It Fits

It was the first test for the Mini Cooper Countryman this morning. It passed with flying colors and it was good to see that my measurements in the cargo area were accurate.

While spending some time outdoors enjoying the afternoon sunshine yesterday, Sadie spent most of her time in her newly discovered favorite spot. With the summer brush cut back and that corner of the hay field cut, she likes to check out the small area behind the burn pile. There is a eroded out area that looks like a small waterway may go through there but I've never seen any water traveling that path in the 19 years that I have lived here.

While she stayed in that area, with Stella out in the field, I walked the front and back yards picking up small limbs from the storm the other night. The 2017 burn pile is slowly increasing but not at a fast pace. That usually doesn't happen until after the winter and a few more times where the winds will be above 30mph.

This morning was a different story though. The sunshine was back and will be for a few days before it starts raining by the end of the week. The temperature this morning had dropped into the 20's. With no walks planned until later in the morning I had time to take my one and only container of recyclable paper, cardboard and plastic. Just recently they started requiring glass to be sorted separately.

As I took off the piece that covers the cargo area between the back seats and the back door, I wasn't sure the 32gl container was going to fit although I had measured it before trading for the car. It slid into it's space with no problem.

You may see some "paw prints" on that black carpet and you would be right. About the time I opened the rear hatch door to put the container in, Stella jumped in the back and sat there ready to go for a ride. As she jumped back outside I slide the container in with room to spare.

I would get my first chance to drive the Mini off the main highway onto an old country narrow road, which would turn into a long gravel drive toward our local recycling center. I was happy the way it handled both roads and can tell a difference between an AWD and a FWD vehicle of this size.

It wasn't long after I returned where the temps had increased to 34° and Sadie had won with her pre-walk stare down ... that we took our first walk of the day. Heavy frost covered the field of grass except where the sunshine had shown through the trees.

I didn't say a word and let the hounds move at their own pace.

You can barely see here just how far back they were as I approached the first turn. You can also see how the sun shining through the trees have melted some of the frost in certain areas.

Sadie came sprinting around the first turn toward me into the deer area, like a horse rounding the final turn at the Kentucky Derby. She was flying then stopped immediately and turned back to the wooded area. I am not sure if she heard something or was checking to see if Stella was with her.

She didn't stay in the mashed down grass long. I suspect by the way it looks I have always thought the deer spend time there.

Then she took off on her next assignment.

I scanned along the tree line but didn't see Stella at the time. Once I downloaded the photograph to the computer photos program I could barely see Stella sitting on the far right side of the photograph. That also explains how she got so far so fast later on ... heading for that wooded area north of us.

While Sadie and I moved along the back of the field, there was no sign of Stella but I was looking along the tree line that moves into the far right corner. It was the wrong direct since she was running across the field to the opposite side.

I was surprised as I made the final turn to head back home that Stella was running and was 3/4 of the way to the woods on the north side. I didn't see her during any of her run. She did stop though when I called her name and acknowledged that she 'had been caught' and slowly headed back toward me and Sadie.

It was a good attempt to get away and she is never too happy when she gets caught.

Sadie sprinted to her and touched noses, just to let her know she needed to head home. It's funny to see that on a consistent basis, whenever Sadie touches noses like that, Stella will always turn and follow Sadie or will run to the door at home if she is in the yard.

Neither of them waited for me to catch up to them. They trotted away from me and got in one last exploration before I got even with them.

Not sure what will take place today. With it being cold outside it seems like a pretty good day to stay inside and read books. Sadie will bother me a couple of more times wanting to walk but the first of many football games today and tonight, start at 2pm.

I've decided to scan only the old hound photos that I want to post on the blog and keep the rest of them in the albums of packages. They don't take up that much room, it's just that I don't look at them much since they are out of view, yet I do look at a lot of my pictures that are downloaded in the computer.

Another sunny but cold day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Hounds Love This Weather

It may not be their favorite weather, who's to know, but they seem energized when it's near 32° and sunny. The key word there is ... sunny.

The warm temps yesterday were a nice change of pace but really today is nice, just a little cooler but nothing major.

Before my last drink of coffee, Sadie had talked me into taking the first of two daily walks. It was perfect timing really because I needed to do some errands before the week starts and they could get a walk in before I left. That also seems to help Stella's anxiety when I leave.

Speaking of energized, Stella moved out to lead the walk from the start. That didn't last too long, at least in the beginning. As I turned to see where she was ... she was nowhere to be seen. Did she go down into the steep gully? I couldn't see her as I scanned the wooded area.

Then, just barely I caught her tan coat hidden among the dormant bushes. Maybe it's just my eyes but you can see how hard it is to see her in this next picture.

She scrambled out of there when I called her name and took off getting back into the lead. The light frost on the grass made each step 'crunchy' but with the sunshine out, it didn't feel that cold.

I am not sure what they were tracking but they didn't stop today anywhere they normally do. They veered around that first corner and took off with tails curled into the air and noses to the ground.

It was quite surprising to me that Stella was out in front and not spending a lot of time investigation different places she normally stops. I was beginning to wonder if she was going to run off as Sadie and I hung back.

They decided today that two noses are better than one. A lot of places on this walk today they were either next to each other or within a few feet of each other.

The path you see that the hounds are on, is a path of deer traffic. A lot of the grass is mashed down year round and it's one the hounds take every time they move to the far right corner of the field.

They didn't stay long, following the edge where the field had been mowed. Before I could even catch up they were trotting down the back edge of the field. I had a gut feeling they had locked on to something and might not stop ... so I was aware they might do what they did on Saturday, take off sprinting PAST the 'no-fly zone'.

Stella moved out to the left and quickly moved back with Sadie. I could tell she was really on a strong scent.

It was at this point in time I had to yell for them to stop. They had both stopped right before this picture, had raised their heads sniffing the air while facing the area they were not allowed to go.

I could tell they were wanting to go in that direct and started to go in that direction again past the power tower and along the edge of the field you see. They finally agreed to head my direction back to the house.

About halfway home, they both stopped and looked in the direction of the neighbors house where they had chased the strange dog the other day. It was visiting for Christmas, so it will not be around much longer. I did not see the dog anywhere on the horizon but the hounds could still smell him.

It was like they didn't want to come inside this morning as they veered back to the edge of the field with their noses on the ground and rechecking the path that starts the walk.

Stella never looks happy when the walk is finished.

It is quite a change to see I have plenty of gas left in the Mini Cooper tank after driving my usual errands the past two weeks. The inboard computer tells me I am getting 34.5 mpg since I left the dealership just a couple of weeks ago. Plenty of room in back for groceries, with a hidden storage under the cargo area floor that is 8" deep.

There wasn't much planned for this afternoon since I am down to just one room to clean and that isn't more than mopping a small bathroom floor.

I am still going through photographs although I have not scanned anymore of them since xmas day. Cleaning out a closet yesterday I found about a box that had 10 more packages of pictures in it. There were a few old Polaroid pictures of when Harry was a puppy in the summer of 1987. Even at that age of 3 months he would wander off if left unsupervised or like Stella, if you let him roam.

Looking through those new stacks of pictures many were duplicates of what I had put in albums, a few were new and will be sorted once I decide if I am going to sort by dog or by date sequence.

With the large size pictures I can only fit 3 at a time on my scanner for the 'overview' the can capture each individually and scan it. It's a slow process and I am beginning to think if I am serious about this scanning pictures, it might be best to have Office Depot or Costco do the scanning for me with a small fee.

Well it's that time of day where Stella comes over to me and nudges my arm with her nose to let me know it's time for her lunch. With the sunshine out today I can see us doing possibly three walks today. After lunch I am going to let them roam the field on their own while I spend some time outside but I'll be keeping my eyes out for them.

Great weather to end the year here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

What??? 64° This Morning

I knew when I opened my eyes for the first time this morning and heard the wind howling outside that the weather experts has been accurate.

Along with some rain though were going to be 64° temperatures the day after Christmas, which is extremely hard to believe. Yet, no worries, it will be back with a high in the low 40's to high 30's by Tuesday morning. My iPhone weather showed 64° at 7am and the air that hit my face when I opened the door confirmed it.

There are always some immediate signs when I open the door for the first time to let the hounds outside. Yes, Heidi is up for that trip in the morning. The first sign was the amount of wind pressing against my door as I tried to open it. The next was a fully soaked and wet carport floor.

When there are small tree limbs from the Sycamore tree then you know the winds were strong while we slept last night.

I've always wondered if the low wet area in the back of the neighbors yard hinders their chance in selling the house. It does not always have standing water of coarse, just after heavy rains, but the ground does stay pretty soft in that area year round.

BTW ... the 'Picture Of The Day' award goes to the very last on in this post.

With a 100% chance of rain by noon and Intellicast radar showing the storm front about 100 miles to the west of us I decided it was time to get our walk in, since it might be the only one we will be able to take today due to rain and extremely wet field later this afternoon.

On the initial trip outside I checked the ground to see how wet it was and surprisingly it was not as saturated as yesterday because there wasn't any water rising to ground level when I walked. So I headed back inside for the camera and to change into the hiking boots in case it was wetter in back of the field. Sadie was thrilled with that decision and sat right next to me while I changed shoes.

In that picture above Sadie has crawled under a wild bush stem full of thorns pressing into her skin ... doesn't feel a thing. She did that a couple of times today and as usual, she just charged through any brush that got in her way. She is a very strong hound.

With the winds around 20mph, luckily it was blowing warm air. What a nice change that is. No jacket was needed today, just a sweatshirt.

Stella once again stays pretty close to Sadie for the walk this morning. They acted as if they had a lot of things to get done on this walk ... a purpose. They were in their 'serious' mode.

It never fails during these walks, where I wonder what actually had been in these places they are so interested in. What time of day was the deer or other animal around. With the soft ground it is much easier to see the fresh prints in the ground from a hoof of a deer.

While Sadie sprinted for the far right corner, Stella made a straight line sprint without making the sharp right turn.

As I walked over to see what Stella had found that was so interesting, there was nothing there to eat, she was just moving her nose under all the wet leaves.

They decided two noses were more powerful than just one nose in today's expedition.

Sadie powers through another stem of thorns.

Back to some teamwork.

It still amazes me that I have an AT&T tower this close to my house but they cannot offer me wireless internet service due to my location. Being a Directv customer, and with AT&T purchasing them last summer ... they are offering unlimited data where I could stream all my tv shows and games through Directv for free.

They do have a price for different packages but from the way it was explained to me, based on the package I pay Directv my AT&T wireless UNLIMITED data would be a no cost to me.

The hounds had just turned to me because they were sure there were deer in the cornfield behind them, but didn't see any. That is where I might see 10-15 deer at times grazing. Luckily the hounds have not seen them since Sadie was a puppy in the middle of deep snow. She scaled that fence and was sprinting through snow as deep as her chest after the deer she saw.

That tree line is where the hounds took off a few days ago that I blogged about yesterday. There is a fence that runs the full length of the tree line. You can see the camera did not capture all of it. It's good to see the past few walks they have not shown any tendency to go back to the new area they found.

Here come the rains.

It was not raining yet but the hounds were fairly anxious to get back to the house.

This afternoon I will return to my detailed house cleaning. Later tonight I will be going back to scanning old photos. I did 139 pictures yesterday but got off track in subject matter after I opened an album looking for any stray hound photos. It was mostly old people pics. I scanned them so I could send them out to those in the picture, if I had a phone number or email address.

I don't have 1,000's of pictures like some of you have scanned when you were downsizing but I found a few other packages, and a large Kodak box full of them last night ... so I have more pictures to scan than I had planned on and definitely in the mid 100's.

This issue is, I have packages, undated and in no specific order. I also have the small picture size, hard backed albums that are in some sort of date sequence. As I scanned 3-6 pictures at a time, I was trying to decide whether to scan all the hounds in the order as they came in the albums or scan by each hound individually after I sorted the loose pictures.

I do know one thing. For blogging purposes I will go through the stacks of each hound and the albums that contain all the hounds and pick out some of the best ones and upload them to the blog.

I mentioned yesterday I had a basset hound mixed up between Arthur in Washington and Barney. Once I ran into some other pictures where Barney and Harry had stayed a few months with my sister's kids in Indiana then were flown out to Seattle for me to pick up, then I knew it was Barney that was pictured with Harry the other day in my Whidbey Island post, and not Arthur.

Over the 29 years I've had hounds some of the names have been used over again. So in this case for naming my folders that are kept in my computer's Apple Photos, as well as Google Photos and Flickr ... Arthur has a state initial by their name, while Max and Sadie have either 'basset' or 'bloodhound' by their names.

I am not scanning these pictures to downsize and to throw away the paper copy. In fact my scanned copy is not nearly as good as that 35mm picture nor as good quality as that 35mm slide I have. I am only digitizing them to use on the blog plus I tend to look at pictures more on my computers, iPad or iPhone than I do looking through an album.

I plan to keep blogging about Heidi, Sadie and Stella but on occasion I'll add a 2nd post of the day to show and blog about some of the past hounds I've had.

I will say that looking back through all of these pictures, even the non-hound ones, brings back some memories I had not thought of in a long time. They were interesting to see and surprising just how much detail of that time can be remembered by just looking at a photograph.

I even found a couple of more cars I forgot that I had ... so the number of cars I've owned over the years still out numbers the number of hounds I've lived with. LOL

I can hear it raining outside, plus Stella is telling me to get off the computer because it's time for her to eat ... here is the reaction I got yesterday when I asked them "are you ready to eat"??  Stella was just beginning her howl.

A very warm day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.