The Hounds Enjoy Monday

Heidi knew as early as last night that it was cold outside. She headed to bed early and borrowed my Marmot sleeping bag, even with a warm room and the heat turned on. With the ballgames over, and I'm not being a big tv watcher, the evening ended pretty early. Sadie and Stella decided they were too comfortable to move from the living room and spent another night sleeping in the same spots they took hours earlier.

The daily routine is slowly stepping back to the one of the past two years. The hounds are still waking me up a little earlier than I like but that seemed to have started with the Daylight Savings time change in November. So they wake me up, they go outside quick for their first trip of the day. They always think breakfast is served when they come back inside, so they do not stay outside long.

At 6:00am or 6:30am, their breakfast is not served ... nor at 5:35am. What is different, recently Heidi is up before any of them, with a full body shake and enough flapping ear noise to wake me up. She has actually been going outside every morning with the other two hounds. That has not happened in months, if not years. She was a sleep until lunch type of basset hound.

We return for about an hour of sleep with breakfast being served around 7:30am. The thing that bothers me is not the hounds waking me up but when I glance out the window and see it is so cold that the storm windows are completely covered in frozen condensation. That means the temps are low teens if not single digits.

With bloodhounds temperature will not make a difference. They don't want to wear jackets, sweaters or shoes ... just nose to the ground or inside the snow and away they go. One thing I have to be really aware of though is Stella is starting to expand her traveling past a "house rule" boundary. One of those "give 'em an inch they take a mile" type of things.

Luckily the couple of times I have had to scream her name as I am running toward the suspected location - she will turn around and come sprinting towards me.

There wasn't much done this morning with the temperature at 9° our first trip outside and 13° at the 9:15am trip outside. Heidi never even opened her eyes when I asked if she wanted to go outside for the 2nd time of the day. She had moved to 'her' other spot, on the chair in the living room.

Sadie and Stella though charged outside for about 15 minutes of searching, sprinting and a little play. Once again my trusty Nikon D3200 failed when trying to focus to take photos of them playing. I cannot say that after a year and some months being a Nikon owner that I am a happy customer. I just realized that in my recent posts this past week I may have said D3100 instead of D3200. The D3200 is my correct model number.

I would go back and edit those posts but I have a fear that Blogger will move that old post to the most recent post after I click "update" ... that seems to be an issue lately. Is it time for me to seriously consider moving the blog to WordPress?

I started making some afternoon coffee with the temps hitting a high today of 24°. I found out I was down to my last cup of grounds so it was off to the store buy some, a 25 mile trip. Maybe I'll start buy coffee online and keep one bag of coffee ahead. Plus, stay warm.

There was still time for some afternoon jogging by Sadie and Stella. About all Heidi did for the afternoon was a quick trip behind the Yews to dump tanks and come back inside.

Sadie had been pretty nice to Stella since she arrived last August, they are great friends ... that is until Sadie has "her" container of The Greek Gods Greek Yogurt to lick out ... I don't think she is into sharing that.

Later on they still wanted to go out one last time for the day and double check that no one had been in their field while the snow flew. They would probably be able to stay outside all the time because they love it so much ... in the end they are always happy to come back inside where it's warm.

Yes, it does feel different without Winston around. He loved the snow and loved licking out the container that had the very last part of  yogurt, cottage cheese  or on a rare occasion ... pudding.

It's heading for the 40's here in a few days in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana .. all that snow will turn to mush and a really wet and soggy backyard / field.

Blogger Policy Change Effective Today

I don't know how I missed this announcement from Google Blogger, but it was on my blogger dashboard this morning. I was going to state the policy change in my own words but thought instead of just copy and pasting the notice. In a nutshell, for some readers it might change the way they follow my blog and other blogs.

Please read the statement below:

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In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

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Feel free to email me if you have questions or need help making adjustments. I know I am a little confused by what they are saying. Basically all the big companies want control of their sites and traffic.

Sad.

First Snow Of This Winter

I see that Blogger is having issues again. I posted my last blog post on Saturday afternoon January 9. I see after I made an edit to Saturday's post this morning, Blogger changed the date of my Saturday's blog post to today January 10. I know it's nothing ... really ... but stuff like that drives me crazy.

Woke up in the middle of the night, but it wasn't Winston's whine I heard. It was a snow plow barreling down the highway with me hearing howling winds up here on the hill after that snow plow passed the house. So I was pretty sure the local weatherman was a few days off with his prediction the other day of snow showing up in the middle of this week. Even wunderground.com, my weather channel, predicted snow Wednesday.

So as I opened the door at 5:21am to let the hounds outside I saw my Mini Cooper S covered in wind blown snow. A few friends have suggested to me over the years living here, to convert my carport into a garage, it would prevent wind blown snow settling on my vehicles. I'm "old school". I like that the house still has the original but painted aluminum siding. I like that all the cabinets and counter tops, along with the stove that almost caught fire a few weeks ago ... are the original 1975 feature.

What has kept me from changing that to a garage is a different reason besides being the original design. It would block the view I have out the large window when I sit at my kitchen table either eating or being on my laptop.  I remember in 1979 my great aunt and I sat there drinking iced tea as I took a break in the summer sun while painting the overhangs. I never knew I would end up living in this house back in 1979. I am not from the area but my parents, grandparents were.

So Stella, Sadie and Heidi sprinted out into the snow at 5:25am. Of course Heidi stayed under the overhang and wasn't outside more than 30 seconds. The only reason Stella and Sadie came back to the door so fast to be let in after their trip outside ... Stella thinks it's time for breakfast.

It wasn't. Not at 5:30am. We all caught a few hours of sleep before we were up for the day. As you can tell, as it probably does with  your dogs, snow seems to give them more energy. Stella and Sadie played as soon as they stepped onto the snow covered driveway.

Just as fast as they started ... they stopped playing and sprinted a few laps around the field. I would have had more photos of that but my trusty Nikon D3100 that I told you about a few days ago ... was back to not working for a short time.

Just a side note:  At 10:43am Stella is whining beside my desk chair wanting lunch. Not going to happen. The photo below is what I call her Phase II of begging to be fed lunch. Phase I is the whining beside my desk chair and Phase III is when she is howling. Phase II .... she lays her ears back and looks as pretty as possible ... "look at me, I need to be fed".

 

She tried to enlist Sadie to help ... but Sadie doesn't care

 

 Heidi comes out in 15° weather - Believe me, she wasn't outside long  :)

Between the two NFL games, ALL the hounds had their nails cut. Only Sadie needed bribing but all of them got a peanut butter bone after they were finished.

Last time I looked the snow was flying horizontal outside ... so the hounds and I spent the rest of the afternoon hibernating inside.

That's it from the "tropics" from Southern Indiana for today.

My Blog Has A Special Reader

First of all I am going to include some photos of the hounds that were taken this morning. They have nothing to do with this blog post but there are a few good photos of them, if I do say so myself. It will break up the paragraphs of this LONG blog post.

Sadie Letting Me Know That Stella Is Outside Of Her Boundary

I am sure that most of us that have or had blogs, never realized where our words or photos on our personal blog would reach. We don't even think about how far away readers come from or the total number of readers that would return daily, hourly or with every updated new post. Many of you made a blog just to add photos of your travels for family and friends so they could see and keep updated with your travels. My blog started October 2011 about the RV lifestyle I had just found out about and I was interested in doing that. Over the years it changed direction and moved to more about my hounds instead of RVs.

A couple of years ago I even stopped and deleted the blog. I shut off the domain name. Due to blogging being an addiction to someone like me, I brought the blog back in time to recover the same domain name and Blogger could bring all of my blog back online. Sure they deleted a lot of my photos but it didn't take that long to reload the photos.

Anyway ... where was I? Stella just came over to my desk chair doing her Phase I of begging to have her lunch at 11:35am ... you would think she would at least wait until after 12 noon. She hasn't started howling yet, that is usually her last resort. (~smiling)

I think some of you might find this to be a very heartwarming story ... but also show bloggers, like yourself, you never know what your words or your photos may do for someone that is having a bad day, a bad month or even a bad year. In my case it is a mom that read my blog to her disabled son, who laughed at all the hound photos and for some reason became quite attached to Winston.

He is my blog's "very special reader". -- {I forgot to mention that all quotes were pre-approved by mom & son}

This past fall as I did less yard work outside, most of my blog posts and photos, if not all of them ... were taken in my backyard with the hounds roaming the field by day and sleeping on the couch at night ... I was becoming a little bored with it. I was sure if I was bored than the blog readers were becoming bored, with some of them not coming back.

So last month on December 11, 2015 ... I made a post telling everyone that I was making the blog a 'private' blog, where I could document the hound's lives for only me to see. More like a personal journal instead of a blog. Later that I afternoon I received an email from a reader that 'blew me away'.

"Winston, he stole my heart, they all did actually. My son, who is disabled, really enjoyed me reading your blog to him and he would look at your hounds photos and laugh out loud when he saw the action photos. He misses your hounds too."

I am not really sure why I went with my plans of shutting the blog down from public to private, but I did. I guess my feelings were too strong, that I no longer wanted to write about my boring life for all to read. I was being selfish and looking only at me and not the 'big picture'.

During that next week I received a lot of emails wondering if I would reconsider putting the blog back online so all could read. There were more people than I had ever imagined, telling me they loved coming to my blog just to see the photos of the hounds, and it didn't make any difference what they were doing.

So December 22, 2015 I sent out a few emails to some people, including this mom, saying that I was going to bring back my blog to a public status, where everyone could read it. This was also only 3 days after Winston had hurt his back. Not only did I want to document what was taking place to help him recover, I wanted to post photos I could use as a reference during the process.

I also felt after all the years of my blogging and all those readers that came here only to read about the hounds and see the photos, deserved to know what happened to Winston just 3 days prior and would want to follow along during his recovery process.

I felt more than any other reader, that one "very special reader" needed to know what happened to Winston.

It was a short time after I sent out the 'reopen' emails that I received this from the mom that read the blog to her disabled son.

"That is the BEST news I've heard. We sure do miss the hounds"

That's not all though ... these next few quotes will show fellow bloggers just how much influence your blog may have on someone's life.

After I broke the news on the blog that I had to put Winston down, I heard from the mom.

"My son stayed sad ALL DAY and then last night he asked me to print out pictures of the hounds. He had me write all their names on the pictures EXCEPT for Winston's name. He went to his room came back with the Best Buy advertising flyer, took my scissors off my desk and did his best to cut out the word "BEST" then took tape and used almost the roll to tape the word "Best" on the bottom of Winston's picture, THEN he had me write the name "Winston" after the word BEST. All the hounds are taped to the wall right now. Winston's is face level to him. He has leaned his face against Winston's pic a few times. I am so shocked how he took to Winston like this. Especially since he has not ever saw the dogs.  I am suspecting Winston may have reminded him of a stuffed puppy that he had when he was a young boy which had the big ears and close to the same color as Winston."

I cannot tell you how many times I read that paragraph over and over. As bad as I was feeling about losing Winston just the day before, this "special reader" was feeling even worse ... a million miles away.

Like any good idea ... I had one pop into my thick skull, just out of nowhere, it was just there. For this "special reader' I wanted to tell him all about Winston, the hound he fell in love with. I wanted to show him when Winston wasn't much bigger than a 24oz plastic Pepsi bottle. I wanted to show him that Winston use to have a huge bloodhound named Bertha, bigger than Sadie, who taught Winston everything because she thought Winston was her puppy. She even taught him to be a squatter instead of lifting his leg.

As I went through my photo file of Winston, picking out certain ones to load int the blog, I started feeling better. The more I wrote, I felt better, so I couldn't imagine but was hopeful it would make this "special reader" feel better also. By the time I was finished I had uploaded 121 photos for "Winston's Story", linked at the top of the blog page.

Sadie, Stella and Heidi had just returned from a short fast trip outside ... when I had this in my email inbox ---

"The boy is in love all over again. Ran out of ink printing out the Winston puppy pics. And, he has someone looking through a HUGE stove box full of his stuffed toys, he pointed to Winston's photo and they are looking outside in the shop through that box for his stuffed puppy. That baby pic did it. My son knows he has a puppy like Winston."

Then the next day ... something else ---

"We are still looking for his beagle stuff dog, it was black with brown and had big ears."

The latest news from the mom arrived this morning ... "We now have Winston wallpaper. It is not too bad for cost, under a $100 and will cover a wall space of 4 feet by 10 feet!"

Winston would have been happy to have this "special reader" as his friend. He would would have given him "that look", as he looked up at his new friend, wagged his tail back and forth ... waiting for his new friend to pet him ... or give him a treat to eat, or maybe some of his pizza crust.

I am watching college basketball and the NFL Playoffs this weekend with hopes I'll start feeling a little better. That prediction the weatherman made yesterday of 51° and sunny is a little off today with 47° and a lot of rain here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana.

Stella Goes To The Dog Food Store

I was starting to get low on dog food for Sadie and Stella.  Heidi eats a grain free food for her allergies and a 28# or 30# bag will last almost 58 days for her. As usual when I get low on dog food I always look at Heidi's Skin spreadsheet where I track daily and rate her skin condition from 1-5, with 5 being the worst. I also list what dog food is being used and the main protein ingredients. I just want to check to see if I should change her food.

For some reason Heidi has been itching almost out of control these past few days. Yet when I look at where she is itching, the skin is perfectly normal. So I am going back to Earthborn No Grain food, and a blend I have not tried yet ... Primitive - turkey, chicken with whitefish meal.

Before I left though, Sadie and I had a nice inside game of fetch. I was at the kitchen table on my MacBook Air, taking in the great scenery outside a large window ... when I hear the bone drop on the floor next to my chair ... Sadie was looking up at me asking for a game.

Stella does not fetch a bone but the previous owner told me she does like to chase and catch frisbees. We will try that next spring. Consequently Sadie had the game of fetch to herself.

Stella has no interest in chasing a bone.

You might remember that I mentioned a few weeks ago that Stella was showing separation anxiety while I was gone. She was perfect from Aug 30 - Nov 24. I got over confident and went down to see a friend and his wife for a "day trip". I was gone about 12 hours and came back to a bedroom that was destroyed. The worse damage by a hound I had seen in the 28 years of having them.

She DID have the reputation and I knew that when I picked her up. Anyway that is a different story. BUT, because of that I decided why not ... I'll take her to the dog food store today because they allow dogs inside and there would be no chance of her destroying the seats in my FJ, if I were to leave her outside in the FJ.

You would think with a hound that loves to eat as much as she does that she would have LOVED that store. They have the open boxes of bone treats in bulk she could at least smell before I bought them. I was even was prepared to control her from eating the bone treats out of the box ... That was not a problem.

She must have thought she was going to the vet. Or maybe she thought I was taking her somewhere and was going to leave her. She jumped out of the FJ, attached to the 6' leash in my hand and was nervous right from the start. Then she wouldn't go inside the store. Once I got her inside just enough to close the front door ... she sat down and refused to move. I got her to move and she was skittish, scared as we walked in the back part of the store to grab the bag of food.

Stella loves to ride ... even laid next to the bag of Heidi's dog food and slept some on the way back. She was THRILLED to be home when she jumped out of the back of the FJ ... with that familiar howling bark. So, she must have thought she was going somewhere to be left or I was giving her away. I guess we will have to take more trips.

Still no playing by the hounds outside today. There was light rain and they have no interest in staying outside very long.

They did notice people down in a building in front of the field I take photos of on occasion. It could be interesting in the future, depending on how much noise there will be. The new owner is converting a duplex apartment into a child daycare center ... with a little rural touch. So I am not sure how much noise of excited and happy kids playing outside will carry up to the yard but that will definitely peak the interest of two bloodhounds that love people.

On the afternoon trip outside, Stella thought there might be a chance for another ride in the FJ and was a little disappointed we were not going anywhere. She ended up back inside taking an afternoon siesta.

Of course her paw was touching her bone just in case Sadie decided it was hers based on those Bloodhound Property Laws I mentioned the other day. Sadie thought we should negotiate whether she was coming back inside. She refused to move for longer than I had expected. I finally won the argument without offering any bribes.

Here are a couple of photos of the past, one of Heidi about a week after I brought her home. She was healthier than now, very pretty, with some minor documented skin allergies. She is laying on "her" brand new dog bed I bought the day I picked her up from Guardian Angel Basset Rescue. She was unaware of the Bloodhound Property Laws until Sadie decided that was her bed. Heidi decided sleeping on my bed was a better deal anyway.

This next photo is of Maggie. You may have seen her name mentioned in the Winston Bio page or in recent posts. By the time this photo was taken she was full of cancer. You can see the swollen lymph nodes under her neck. She also had tumors inside her lungs. It wasn't a week after I noticed them until I had to put her down. I brought her home from the vet that July 4th weekend so she could enjoy a couple of more days at home. Surgery was not an option due to her weak condition. When it was over, the vet staff was crying in front of their next customers as we carried her out to my 4Runner.

I might start something new on this blog, like ending my posts on occasion with a "blast from the past", and show some photos of the past basset hounds I have had. Maybe today could be a start for that to happen.

Oh, I almost forgot another photo. For the 2nd time in 3 days, an Indiana State Patrol car was heading my way, parade speed down the center of the the highway. I grabbed my trusty Nikon D3100 to get a few photos of the monstrosity loaded on the back of the flat bed trailer. A line of cars surrounded it. I don't really know if it was coming from the 3rd largest military base (inland) in the USA or it was some large farm equipment. My camera didn't know either since it decided for the thousandth time not to work. By the time I turned it on and off, then took the lens off and back on ... this was the only shot I could come up with. I'll not repeat here what I said to the camera.

The weather never changed today. It may have been dark overcast clouds, with drizzling off and on rain but the high temperature still hit 51°. It will be the same temperature tomorrow only trading dark clouds for sunshine. Don't pack you bags thinking you want to move to the "tropics" of Southern Indiana because of the great weather ... by Sunday the high is suppose to be 28° and snow by next Wednesday.

I think Sadie and I need more games of fetch to pull me out of the ditch here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana.

I Haven't Adapted Quickly

Something wakes me. By the time I get my bearings I realize it's in the middle of the night. I'm guessing between 3am - 4am. The times just 4 days ago I would hear a whine from Winston out in the gated area of the living room. That would wake the other hounds one by one. I'd put my shoes on as fast as I could, grab my coat, prop open the door, get the t-shirt harness and catch Winston on the move to slide it under him.

Now, it really wasn't a whine that woke me. A whine you would do anything to hear again ... even if it were to take place at 3:30am. I almost beg someone or something to hear it again. I lay there in the dark and my mind takes no time to wake up and is going at speeds of an Indy500 car going across the "yard of bricks". An overwhelming feeling of sadness comes over me. Even the word sadness is not a good description, this feeling is worse.

No ... it's different now. That wasn't a whine I heard to go outside. There isn't a reason to rush out of bed and get outside. It's a feeling that makes you wonder how long is this going to keep coming back in the middle of the night.

I reach my arm to the right and feel a sleeping Heidi buried under her two Mexican blankets. I hear Sadie snoring from her stretched out position on the floor, her body half on the floor and half on the dog bed. Stella is so quiet you don't know she is there, rolled into the tightest ball ever, sleeping.

Soon after my thoughts move down the avenue of doubt. Did I do something wrong? Did I give him enough time to heal? Did I misread what I thought were signals from him telling if he was in pain or not? How could this had happened?

Those feelings and questions don't only happen in the darkness of the early morning. They happen at the most unexpected times. Maybe while walking the bloodhounds, realizing you are standing in the middle of the house during the day with no intention of walking anywhere, looking at a photo ... even looking into the eyes of Sadie, Stella and Heidi.

This is only the 3rd day --- it feels like a lifetime. How great would it be if people adapted to life changes as fast as a hound does?

Watching ballgames doesn't help. I can't focus at all, let along finish the book I was reading on December 18. Walking the hounds only delays the next rush of bad feelings. At least the hounds are enjoying it as they deserve to. I thought writing, posting to the blog was helping but really that is also just a delay mechanism.

I took off driving yesterday thinking that a roadtrip of some sort just for a couple of hours would help. Six miles later I make a u-turn and come back home.

Then I remember Winston's last 12 hours ... how he turned down water, sniffed my hand of kibble then looked up at me not eating any of it ... or how he had to lower himself one small step at a time with is front paws to get into the position to lay on his stomach .. how he could barely sit up from that down position ... the yelp ... and his looks at me. I know, as hard as it is to accept ... I made the right decision and in time I will feel better again.

I continue to get blog comments, emails ... more than I ever expected. I look at blog traffic numbers and am surprised again on what has taken place. All the blog comments and emails help me during this time. I know eventually things will get better and I never expected a fast resolution ... but it feels like a lifetime.

It's dark, dreary and rainy here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana.