Sadie & Stella Don't See Deer Again !!

I am beginning to think that Sadie and Stella need to go in for some maintenance on their noses. For the 2nd time this summer I've seen deer close to me and close to them with no response. For the 2nd time in 14 hours, two deer have been within 30' last night and at the first corner this morning ... no response by the hounds.


It looks like we may have a couple of curious new neighbors. Last night around 6:30pm Sadie, Stella and I were heading out for our 3rd walk of the day but NO CAMERA ... big error. Just as we turned the corner of the house and stepped toward the yard there they stood, two deer not 30' from the edge of the yard ... just as shocked as we were. None of us moved, the deer the hounds and I just stood still so the others could not see us. Even when the deer turned and sprinted for the woods, neither Bloodhound chased after them.  (strange)

This morning started like any other walk early in the morning. We were a little later today, just past 9am. At this time I did not see who was staring at us again. Sadie slowly strolled to the wet field and Stella stopped to eat some nice tall, wet, green grass. Little did I know what I would see up ahead.

I thought I saw deer at the first corner of the walk but without my glasses on I can't see distance that clear. So I focused the 200mm zoom lens and sure enough, there they stood. A mom and baby looking at us again. I don't believe it was the same two from yesterday. I turned to look to see if Stella was going to take off after them ... she had her nose to the ground totally unaware there were deer in the area.

Same response from Sadie. She had no clue that two deer were within eyesight and close enough to chase. I saw the deer turn and walk around the corner and knew they would not be there by the time we arrive.

The closer we got to the corner Sadie decided that yes, something had been in this area but didn't show that bent out of shape excitement that she usually has when her nose locks into a strong scent.

Stella was on her own pace, taking her time exploring the field. She finally came trotting toward me to catch up. Still, she did not show any 'deer urgency'.

By the time I turned the corner the 'light bulb' had turned on in Sadie's nose and she was positive there were deer in the area area and took off sprinting for the far right corner ... the deer entry ramp down into the gully.

She was a day late and a dollar short in her search. The two deer were long gone, back at their camp telling their comrades about the two idiot bloodhounds they saw and were never chased. I'll be looking for them again between 6pm - 8pm, from inside and looking out the window, not to scare them off.

With both hounds enjoying the field in totally opposite directions I was able to catch some butterflies this morning. I am going take the camera with me on the afternoon walk today because again last night the field was full of butterflies.

Stella met Sadie and I on our return trip. She had just crossed our path and was headed north when I said "over here", so she stopped and waited on us.

Sadie let the butterflies alone this morning. This one was about a foot in front of Sadie's nose but she didn't charge the butterfly this time.

Stella did a little trotting this morning during her walk. She does this in the same part of the path almost every day now.

On the way back, both hounds needed to check out the area again where the deer stood. Like me, they couldn't believe they had missed them.

I kept walking and decided I'd let the hounds come back to the house when they wanted to. I guessed that by the time I went in and changed from boots to shoes, then bring the boots back outside to dry out in the sunshine that they would be at the door ready to come inside.

I was right.

It looks like the utility crew is back to check on their new installation.

With the forecast of a high of 86° today, this will be the coolest part of the yard. I need to get a nice chair to put out there.

When I got to the corner of the house to go inside, Stella was still back at the edge of the woods. By the time I was at the door to come back outside with my boots, she was standing at the door whining to come inside.

With my new plants watered this morning and the high temps of today I'll not be doing much more outside until later this afternoon. The ACs have already turned on automatically so the heat must have arrived early. It's not quite 11am yet.

With spending time inside today I'll have time to put a couple, yes, TWO more posts today. I have some photos I took Sunday afternoon right after the hounds had lunch ... all three of them spent some time laying in the sunshine, even Sadie and that's something that deserves a blog post.

The other post will probably have a few readers shaking their heads ... but once again I can explain everything like I have before. Basically the day or month might be different than before but the story is still the same ... stay tuned in for that one.

I am in my 2nd business day waiting for the local utility company to at least stop by and check the tree limbs touching the transformer and wires that lead into my house from the utility pole.

I can already see it's going to be another fine day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

An Active Sunday Morning Walk

Since it dropped into the 50's last night after reaching a high of 80° yesterday I knew the field was going to be extremely wet this morning as I put on my North Face snow boots. That would make no difference to Sadie. While I was lacing up the boots I decided Stella would have what I call total freedom this morning ... she could go anywhere she wanted at her pace ... I was not going to be 'herding' the hounds this morning.

It was a perfect quiet morning for our walk that started a little after 9am. Things were back to 'normal' since we our internet service had been fixed on Saturday. I was up early to upload over 300 photos to Google Photos and Flicker since July 26. I then move them into their own individual albums. Before I knew it, my 'free' data period was over at 8am. A little more reading online, two cups of coffee and Sadie let me know it was time to walk.

Since she was very active this morning I was sure we had just missed some early deer appearances. A lot of things were getting Sadie's attention just after starting the walk through the wet grass and wild flowers that are starting to grow for their fall cut.

Stella followed along laidback as usual, casually walking one paw at a time ... in no hurry.

That is until she saw Sadie sprinting toward the middle of the field. She actually ran again for the 2nd morning in a row. I know what is wrong with her though. It's her rear hips. She couldn't jump up in back of the FJ yesterday for our local drive. I helped her up as he put her front paws on the bumper ... Sadie was already inside ready to take off.

The way both hounds acted and me being so far away that I had to use the 200mm zoom on these next three photos, I was sure that we had just missed some deer. I thought they might be back in the far right corner of the field so I glanced in that direction once I caught up with the hounds.

It was good to see Stella running slowly but hard enough that both of her rear paws were off the ground as she ran. She and Sadie were all over the first part of the field up to the first corner turn.

As I turned into the sunlight you could see the heavy dew reflecting off the grass and wild plants.

Just as I was about to reach the rolls of hay I turned to find Sadie staring at me in the far right corner. She was having a blast running all over the field. Stella was not in sight as he was behind us on her own path.

By the time I had walked by 4 of these rolls of hay, Sadie had sprinted toward me and ran right up next to me. She covered quite a distance in the time it took me to walk only halfway in front of the hay rolls.

As usual I could barely see Stella's red coat through the growing field as I was on my way back home. The cooler overnight temps had chased away all the mosquitoes so far this morning. I forgot to mention the other day, that a light spray of 50/50 water and vinegar DID keep the mosquitoes off of me on my afternoon walk. Bethers had suggested 100% vinegar but I thought I'd try the 50/50 solution first since I had that mixed for Heidi's skin allergies.

I told Sadie to 'go get Stella' ... she had Stella in her sights of her nose within a minute.

She ran towards Stella and tapped noses, and like always Stella turned to follow Sadie. That message by touching noses must be pretty influential for Stella to follow Sadie's direct order.

I started to call the hounds for them to move over to my path on the last part of the walk. Today I decided to keep quiet and see what they would do. I was pretty sure that eventually Stella would walk into the north part of the yard near the property line pole that I was asked to leave up years ago.

By the time Sadie was almost home, she was soaked from the field. Her legs and paws were just as wet.

I might want to get back inside to make a small breakfast but that doesn't mean that Stella wants to. She is always on her on 'clock' unless food is mentioned ... then she will run for the house.

Still waiting for her to finish.

Slowly but surely she starts towards the yard. Instead of a direct route toward me, she walked far to her right and entered the yard just inside the property line pole. I find that to me not only interesting but amusing.

Sadie wasn't going to wait much longer. She was reading for her morning nap ... Stella took her time, she wasn't going to hurry for anyone.

The Daylilies are trying their best to show me they can grow after planting them only a week ago. I'm not sure how long it will take for them to get fully grown but they will cover a lot of area and still have nice blooms. That's the reason I chose them.

This is to the left of the porch under the living room windows Saturday afternoon.

This is from this morning showing how they had closed over night. They will get shade until about noon. Then that sunshine moving to the west will blast them with bright sunshine all the way to sunset.

I am going to go on a plant exploration sometime this week in Bloomington and hopefully find some Hostas to add to these areas. Once I get all the planting done and the ground settles a little, I'll cover all the exposed ground with Cypress mulch.

A little rambling before I go this morning. I had so many pictures from this mornings walk and was only able to get my choices down to 21 pictures for the blog. With the day as nice as it's going to be I can see later tonight I'll do another blog post with pictures of the hounds taken throughout the afternoon. I continue to read "Inside of a Dog" by Alexandra Horowitz. I can see a lot of what she says in all three of the hounds.

I really cannot figure out my internet data usage. By paying only for 20Gb per month and only 2Gb per month on my phone I am still very careful how I use and what I do on the internet.

Here is what I find strange and it makes me wonder if it is costing me more data to use HughesNet Gen5 for my internet service. When I had Excede Satellite I averaged below 500Mb of data per day. My internet use has not changed just because I have changed service.

I get faster speeds now ... 48Mbps instead of 10-12Mbps. My free period changed from midnight to 5am with Exede but 2am-8am with HughesNet. I normally use my free data early in the morning but not every day. This morning uploading those 300 photos took almost 200Mb of data, luckily it was on my extra data that HughesNet gives me for free.

Friday when my internet service was down I viewed and did my normal online reading on my Verizon account on my iPhone. By the end of the day I had used 358Mb, way below my self imposed 667Mb average.

Yesterday after the tech rep fixed my internet service, it was past 12 noon. I did my normal internet reading but spent a lot of time away from the computer. I cannot say that I did anything different than what I did on Friday with my iPhone.

Last night at midnight when I logged my daily data use into my spreadsheet ... Hughes told me I had used 895Mb !!!!

895Mb from 1pm to midnight compared to my use on Friday with Verizon 358Mb doing the exact same kind of internet surfing. My Activity Monitor was showing I had used a little over 500Mb of data.

My iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air had Wifi turned OFF during this time as part of my test.

The Google Chrome Extension I added a few weeks ago called Data Saver shows how much each website I visit uses in data. I can choose to look at their counts for 1 hour, 3 hours, 1 day, 1 week, 30 days and 60 day intervals.

In all cases Facebook was the leader in data use, using twice as much data as the #2 in line ... Blogger. My blogs use more data than any other website I visit except Facebook. If I use Google Photos or Flickr between 8am - 2am, then they are a close 2nd place depending on how many photos I am uploading.

So this morning after 4 hours, minus the time it took us for our walk ... I did the photos upload during my free period and I have not spent one second on Facebook ... I have only used 99Mb of data in a 4 hour period.

99Mb ... 25Mb per hour roughly ............ how could HughesNet show that I used almost 900Mb??? I would have had to been on the computer every minute of the day and night for that to be possible.

Also I have all automatic updates in the background .... shut off

Also I have an extension called Disable HTML5 AutoPlay that works well blocking videos that want to play automatically on different news and sports sites.

I have AdBlock Plus to do what it sounds like ... block ads.

I can't think of anything else I can do to stop any data "leaks". I'll be anxious tonight to see just how much data HugesNet tells me I have used after a very similar internet day compared to "their" 900Mb day on Saturday.

Since switching to the faster download speeds of HughesNet, my average data usage is 723Mb per day doing the same thing I did with Exede and averaged less than 500Mb per day.

Any ideas?

I cannot believe this weather we are having this summer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... it's been great.

It Wasn't HughesNet Gen 5's Fault -- Our Internet Service Was Out

I did not notice it storming Thursday night after I had moved to the living room away from the computer. How could that be, since it looked like it had stormed when I took Sadie outside around 10:30pm? The Reds game wasn't going well so I turned off the game and started reading a book ... only to fall asleep for an hour. Only when I went back to my computer around 11pm and could not get any websites to load did I realize I had a problem. I had lost my internet service.


I'll not go into the whole story. The same installer showed up Saturday morning for the service call that was called in by HughesNet. He also had installed my very first internet satellite system called Exede 3 or 4 years ago. When he changed my system this past April to HughesNet he used the same coax line that goes from the modem ... under the house ... and out to the satellite dish receiver. This morning he found out the line was bad, not the radio receiver on the front of the dish. So I am back online after a day and a half. It was a nice break from my internet addiction.

With the baby gate keeping Sadie and Stella in the living room while the two men did their work, the hounds were pretty excited to get outside after the techs had left. Of course they had to double check those footprints and van tire marks scents before we could go on a walk.

How the temperatures ever dropped to the low 60's this morning is beyond my knowledge base but I liked it. It will eventually get to 80° by late this afternoon but in the meantime the AC is off and all the windows are open with a solid breeze from the SW.

It was so nice outside that even Heidi decided to join us for part of the walk before she turned off to do her own thing, while Sadie, Stella and I walked on.

Hardly into the walk Stella had already started trotting to catch Sadie. When I see that I always hope she is on her way back to running full speed since she loves to run but hasn't been able to for some unknown reason.

Heidi was actually trotting a little also but she was really more into smelling every scent in the field instead of walking. I knew she would be turning into the field soon on her own exploration.

What a difference in her appearance compared to two summers ago.

After I turned away from Heidi, I barely caught Stella actually running to catch Sadie. Galloping more than trotting. They both took off around the corner, so I thought a deer sighting might be possible ... but nothing was there. They were just both feeling good with the cooler temps.

Just as I arrived at the first corner I turned to check on Heidi a final time to see if she was headed our way or somewhere different. She had already found a scent to keep her occupied.

Again ... as I turn back to the bloodhounds, Stella is running again to catch Sadie. This is more running than I have seen her do in almost a year. I'd have to go back and look at pictures or blogs posts to get an accurate time.

Not a lot of eating stuff today ... just a lot of snooping and sniffing around.

As I neared home I could see Heidi looking up at us. The camera rarely catches the movement of her wagging tail. She has been a happy basset hound lately. She is back to growling at herself as she plays inside or out in the yard. Once the bloodhounds try to join in her fun, she will stop playing. They are too big and stronger than she likes.

For once she was not sleeping in this next picture. She was rolling on her back from side to side to scratch it, then would just lay there enjoying the sounds and scents of the field ... then roll back and forth some more.

Once I told Sadie 'go find Heidi', it didn't take her long to run at her. Sadie will always perk up her nose and ears when I ask her to find either Heidi or Stella.

There were not a lot of butterflies this morning but this one was extremely tiny. I was surprised when I saw the picture that it had so much color.

No, that is not Sadie taking a nap next door. It happens at least one deer a year but they usually end up in my driveway or the culvert and at times in the front yard. This time the deer ended up in the neighbors yard. He called the state highway department for them to pick it up yesterday but they didn't show up. This morning the neighbor was moving it off his property with his ATV.

I was surprised to hear the deer had been there since yesterday afternoon. I saw it last night about sundown as I checked my mailbox. Luckily the hounds did not smell it and want to take off to check it out. Most of the time someone will pull up in their pickup truck with a friend and will take it away. They are usually not by the side of the road long.

Sadie is in the opposite direction of the deer. She is behind the house not noticing anything about a deer next door.

It's such a nice day today that I decided to go ahead and post this now instead of waiting. I don't think I will be around the computer until late tonight since the weather is so nice. I think it's time to head out for a local drive with the camera and see what I can find.

I cannot describe how nice of a day it is here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.