The Hounds Get In A Speed Workout

I knew as soon as I opened the door to let the hounds out before breakfast that it had to be in the 20's. It was freezing cold. In the short few minutes they took to finish breakfast I already knew we would be 'waiting it out' to see if it would warm up outside. My trusty iPhone weather was telling me it "feels like" 21° and that was enough confirmation to me that we'd wait. Sadie didn't understand that but she waited.

As soon as Stella's feet hit the field, she was off ... sprinting way ahead of Sadie and I, which is rare. I do mean sprinting when I say that. I guess the freezing cold air had energized her. She rarely slowed down and was all over the field darting from one area to another. The best way to describe her today during this walk is 'rambunctious'.

Sadie was also sprinting to different areas with nowhere in particular to go. They both looked like they were just running to run.

It takes a lot of ground speed to get their ears moving like that ... when the camera catches their ears in the up position, the hounds are flying faster than the speed of sound.

When both back paws are in the air at the same time ... same things ... flying.

Just because they liked the freezing weather didn't mean I nor Heidi did. She walked out this far after lunch, looked up at me after sniffing the ground and head back to the door to be let inside.

 So with any leaf raking canceled due to cold weather, there isn't much more planned for today ... at least outside. To warm myself up I decide to look through some photos from this past August and in keeping with the flying ear theme ... I thought I'd post these.

Do you feel warmer than 37° seeing these next few photos?

{Editor's Note}  From the comments below, Contessa said she would like to see Heidi's picture cropped and up close. I inserted it here so others could see it also. I am not sure if you get a notice that an update has been done or not, so I'll link this post for the cropped photo in my next blog post.

What Stella does best when it's really hot outside and the sun is beating down on her.

This is the butterfly that kept getting closer and closer to Stella while she slept. The butterfly was gone as soon as Stella lifted her head.

Since I got up while it was still dark outside and extremely early, I feel a siesta is required in preparing for one college basketball game at 7pm and then a college football game starting at 10:45pm.

A very frigid day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Decide I Needed To Work

I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have Sadie getting me away from my morning coffee, out of my desk chair and out into the field every morning. She will always sit quietly at the doorway into my computer room. While sitting straight and proud, almost like a pose, she will give me her stare down letting me know that it's time for a walk. This also happens throughout the day no matter where I might be.

It's going to be another beautiful day here in the tropics. I've adjusted to the colder temps and have waved bye to summer. I love hot weather but I do like the change of seasons. There is a little bit of good in every season and each has it's highlights with likes and dislikes. The hounds? Same stuff different day and I'm not sure they even care about the changes.

You might notice my photos lately on these morning walks are a little bit brighter or better quality. I have had some strange adjustments to the Daylight Savings time change we did last weekend. Where I should be getting up an hour earlier I seem to be going to bed an hour later and getting up later. That slides the morning walk from around 9am to 10am or later, thus the change in lighting for taking pictures.

Whenever I see Stella ahead of Sadie on these walks and/or Sadie venturing into the heavy brush between the field and woods, I suspect there has been a lot of deer traffic in the early morning hours. The local news on tv and in the newspaper is saying there is an over abundance of deer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. Some of the state parks are closing to the public, only open to deer hunters to thin out the herd of deer roaming in the area.

When Sadie was staring at the woods earlier in the walk I thought I could even hear the footsteps of deer moving over the leaves that had fallen to the ground. I listened really closely and thought it would be the chance to walk into those woods, look down into the gulley to see if I could grab a picture or two of them. The sound I heard though was not deer but the sound of falling leaves.

The worn path on the taller brush near the back of the field shows where deer move from this field, jump over a very short old metal fence into the field behind us. Stella was sure this is where they went sometime before we got there. She is right. I remember about 7 years ago in December, Sadie as a 2 year old took off  running in this same exact area, over that fence and into that field running as fast as possible for deer she saw. the 5-6 deer were out sprinting her by a mile but she thought she could catch them.

I couldn't catch her and it wasn't long before she was out of my sight. So I ran home to drive my truck around the the back of the field I had last seen her. I thought she might be sneaking around the huge turkey farm or at least see her wandering back home ... she was nowhere. I looked for an hour, it started snowing again and no sign of her. A little after 1pm I hear something hit my aluminum door in the carport ... there she stood ... 4 to 5 hours later. Needless to day she slept the rest of the day and almost missed her late afternoon meal.

So far Stella's periods of disappearances have lasted no longer than 45 minutes to an hour. She doesn't like to miss any meals and food is her real motivation for anything she does inside or out.

It's always interesting to observe the routines of all three hounds. They change their routines at times but most days I don't have to say a thing and they repeat the same walks day after day. As you know Heidi disappears from this blog and outside until cold weather is over ... she has always done that since I picked her up in June 2011.

Even when we are on the 'alternate' path home I can see other narrow single paths of worn grass where the deer run at night. Maybe I need to buy and set up a couple of field cameras to capture the wild life between midnight and 6am.

For the second day in a row the moon was back again. I noticed that Al up in Canada on The Bayfield Bunch blog took the same picture I did of the moon yesterday. It's times like these I wish I had a longer lens to get closer to the moon.

On the way back this morning the hounds kept drifting further away from me. I was getting down to two choices. Either leave them and let them do what they wanted knowing they would eventually come home or walk over to Stella and tug on her collar to get her back toward my direction. Many times she will start moving once she sees me heading her way.

Yesterday afternoon I did attempt to rake some leaves but those first few that flipped over with the rake was showing moisture on them. I would prefer to rake them completely dry so they will burn faster and better. Today might be Day 1 of the 2017 Leaf Project. Until I looked at past blogs for the post about our Leaf Project, I thought we were late this year but that is not the case. In 2016 we were raking them this week. In 2015 we were getting all the leaves taken care of in late October.

Here is the 2015 Leaf Project Supervision Crew.

Stella lagged behind at the end of the walk but nothing major. She stepped inside the yard and had to stop for one of her back scratching exercises. Once she saw Sadie and I almost ready to make the turn into the carport, she came running.

A tentative plan was to rake the leaves once they dried out a little more, possibly this afternoon. While the hounds took their lunch break outside they decided that not only were the leaves dry enough to rake but the grass was tall enough to mow. If I mowed first would it mulch the leaves good enough to get me out of raking?

Stella has been staring off into space a lot lately as if there are new places she would like to check out if only I would let her, or if only there wasn't a highway in that direction, if only ....

Sadie checked for some fresh soft mounds of dirt to eat since it rained this past weekend. You can also see with her standing in the yard just how tall the grass is after a weekend of rain. I've been told the ground is still warm although the temperatures have dropped, so mowing season may not be over yet.

I'm posting this because I like it and it's just a little bit different for a photo taken in the middle of the day.

For doing yard work you cannot beat weather like this.

I still wasn't happy with the amount of leaves left in the yard after mowing. I need a new rake since my old one was missing a few teeth after I had the plastic rake to near to the fire last year. I headed to the local hardware store and picked up a new one. Of course when I got home I had to try it out, so that is the 'clean' area you see. The wind was blowing from the south as I raked into it. So it was a good place to stop and wait for better wind conditions before raking the rest of the yard.

The heavy storms on Sunday washed out some of my old mulch, so a short trip to the landscaping biz where I bought a few bags of new Cyprus mulch to add today. I had to work fast because Sadie kept disappearing on me today but would come running when called. She was always too far outside her boundary.

It's good I stopped when I did. As I sat in front of the computer afterward with a cold glass of water, I had an email I needed to reply to for confirmation. One of the parts for the Z4 has to come from Germany and is delayed. My other parts are in route and due to arrive early next week. That gives me time to finish the leaves for the year.

Tomorrow I will trade parking spaces with the FJ, which will give me more room to work. I'll either drive the Z4 up on ramps or jack it up high enough to slide some jack stands underneath it. I am thinking the jack stands might be the best option while I am working under the car.

At a website called realOEM.com I was not only able to find a detailed diagram of the parts I needed but also where they go and what screws, nuts, plugs or clips go with each part. I've printed those out. With the help of those diagrams and some YouTube videos I have a clear picture of what the process will be to replace the damaged parts under the Z4.

I enjoy this type of work as long as it's on occasion and not a job. It just proves how old I am sometimes when my knees and back don't enjoy being in different position under a car to reach to connect a screw or snap in a part. I've made sure I have enough Ibuprofen in stock.

It was a great day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... much more done than expected.

A Rabbit Almost Runs Into Me

Sadie was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to start our day and the morning walk. A terrible night of sleep led to a late wake up time, thus the daily routine slides down a few hours. Not that it mattered, it was cold even with the late arrival. What was a slow day in 'the tropics' yesterday turned into some excitement this morning.

Okay ... I admit it. In yesterday's blog post I used the word "Russia" in the title to see what kind of response I would get either by comments or by the number of visits. It was slow and in most cases if the post title doesn't have some sort of drama in it then there is less interest. I compare it to the line of traffic slowing down so they can get a look at the accident on the side of the road or the other lane of traffic. Sad but true.

I knew this morning something was up. Sadie and Stella never stopped once they got into the field. I was just an after thought to them. They had plans evidently and I wasn't included. Yet I was the one that saw the excitement this morning.

BTW, I'm glad that Ed explained to me that the Russian traffic was actually automated bots, collecting links from outside their domain to improve their traffic. I can handle bots better than attempted hacks to the blog.

As the hounds charged up the side of the field nonstop Stella was about to head right to the far corner of the field but once she heard "over here", her and Sadie proceeded in our normal direction. Sadie decided she would cover the back of the field for any deer scent ... Stella took control of the middle of the field not quite to the ATV path.

I was enjoying the sunshine, the cool crisp weather. I was happy that the hounds finally slowed enough that we all were on our normal pace. They had not sprinted to the north woods where I would have had to start sprinting if that were the case. So all was good. With the late start I knew the photos would have better color to them compared to the ones we take a few hours earlier. Plus sunshine is always more helpful than the dark overcast skies.

While taking photos of the hounds and glancing over the field area I saw nothing ... it happened in a split second. Too fast for me to even raise my camera to catch it on film. I have no idea where the rabbit came from or how close it was to Stella but it showed its white tail and record sprinting speed just in front of her.

In fact it ran close enough to me I thought I felt it hit my hiking boot!!! It could not get to the field on the other side of the short wire fence fast enough. Stella had come to close to it as it hid in the deep grass and decide it was time to escape.

If a basset hound (Heidi) would have been around, I would have heard instant baying and their short legs would have been moving as fast as possible to catch the rabbit. Basset's are bred to flush rabbits out and then chase them into heavy brush. Once the brush is so thick the rabbit panics and stops. I saw this happen in 1989 when I took my basset Sadie with me to heavy brush area by the golf course. It happened just as I described.

Once Stella picked up the rabbit scent she became a little more excited yet she had no idea just how close that rabbit was to us and how far away it was now. These are the photos in sequence of how she reacted. She was moving faster than the stop action the camera captured.

She could tell it had been there somewhere but she couldn't find it.

In the meantime Sadie finally caught on and went racing down the edge of the field, right to the point where I saw the rabbit sprinting into the field behind us.

Yes Sadie ... that's the spot the rabbit jumped through the heavy grass and over into the field.

With all of that excitement over with, it was like a normal walk to the hounds. They turned for home like nothing had happened. While they ran for home, I was thinking about raking leaves today.

This gives you a better idea where they have been running to the past few days. The photos that I zoom into makes it look like they are close to the highway but as you can see they are stopped quite a distance away from the highway. Basically they are in the middle of the lower field between my house and the neighbors, just to the right of the 'alternate' path.

Same position but zoom'd. See how close the highway looks in this photo?

Stella was going to let me know she was still in charge of this walk this morning. Sadie and I might want to get back inside but Stella was going to take her sweet time and wasn't moving any faster with me calling her name.

By this time she is smelling either rabbit scent or those from the field cats.

Although during the winter with snow on the ground I can see deer tracks moving down that small hill around the tree, then around the corner of my house, diagonally down the front yard, crossing the driveway into the field across the highway.

With the sunshine, the slight wind and the perfect direction from the N/NE for raking leaves ... I'm thinking of clearing out the north side yard and raking the backyard toward the burn pile. I am going to take my big powerful electric leaf blower and blow the leaves along the driveway fence down the drive near the highway and let the traffic blow them away. Or I could move them to the middle of the gravel drive and build my infamous "wall of flame". My co-workers use to comment on the "wall of flame" at work the next day after they saw it on their way home from work.

Plus I need to get the leaves you see raked out of the yard and burned so I have time and complete focus on repairing the Z4 when the parts arrive.

I might post again later tonight about any afternoon excitement. What do you prefer?  The longer post once per day at the end of the day or one or two shorter posts (still 18-22 photos) late morning or mid-day?

Basically I post most of the time when I have a free period in my day, depending on what I have going on.

The hounds were sound to sleep five minutes after their walk. It's so quite while I write this you could hear a pin drop. It's another hour until their lunch and the the 'real day' will start ... things don't seem to happen around here until after their lunch around noon.

Perfect weather today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.