We Are Back To Blogging Publicly

I cannot really go into why we are back blogging publicly since it's too in depth to explain, would take too many pages and I still might not have all the answers to the question 'why' ... but here we are back to blogging publicly with plans to continue. I am not sure about the frequency though but this is a start. I will say before I get started that all the hounds are doing fantastic and I think you will see that Sadie has not changed, Stella has gained all of her lost weight back as has Heidi. These photos were taken this morning, and Heidi's were taken in the past 10 days as she prepares for wintertime hibernation.

I can't say there are any drastic news announcements since our daily activity is about the same. The weather is trying to stay cool but it's still humid most days. We get 2-3 walks in per day yet Heidi is back to boycotting any kind of activity that takes that long to complete the walk. She is not into counting how many steps she takes besides from her couch to her food dish.

Sadie as usual leads most of the walks while I have been letting Stella do her own walk, letting her go where she wants as Sadie and I pick her up on our way back. As far as deer go ... their noses need calibrated. Last Thursday on our afternoon walk, with both of their noses to the ground I heard tree limbs breaking only to see as I glanced into the woods a large deer turning and heading away from us down into the gully.

The hounds never knew how close the one deer was to them.

ATV traffic has continued but mostly only one neighbor riding late afternoon after school. I have a feeling that he has mounted some new field cameras that he checks daily.

I feel really good about Stella regaining her lost weight. I think if you look at them from the side it is a little hard to tell which is Sadie and Stella ... only the collar shows it's Stella. Nothing has changed since February as far as kind of dog food and not too much of an increase in quantity.

I can't say that I have finished and marked off many things off of my 'to do' list since we last blogged on the Wordpress blog sometime early September. When I went to reconstruct this blog, evidently I did not do a backup of that Wordpress blog that I was using as my main blog from August 1st until the middle of September.

I did have a backup .xml file of my old Blogger blog that was dated September 15 ... yet that was only posts, comments and pages ... not the template nor settings. So I have tried to rebuild the template into the same Blogger blog I had before deleting it. I'll slowly be making more adjustments, getting it as close to the old format as possible. I have added the Blog List with as many blogs as I can remember that I was following. I'll more of them as I find their url's or remember them.

A few weeks ago they removed those 8 rolls of hay that were parked in back of the field. Sadie is checkout those parking spaces in this photo. There is never a walk, no matter how many per day where she searches and explores most of the field.

While we were walking along the back of the field, Stella was way behind us ... in the middle of the lower part of the field.

After a couple of days of rain and overcast skies, you can see we are not having a lot of fall colors yet.

We have an alternate path on the way back now. I might have mentioned before, but it angles toward my north property pole. Luckily today when I called Stella's name, she turned around and headed our way to actually walk with us back to the yard.

She went from this pose of ignoring me to trotting into the yard without me calling her. I was facing the opposite direction when she ran past me ....

For the first time in 8 months ... she played, and wrestled with Sadie. Sadie may have felt it was time because as soon as Stella's front paws hit the yard Sadie rushed at her wanting to play. Stella returned the favor and they were off for a short period of time. I had to look back through the blog 'topics' of "Bloodhounds Playing" to see the last time I had blogged about her wrestling ... it was in February.

The high winds from last night cleaned up a lot of the yard that was full of leaves, although very few have fallen from the trees.

With my old Central Air Conditioner going on the repair list during the hottest days a few weeks ago ... I had to add a small window AC for my computer room. That small air conditioner pumped out more cold air than my older central air unit. Estimates are telling me it's around $3,000 for replacement. I'll have the fall and winter's cooler temps to come up with my next plan before next summer.

Since I was up too late last night watching college football from the west coast .. we woke up late and the hounds were more than excited to stop playing when they heard the question "do you want to eat" ... they stopped immediately and ran to the door of the house.

These next three pictures of Heidi were taken the past 7-10 days. She enjoys time outside by herself and will spend almost 1 hour outside before she stands in front of the door to let her know she is reading to come back inside. She never barks to let me know but knows that I am checking on her to see where she's at.

I have not taken her over to the vet to get her weighed but the times I have lifted her into the FJ, she 'feels' like 45 pounds, her normal weight from 2015.

With a lack of sleep, another full day of NFL football and trying to rebuild this blog ... I'm a little tired. I'll add more information from the 3-4 weeks we were offline (blogs deleted) but really ... you didn't miss much ... daily routine stays the same.

All is good for all of us here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

It Will Be A Wet Apple Festival

The raindrops started hitting the leaves outside of my bedroom window around 3am. It wasn't a heavy rain but a constant light rain. I finally fell asleep at 4am with no plans of getting up at 8am to feed the hounds. They would get breakfast when I woke up a little after 10am. It was still raining lightly but all three hounds went outside for their first bathroom break of the day. Apple Festival starts tomorrow night thru the parade on Sunday ... it is suppose to rain all weekend.


While the town fills with people, I will do a little grocery shopping this afternoon after this post and the hounds get their lunch. Then I'll stay inside my house all weekend, starting tonight, watching football and the MLB Playoff games.

Stella yelped last night on the couch while I was petting her ... I wasn't sure today if she would do the walk or not. It was a spot right above her rear hip between her upper leg and stomach. I could not feel anything swollen but didn't dig much to keep her from yelping again. She went back to sleep and I left her alone.

It was on the right side, on her upper side just above the upper leg or shoulder blade.

I didn't think she would go far so I let her do what she wanted as Sadie and I marched forward in the wet field and a few drops of rain here and their but not even a sprinkle. No rain jacket, just a t-shirt and my North Face snow boots to keep dry.

Sadie did her normal daily, every walk, routine ... exploring. She never looked back for Stella but just kept her nose to the ground and tracked scent.

Not quite 9-1/2 months old, great shape with a little gray on her muzzle. I still would like to know what that means with her licking her lower front leg in that one spot all the time. She normally does that licking while laying on her bed when I am getting ready to leave or at night just before we turn the lights out to sleep.

She was hard to get moving off her search this morning but I cannot leave her behind or she would never come back to the house.

She would explore this 7 acres for hours on end if I let her stay out that long alone.

As we walked back toward the house I did not see Stella anywhere through my lens. Had she snuck off again, even with a sore back???? Just as I was about to give up hope of finding her, I barely saw her in the lower part of the front field.

As I called her name she ignored me as usual and slowly meandered toward Hasler's.

About the time I got close enough to her to grab her collar, she looked up and started walking toward me and Sadie on our alternate path home. She kept following me as I kept repeating "come on" ... a nice surprise.

It would be pretty tall but that tree in the middle of the picture is slowly rotting. I need to cut that down either this fall and let it dry out to burn next spring or wait and see if it falls down over the winter. Yet it might not be rotted enough to fall for years to come.

Just in case it might be raining too hard on Friday to take our walk I thought I'd take the weekly leaf color pics today. Not a lot of color so far this year except for the few isolated spots throughout the field.

I like the different colors on ground level right now. The field is usually cut down by now so it's a lot of different colors that I miss because of that. Will they cut the field later this month??  I'm guess they won't.

Based on what the Mahogany tree is doing by the house, I am guessing this is a Mahogany tree in back of the field.

This is the edge of my north property line. I really do live in a nice area.

Stella led us back to the house which is much different than her usual routine. Maybe she wanted to get back inside due to a sore leg or back. I saw no limping from her, felt nothing swollen this morning and she did not yelp when I petted that area after the walk.

After 2am last night I still could not get to sleep so I got up and did all of the Apple software updates for the iMac, MBA, iPhone and the iPad Mini.  It took a long time for all of that. Just as I tried to download the photos to this blog the site was hung up and wouldn't load anything, even after I closed Blogger and reopened it.

About that time I saw on my Activity monitor a large download of data of some sort and I went from 63Mb to 215Mb just that fast and it would not have stopped unless I shut Safari down like I did. It must have been some sort of cache update in the background because I have all software updates turned off so they will not use up my data automatically.

It feels like a Friday but it's only Thursday ... should help with traffic and fewer Walmart shoppers. If nothing else I need to get out of the house so I'll head there after I feed the the hounds plus stop at the Auto Body Shop to talk to them about fixing or getting an estimate on the Z4.

All is good today ... may even get some house cleaning done later this afternoon.

Monday Morning Rambling

Stella took the lead of the walk this morning. I was going to let her do her own thing this morning ... and she did. It's a nice way to start the week, where at times she will have a different routine. There will be a slight change to my schedule this week since MLB playoffs are on almost every day and by the end of the week will mix in with College Football.
I was slightly surprised just how fast Stella was moving out ahead of us. I'd rather see her way out in front rather than way out in the back. If she is that far back she will not catchup with us, most of the time. The field is ugly right now with the wild flowers and weeds dying off ... fall is on the way.

Sadie never changes ... she explores the field every morning and afternoon.

Stella is looking good again without her ribs and hip bones showing like they were a few months ago.

Sadie eats less amount of kibble than Stella but its only to control her weight. It's never good for an older bloodhound to be overweight.

I just realized it was 32 days ago that I stopped blogging on my Wordpress blog.

Then this morning while I was walking I thought of starting a brand new Facebook account just to follow my interest. When I got home and found out that Taxa Trailers did NOT have a Twitter account, my interest in a new Facebook account grew. I would only list groups that I was interesting following like my FJ, Taxa Trailers, Casitas, all the Sports teams.

Sadie was in heaven this morning ... she had the whole field to herself to explore, Stella was left behind and out of our sight. She would be spending her 'walk' searching for and eating fresh deer scat.

It's going to be another beautiful day here today with a high of 81°, most of the week in the high 70's and rain by next weekend. I've thought of what Ralph told me the other day where he never rakes leaves but just mowed and mulches them. My problem is for some reason I cannot keep the mulching 'shoot cover' locked in place on the mower .. it blows off after a while.

Then this morning while walking I wondered if it was really saving time mowing them instead of raking. I guess it would take more time to rake them based on the small north corner I raked last week in 35 minutes. I could mulch the whole yard in 45 minutes so that answers that question. I guess I'll work on that cover a little bit more.

No sign of Stella anywhere on the horizon.

Holy Cow!!  Stella had wandered from way behind us over to the area between my neighbors houses. I had to tug at her collar hard to get her to move. I did NOT yell but kept quiet the whole walk.

Is Facebook an addiction? Is the need to blog publicly an addiction or does it fill in the gaps of a solo life with little social interaction? Why does the need for both Facebook and Blogging never go away?

After I grabbed Stella we used the ATV path to get back to our 'alternate path' home. That worked out pretty well. The field did not grow much after they cut it in July. I guess it really was a dry summer, not enough rain and when it did rain, it was not as much as forecast. All the storms moved north of us.

Today I'd like to rake this part of the yard. It would take me around 30 minutes to rake, put them in the container and move them to the driveway to burn them. Really the leaves have not ever started falling yet based on how many leaves are on the trees.

So it sounds like Facebook is back on and will be set up after this post.

It's a quiet Monday here in 'the tropics' of Southern  Indiana.