Nothing But Photos & Jif Peanut Butter

After the hounds finished their afternoon nap by waking up at the sound of crackers being opened for peanut butter ... Sadie, Stella and I went on an afternoon walk. Later, after I had finished the last of the peanut butter, Sadie cleaned out the top half of the Jiff jar then let Stella try getting the hard to reach peanut butter in the bottom of the jar. She decide that if she could just chew the jar to make it shorter, it would be easier for her tongue to reach the bottom of the jar.

Nothing but photos ... you can click the top photo to see the slideshow.

Most of the time it's movies at home on Friday nights in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Dog Food Changes & Stella's New Collar

Woke up to a bright and sunny 21° here in 'the tropics' this morning. Some of the rooms were in the mid 50's, it didn't seem that cold when we went to bed. It was time to buy gas and dog food, so I knew I was going to get out of the house today ... with a possible road trip, depending on what kind of dog food I was going to buy.

Over a cup of coffee I decided that Stella needed a new leash, one to give all of us a better chance of telling Stella and Sadie apart in the photos taken. Another factor in the possible road trip was if I was going to change brands of dog food for a final time.

Diamond Naturals is located right downtown at the local 'feed store' where the Fromm for Lrg Breeds was 25 miles away. I needed to buy only 2 more bags to get my free bag of Fromm. No doubts that all of that dog food would eventually be consumed in this house. I had just written last week sometime that I was happy with the Diamond Naturals for all the hounds ... over the time it took for them to eat the 40# bag, things changed.

Heidi was itching so much on clear skin ... it was past the point of obsessive. Stella was fine. All their coats are soft and they shine. Sadie started doing two things, one of them she had done before when on Diamond Naturals ... at night she was frantic to get outside, then sprinting to the field and eating grass, a LOT of grass. The new thing she was doing ... licking her lower leg about 1"-2" wide ... fully saturated but no hot spot, nor any chewing. She licked as much as Heidi itched ... Stella had no issues. To me that looked like they had issues with something in the food.

So like changing my blog back to Blogger for a final time ... I put Heidi back on Earthborn Grain Free and the bloodhounds on Fromm for Large Breeds. The Earthborn for Heidi has a min of 20% fat which is really high and protein of 38% but I think with that much fat and feeding her twice the recommended amounts, it would help her add some weight. Yet, maybe not, as some here have said she might have a metabolism issue, therefor cannot keep weight on ... whatever the case she will be getting better ingredients with the Earthborn no grain food.

Right after this post is published it will "Toe Nail Friday" ... where I will be cutting a total of 64 toe nails counting their dew claws. I look at it only as 3 hounds. Stella's toe nails have always been the perfect length and she doesn't mind getting them trimmed. Since I started just cutting a little bit every Friday/Saturday - Sadie's and Heidi's are slowly being decreased back to a shorter length. The sound of a dremil tool turns all the hounds into sprinting champions so that is not a possibility. Nail clippers are my only option.

Heidi made it out not only for the 1st trip of the day but she came outside voluntarily after lunch. She sprinted back to the concrete after I had carried her into the field. Maybe when it is warmer she will be more interested in getting back into the field.

I took Stella with me to T&T Feeds in Bloomington to buy her a new leash and pick up Fromm dog food. She stayed in the FJ this time instead of following me into the store.  I wanted to see what she would do if I left her alone in the FJ while I was inside shopping. She passed that test with flying colors. She loves going for rides and she did not bark or howl when I walked toward the store. Last night I was gone an hour and a half ... she had not damaged anything but she did move the chest of drawers enough to reach the drywall next to the door. There was nothing on the floor to show she had been digging at the drywall though. So she is on a winning streak of a few days/nights where there have been no damages when I am gone.

Those are lizards

I would have preferred a different color, further away from Sadie's red one but the choices were slim. The ones I liked were sold out in her size. Anyway we should be able to tell from now on, which bloodhound is Sadie and Stella. I didn't care for the faded pink one she came with.

Faded Pink One

The new one besides Sadie's red one. After the manicures we'll take off for a Friday afternoon walk.

In the meantime, with 99lbs of new dog food - a new collar ... all Sadie wants to do is go for a walk.

It's a beautiful Friday here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

It's Cold But We Walked The Field

As the temperature dropped near freezing, we still had time for a walk this morning - Mountain Hardwear down parka w/hood, gloves, camera. Someone mentioned it was hard to tell Sadie and Stella apart in the photos. I agree, so I am going to put the pink John Deere collar back on Stella. It fits better than the red one I found in a drawer and it will be easier to tell them apart, not only for you but me as well.

Of course I didn't think about before this range of photos. A couple of ways to tell the difference is, Stella's collar is bright red, Sadie's is faded red. Stella has a distinct black streak in her tail and Sadie does not. After this post though, just look for the pink collar on Stella, it's the collar she was wearing when I brought her home.

If I feel cold, then it's cold not only for me but Heidi also. She has been outside twice this morning but nothing was photo shoot quality. She also likes to walk under Sadie toward the water bowl and guzzle non-stop as Sadie sits above her and watches ... giving her the stare down this week. Water protection seems to be Sadie's theme of the week. Where Stella will come to me to move Sadie out of the view of the water bowl so she can drink water from that same bowl, Heidi doesn't care ... it's her water too.

Another successful walk this morning with Stella leash free. I had to say 'no' once, she came running toward me. Another time I had to remind her we were "going home" and she changed direction and headed back on the path with Sadie.

We were just outside with  no plans for taking a walk since it was early. Once they knew we were going for a walk, they came running toward me.

Once they saw me walking toward the field, they knew we were walking. It didn't take long for them to start their aerobic excercise with noses to the ground.

As we take that first turn to the right ... the coast is clear ... no unexpected deer or other animals.

This next photo is too blurry to put on a blog but I wanted to show you that nothing stops a bloodhound when their nose finds something. Even if that means Stella walking under Sadie and lifting her hips off the ground ... all for the same target.

Very little was said today during the walk. They searched the field and stayed as long as they wanted with what they found ... them came running to catch up with me.

It never fails, they may veer a different direction on the way back home, but once I say "let's go home" they both line up on the worn path to head back.

There was just one last thing they wanted to check out before coming back inside the house.

The yard takes a beating in the winter months. Mole traffic is running rampant. There are lots of tree limbs to be picked up and added to the new 2016 burn pile. Yet, the winter has been much warmer than normal here in the 'tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella Had A Perfect Day Yesterday

The move was so quiet, few noticed. No, not Stella ... the blog!  I was going to wait and then I decided not to. I had everything I needed updated, except the comments made on the WordPress Blog. Now there is a thought I just had ... hmmm, no don't even think about it.

Anyway, I could have copied and pasted all of the comments from the old blog I guess, but there were hundreds of them. Plus there wasn't a way of bringing your user name and blog link in that transfer. With a working converter that was required, comments would have come along for the ride.

I can live with it.

Next came the color and design of the older blog. I was planning to keep it but you know what happens when I have too much time on  my hands. It was not intentional but when I was finished, the blog template in Blogger looked almost like the theme I used on WordPress. I don't miss the header image the other blog had. My other sidebar had about 40 photos from the past. Some readers liked it, I liked it ... so I added a page at the top of this blog with some of those same photos listed. I will add more as I remember what I had listed before.

The redirect of the domain name was  painless and took just minutes before the .net address started transferring all visitors to the new residence. If you want, you can change all of your bookmarks back to the www.houndsandrvs.com. You don't have to because the .net side of the house will bring you to the same website. Even my old blogspot domain will bring you to the blog.

It's good to have everything, 4+ years of history under the same roof again, if you know what I mean.

Stella Stella Stella ... what a mystery.

The tests continued yesterday, keeping her in the room with Sadie and shutting the door. All tests were different amounts of time. I drove off a few times for short trips. All of the periods of time she was confined in the bedroom were short. Each time I opened the door to let her out ... there was zero damage. She was awarded in a positive way. Yes, dog treats were involved. Heidi and Sadie approved of the payoff method for Stella's training. I am beginning to think that all three hounds are hoping I leave more often now.

By early evening I needed to restock the kitchen. It was a short trip, a little over an hour. I quietly walked to the door when I returned not hearing a sound. I knew that both bloodhounds would be at the door waiting for it to open. It's the bloodhound way, with each one wanting to be the first one out the door.  I was expecting the worse ... nada ... not one piece of evidence she had been upset or frustrated while I was gone. She didn't even move the heavy chest of drawers to dig at the wall. There were no signs anywhere she had been upset.

Don't get me wrong ... I was thrilled with perfect results. It's just mystifying. What is getting her so upset at different times, different periods of time, to go crazy and tear stuff up? Living in the country means no pedestrian traffic walking by the house. Animals are not usually seen on this end of the house. The squirrels, the birds, an occasional rabbit are always seen on the south end of the house or opposite from where she is located.

Claustrophobic?  It seems like if she were, then every time she was shut up in a room 12'x15', then the results would be the same. I mean Stella can't be claustrophobic just certain days of the week.

The training will continue with positive reinforcement, even if it's nothing more than the time it takes me to walk down the driveway to the mailbox and back. On those trips I let her run the house but I also raise the blinds in the living room so she can see out the window. She looks at me every step of the way.

No matter what, Stella is and has been a great bloodhound since she arrived August 30, 2015. She has been great for Sadie, who didn't realize how strong she was as she tried playing with Winston or Heidi. She was leery at first when Stella arrived but they have been basically inseparable since that first day.

A few months back I mentioned I would start showing photos of the hounds I have had in the past, along with a short story about them. I had my first basset hound in 1987. I moved to this house in 1997 and since that time, I've had more basset hounds and bloodhounds than I ever planned on. The number of hounds at one time would range from 2-4 but most of the time 3 hounds seemed to be the common number. Many passed on at young ages due to cancer. Most lived to be 9-12 years old, but a few didn't.

Max was my first adoption from GABR in 1999. He was located in Peru, Indiana about 4 hours north of me. From the one photo supplied I just thought he was a basset and the size of car didn't matter. It almost was a bad bad mistake. Max was the biggest basset hound I had ever seen. They said he was 100% basset, but he was huge, way outside the AKC specs. The car I chose to drive that night in the middle of the week was small ... like really small ... a Miata, a 2-seat sports car.

As he walked out into their living room to meet me, the lady told me "he doesn't eat his dog food (Purina) unless you put cottage cheese on it". I found out the next day at the vet's office, that combination of cottage cheese on top of his Purina Dog Chow had him weighing in at 83lbs. He couldn't walk 30' in the backyard without sitting down to take a break. The daily hound walk was the same in 1999 as it was yesterday in 2016.

I took him off of the cottage cheese diet immediately, moved him to some quality dry kibble and walked him daily ... while slowly building up his distance without taking breaks. A couple of years later I had him down to 62lbs where he stayed the next 7 years. Of course being a lot longer than I had planned and heavier ... it was fairly exciting fitting him into the passenger seat of the 2-seat Miata.

I still had to shift the 6-speed manual transmission and that stick shift was now located somewhere under his right shoulder for most of the drive home. He slept most of the 4 hour drive with his butt pressed up against the passenger side door, shoulders across the console/gearshift and his head either on my knee or hanging down on the driver's side foot area.

It wasn't long after his arrival in the 'tropics' of Southern Indiana, I noticed one day that he was trying to walk back inside the house but was 8' to the left of the door. My suspicions were confirmed the next day ... Max was 100% blind at 5 years of age.

That didn't slow him down though. For the next 7 years he took the daily walk. He played with Arthur and later decided he new friend Winston wasn't a bad basset hound to hang out with.

Max's eyes didn't work but his nose was stronger than ever

Blind and leashed he still liked getting his running in

Winston's uncle Arthur would always give Max a lot exercise chasing him

That's Max, Winston and Bertha enjoying a hot fall day in the 'tropics' of Southern Indiana

The temps have dropped this morning to feeling very cold but it's still high 30's and we have yet to see a lot of days of single digit temperatures. It's been a good winter so far in the 'tropics' of Southern Indiana.