Sadie's Focussed On Tracking

Sadie had only one thing today on her walk ... tracking. Heidi was buried under her sleeping bag waiting for spring.

Not Much Going On

After a while it becomes pretty hard to post something new on this blog. I got tired of writing about weather, that's not what the blog is about. The hounds are the same, they follow their own routine as I do. There just isn't a lot going on here in late January. Even as I write this paragraph I have no idea what to write about.

So, there may be just a lot of photos from this morning's walk to let everyone know that the hounds are okay. We are not in hiding, just nothing to write about.

I have decided on a town in my search. It's the same town I have come back to think about over the past 5-8 years. I know that I cannot have the best in both worlds, or the best of all the houses I've looked at.

There are 'good' and 'bad' for each location, each house and really hard to sort out. The temperature averages over 12 months may only be around 10° .. but those are averages.

During this month, daytime temps are almost 30° to 40° difference, with the town under consideration much warmer and sunny over 300 days per year.

Green or brown? Environment that is ...

After 20 years could I handle having neighbors living right next to me instead of a fair distance away like now.

Are large fenced in backyards good enough nose exercise for the hounds?

I'm off for my daily routine .. internet surfing, moving analysis, games of Mahjong, a hound walk or two later today, a ballgame to watch tonight and possibly a movie.

Slow but all is good here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Walks Always Excite Sadie

Just because the bloodhounds and I thought it was a great weather day yesterday, didn't mean that Heidi agreed. Just after lunch she sprinted for the door to go out with all the rest of us. It's the daily routine and I thought it was warm enough that she might spend some time outside.

She made a sudden stop at the edge of the carport, stood and gazed out into the yard, then once she felt that cold air hit her nose, she didn't hesitate to turn completely around running to the door for me to let her back inside. The bathroom run would have to wait until later for her.

While I was talking to Heidi about the advantages of getting off the couch and spending a little walking time outside ... Stella was sure she had found the moles, not realizing it wasn't their time of day to be out tearing up my yard. She walked almost the full length of the yard along the edge where I mow next to the field tracking something.

We had a major highlight yesterday afternoon in 'the tropics'. I was sitting at the kitchen table moving some of my Mahjong games to under 3 minutes completion time. I barely caught a glimpse of a large object backing into the single gravel road that I walk down when I go to the old steel bridge. Obviously this driver needed to turn around as soon as possible and head back to town.

Most would think he might be lost but he is actually wants to approach the parking lot of the Dollar General store from the right lane instead of the left lane. It's a better angle to pull in that 53' trailer, into a very narrow two lane driveway into the parking lot ... hopefully not driving over the concrete culvert as he makes the turn, then having his rear wheels becoming airborne, spinning in midair ... stuck.

Ask me how I know something like that might happen with this same Dollar General truck.

So with my two cups of coffee under my belt, only 56Mb of data used to read some Facebook news, some Twitter updates and a few other sports sites ... all sports news nothing else ... we headed out for our morning walk around 9:30am. The sun was bright, skies were blue under a crisp 34° ... and the ground was frozen like a rock. Heavy frost twinkled under the early morning sunshine.

Same picture of the mole traffic yesterday but today's frozen ground gives it a little more definition so you can see the path easier. I am up for any suggestions from you on how to get rid of these pesky destroyers. I've battled them for 20 years but this past year there seems to be a lot more of them. I know it's almost impossible to get rid of them since I live next to a field but there has to be something to stop them. I've tried every thing over the years.

After I had put on layers of clothes in preparation for cold weather I was more than likely going to let Stella go where she wanted. I didn't expect her to take the lead this morning. She simply trotted away from Sadie and I ... I barely caught her with the 200mm lens. Who knows what she was thinking but she had to get somewhere fast.

A poor visual of the heavy frost.

By the way Sadie charged into the edge of the brush/woods I thought she had seen a rabbit, maybe a stray bird. Whatever it was, it was moving and she was going to get it. Sella??? She was more interested in natural protein.

Their attention span was short and whatever Sadie had found was no longer the focus. They trotted past me and didn't stop. Both of them had places to go. With the field having heavy frost it was easy to see the fresh deer tracks from earlier this morning. At least they were easy for my eyes to see while I walked but the Nikon D3200 didn't catch them.

When the front paws are curled, Stella is going at a faster pace than her normal one, where she drags her feet. It was good to see her get a little exercise this morning although the duration was short.

This is a worn deer path from the field into the wooded gully. In a few months when these bushes fill in, neither hound will be this deep into the woods.

Sadie was on her normal path, stopping in the same spots that she investigates 2-3 times per day. At least I don't have to call her nor put a leash on her. She always catches up to me while following her own walk.

Since the field is not frozen that hard and there isn't mud .. the deer tracks were easier to see. These two were from the same deer ...

It wasn't until I was at the point where Sadie has her nose that I saw what she was smelling. It was a deer hoof print, a fairly new one from earlier today ... she thought she was close to finding them.

Again, while Sadie and I kept walking the normal path, Stella had not moved more than 10' from where I last saw her. The only difference today, she started walking toward us and with us toward home without me saying a word.

All walks in the afternoon, whether it is one or two of them, Stella is on the 25' retractable leash and the camera is left at home. I really need to switch that technique because there is better light in the afternoons and I'd get better photos of the hounds.

It was hard to pick up with the camera but I could see they were following worn paths the deer had made when they move from one side of the field to the other ... or from the woods toward my house. They also like to walk from neighbor's woods to the woods on our right side when we start the walk.

I was almost ready to tug at Stella's collar to get her to move when she looked up and took off trotting to catch Sadie. She is one stubborn hound.

It's not often that both of them will walk on the path, let alone on their own all the way to the yard but they did this morning.

Either the farmer that lives behind me bought a new tractor just like the one that cuts and bales the field ... or the farmer that bales the field is a long way from home. They live about 12 miles north of town and only cut the field as a favor the the owner, which lives a couple of houses down from me.

I shocked myself late yesterday afternoon when I started house cleaning and couldn't stop. I finally forced myself to stop around 7:30pm. I have the last two rooms to clean in detail today. With the weather the way it is I can see us getting in at least one more hound walk today ... maybe two since the days are gradually getting longer.

A bit of moving trivia since it seems the title of the post yesterday was too interesting for many to pass up. My blog traffic doubled in visitors yesterday  ... that website I linked gives my current town a grade of "A" in the crime section ... the town I have seriously thought of moving to was given an "F" in the crime section.

I follow their newspaper on my Facebook news feed and this morning I see a picture of a young Mexican man with a couple of small tattoos on his face. He was arrested for an armed robbery and kidnapping attempt at their Walgreen's Drug Store ... 7 felony counts ... he was caught because the vehicle he tried to steal as the getaway car had a manual transmission, not an automatic. He did not know how to drive a stick shift.

I am still trying to digest that news along with being told I have a 1 in 28 chance of being a crime victim in the town I am investigating. An investigation serious enough that I called a real estate agent last Saturday.

Is that what you call a 'red flag' ???  Feel free to comment.

Otherwise it's a bright sunny day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and it's not even noon yet.