The Hounds Are Back In Action

I should never go to bed before midnight. I'm a night person and am usually up until 2am most nights. Last night the urge hit me to sleep before midnight which turned out to be one of the most restless nights of sleep I've had in a while.

By 3am I was awake and couldn't get back to sleep because Sadie was snoring so loud over in the corner of the room. She was stretched out half on the floor and her other half on the dog bed. I stepped around her to open the window since the rains had stopped. Of course she wanted to go outside before daybreak, along with Stella. I think they wanted breakfast more than they wanted or needed to pee.

With dark skies and a feel of rain in the air, Sadie was the only hound to venture out into the tall wet grass this morning. Stella wasn't moving and Heidi was already back to sleep on the couch.

What looked bad around 8am looked much better close to 11am. I decided it didn't matter how wet my feet would get, I knew the hounds would like to take a walk.

Even Stella moved through the tall wet grass after refusing to get out of the yard the past couple days due to the wet field.

Very very early in the walk, my shoes were soaked and feet squishing with each step. The ground wasn't much better as it had standing water in some places.

Sadie confirmed she is back to normal with a firm stool today. Also, since the NexGard application I have taken off only one DEAD tick on her shoulder. I have not found any ticks since on Stella. NexGard works!!

I thought Stella was going to run away but she stopped when she heard her name ... just once.

They were excited to get back to their field as you can see ... lots of new stuff to smell.

I caught Stella between bites of grass on this photo.

Heading to her favorite spot in the field ... besides the "no fly zone".

Sadie joined her today, then took off along the edge of the field.

Stella is still trying to find the deer from last week. She knows it has been around, but where is the deer?

I asked Sadie on the way home "where's Heidi"? ... this is the look I got.

She knew Heidi had to be at the house like previous walks but both hounds had forgot that Heidi didn't come outside for this one. She was on the couch as they tried to figure out where she was.

Speaking of Heidi ... it's been a week since we started using the Wounded Warrior Ointment. When comparing the photos from April 21st I don't see much difference. Maybe improvement will not be evident until after two weeks, so I will continue to apply the ointment. It is not hurting her in anyway.

Due to dried ointment residue on her chest and neck, she had a bath before we took the walk this morning. I am going to let her skin get completely dry before I apply the ointment later this afternoon. She still chews a lot, scratches a lot and has a lot of skin falling off during that time. Is that from the ointment working and healing her skin?

I will do a separate post and new photos of her later today.

I decided this morning to make a career decision and change my brand of coffee. Life is rough retired. No meetings are needed to make decisions. The only person to disagree with my decision is that tiny voice in my head. So as I sat down with my first cup of Starbuck's Original Blend coffee, I logged into my Amazon account and searched Tim Horton Coffee.

Al over at The Bayfield Bunch is always talking about grabbing a cup of Tim Horton's at his local drive-thru before he and Pheebs head out for their daily local drive. Over the years of reading Al's blog I finally decided no matter what, I had to taste some Tim Horton's coffee.

My nearest location to buy a cup is too far to drive, is way out of the way and not a direct route. So the shortest trip for me was to order it on Amazon. I am also going to try some Arbuckle Coffee that Ed Frey mentions when he talks about coffee. It will be a nice change to get away from the two coffee companies in Seattle.

The forecast looks like a couple of days with no rain. It should give me time to mow the yard again before I have to bring in a hay baler since it's growing so fast.

Of coarse after their walk, the hounds are satisfied and sleeping soundly until lunch - they have a pretty rough life. I am happy not having them mauled by ticks after the walks now. Let's see how long the NexGard works this month.

It's a good day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Wouldn't Leave The Yard

This may have been one of the slowest if not the slowest day since I started blogging in 2011. I know, my profile says I've been on blogger since 2013 ... that's only because I had a Google+ account for a while as a profile but came back to the blogger profile.

Anyway as you can see from the photos today ... the hounds wouldn't leave the yard, if they even went outside. The field stayed pretty wet the whole day. Since it was cool and some sunshine but nothing hot, it never dried out. Sadie and Stella were not too enthused about todays events.

We are sitting here through another storm right now, more thunder than rain. Of course thunder is what Stella is not a fan of. She paces a little, stops and stares, bounces up from laying down when there is a loud blast of thunder ... still not bad.

I didn't do anything worth blogging about. I read a lot, played some mahjong and enjoyed coffee. Not real exciting.

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

Local Tornado - No Damage Here

It was not until I had some emails, messages on Facebook and a few texts from readers of this blog and friends, asking if we were okay ... did I even know there was a tornado in the local area.

The best I can estimate, it was 6-7 miles away from the hounds and I.

One thing to remember though, when you see the word "tornado" do not picture the F4's or F5' that level small towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama etc. In this area they are more like straight line winds where a funnel cloud has touched the ground and called a tornado by the National Weather Service.

As I mentioned in my last post last night, the weatherman predicted thunderstorms that were not going to be severe. Right before those storms started, Stella started pacing and panting. I was told when I got her that thunder freaked her out ... I have yet to see that. She whined a little but ended up laying down beside Sadie.

It wasn't a real intense storm like I have seen in the past. In fact during the storm I was texting with some out of state friends. The screen windows had been slid up and the storm windows slid down in time. We did not even have hard rains where I was at.

I was following Intellicast.com's weather radar and most of the ugly dark red was north of my town heading east. That is the same location that weather stations said that the confirmed funnel cloud on the ground took place.

I did hear the siren in town two miles away. Checking news and newspapers this morning it didn't look like there was much damage. A few really old barns or out buildings were damaged, some downed trees and power lines but nothing major.

This was the extent of our damage here at the house. Sadie and Stella did their morning yard inspection to make sure.

There were more thunderstorms predicted overnight but if there were I slept through them. It must have rained a lot because this morning Stella would not go in the field although she needed to so she could do her normal morning tank dump. She never poops in the yard.

She eventually took TWO steps in the field to get her job done.

She thought it might be easier to enter the field from a different angle. That proved to be just as wet as the other place so she studied it, thought about it and then came trotting toward the house.

Sadie? Heidi?

Heidi never gets out of bed until lunch after her first early morning trip outside. Sadie sat next to me with her staring me down and letting me know she wants to walk ... wet field and all ... not going to happen.

There is always quiet and fresh clean air after a storm.

All the hounds are in the deep sleep mode which is normal this time of day. The only crisis we have here today is that Sadie has decided the water bowl is hers and she will sleep next to it and keep Stella and Heidi away from it. She never growls but that stare down at them seems to work.

The birds are singing this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Afternoon Was Cancelled

For some unknown reason our afternoon was cancelled. Had some of that NexGard gotten into my food supply and I was starting to feel some of the possible side effects? I am noticing Stella being a little lethargic after 24 hours since her first/last bite of the tick repellent ... maybe me also.

Or was it that trip through the Dairy Queen drive-thru for lunch that did it?

The hounds are becoming quite popular at the Dairy Queen. To keep them from getting their own ice cream addiction, they can look at my large Blizzard but don't touch. While waiting for my small order, Stella hopped into the front passenger seat, sat up straight with that same pose from this morning's photo ... where she wanted something.

I think about every girl behind the counter came over to the window to be introduced. Sadie shocked them by popping her head out the driver window just behind my head. Maybe we can work their popularity into some discounted prices this summer ... although I doubt that will happen.

We all felt like Stella did ... so why fight it ... I head to bed for a nice afternoon siesta with a gentle breeze blowing through the windows, to prepare for the thunderstorms later tonight. Stella will require a babysitter during those.

While we slept the farmer worked ... all my favorite "yellow weeds" were plowed under before we could come back to reality. He must have known it was raining tonight and not later this week.

I better get this posted. I hear thunder and the radar on intellicast.com doesn't look nice west of us. The weatherman is now changing his tune to thunderstorms "but not severe" ... I'll take that as we should expect loss of electrical power, loss of internet satellite signal and take cover.

Stella isn't a fan of thunder so tonight should be fun with her.

It cannot be sunny all the time here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.