collects as much dust as this house.

I also attached the indoor bike trainer to my Romic road bike so I can ride indoor this winter. It's not that fun but I don't mind it and it will be good to get back into some exercise with plans of riding my bike more this upcoming spring and summer. It took Sadie only one time to figure out that a spinning bike wheel inside is not something to check out with your nose ... puppy curiosity taught her that lesson.

I was told to expect a delivery sometime Saturday from 3 friends I've known since my college days. All of us live in different states in the USA, from Georgia to California and in between.

As I told my friend that made the order that was shipped, "I guess it's good I changed my diet about a month ago from Vegan back to a lean Paleo" because my surprise Christmas gift was 18 pieces of different meats and chicken from Omaha Steaks in Nebraska.

That also included some deserts, some stuffed baked potatoes and each box has packed my freezer. So I am set for a while and more than likely will be placing an order with them in the future.

Why the diet change after 3 months? It's strange in a way but grains give me indigestion, certain beans give me indigestion. Without beans, lentils the sources of protein on a Vegan diet are few and far between. When comparing this strict diet to what I was doing the 1-1/2 years prior, I didn't feel as good.

I am not looking for that energetic feeling 24/7 but I got tired of that 'blah' feeling. Going from low carbs to having them as a large percentage of your meals made me sleepy most of the time in addition to the indigestion.

Maybe the book written about different diets based on your blood type is more accurate than some people think. All I know is the list of foods it told me would give me problems, did just that when eating them.

So how does one spend Christmas if not celebrating with family or friends? About the same way every day in retirement is spent. Doing what you want when you want. Since I am taking a day off from house cleaning, I am thinking it might be a good day to start the monumental task of scanning old pictures into digital copies ... then I can start telling stories and posting pictures of some of my hounds I've had in the past.

It is twofold but a reason for blogging ... refreshing your memory. While looking back at those pictures I posted from Whidbey Island in my last post, I couldn't remember if that was Arthur or Barney. How sad is that? I guess that shows just how many different hounds I've had since 1987, ranging from 2-4 hounds at one time.

Yet I have probably has more cars/trucks in the past 16 years than I have had hounds in the past 29 years. LOL

I don't have that many pictures, but I do have a LOT of 35mm slides to go through that I'd like to transfer to a digital copy. I dod have enough pictures to scan that it will take some time though.

Also on a day like this I like to read books. I always read a couple of different book concurrently. So, really things are good here on Christmas Day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

I've looked back on my 3 blogs (2 private) and checked what was taking place this same time in prior years. About the only differences I found were the changes in weather, not what I did or thought. Once again the blog serves it's purpose as a record journal and is great for reference.

For those readers that are in between family meals or visits today ... enjoy your time with them and enjoy the food. Have fun!!

Stella is wanting her lunch an 1:15 minutes early right now ... yet she is a great time keeper because that is about how much earlier she had her breakfast compared to her normal time.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year from 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.