Stella Gets Her Morning Walk

With rain from Friday afternoon until yesterday, moving us up over 52" of precipitation for the year,  and 10" over the annual average, Stella had not been able to walk the field since Friday morning. I was surprised how warm it felt at 36° but wasn't about the amount of water coming up from underground surrounding my boots.

I noticed even before Stella had her breakfast that something was wrong.

She wasn't her normal energetic self, excited ... no thrilled, she was going to get to eat. The first sign was this morning as I started to get out of bed in the dark when I noticed a dark still shadow like a sphinx at the foot of the bed. She was beyond quiet, staring at me.

As she and Heidi followed me to the door for their first trip outside, she didn't trot, she walked slowly, behind me not out in front leading us. Back pain? Did she tweak her back sometime during the night?

Well it wasn't soon into the walk I could tell she might be hurting a little bit. She didn't trot toward me to catch up like she always does at the start of the walk.

Since Stella didn't get in any walks yesterday because of the rain, I decided today I'd give her a little freedom and we would move her at her pace. I didn't see a lot of deer scat being eaten but she was into gathering information with her nose pressed to the ground or in the taller grass.

Once that happened then should could file the name or have one of those automatic searches of her database that would tell her who had been there and when they had been there as long as two weeks ago. The bloodhound nose is amazing.

Along the back edge of that field is heavy deer traffic, showing many of those small paths that move to the fenced area where they jump over and head to the empty field behind this one. It's been 13 months since I last saw deer in this field. Those were great times when Sadie and Stella would chase the ones they saw, never catching them. It's times like those I am happy my camera caught all the action.

We spent a lot of time along that back edge of the field today. She was taking her time, plus she is never in a hurry on these walks. Today it took us 22 minutes to cover a little over a half mile.

Facing the woods to the north ... smelling or hearing something?

Same spot every day ... food or the mysterious large stray field cat?

Back on the hunt, right down the middle of one of those deer paths.

Nothing to do now but a late morning nap until lunch is served. She will take an afternoon siesta on the couch while I watch the Colts - Cowboys game.

Of course Heidi did not go with us and  this was about the best I could do for fining her presence. There wasn't anything visible except her tail.

Maybe a gross picture to some but one any dog owner has seen. Why is this on a blog post? Well a few reasons really. One, it was just late September that she had her teeth cleaned. Since that time she has been getting a daily OraVet Dental Hygiene Chew that the vet staff had good things to say about the results they were hearing, preventing plaque build up.

Do those small spots show the plaque is breaking up? Yet since I last checked there is new plaque on that front tooth. Plus it looks like a build up along the gum line. I have a tooth tool that would remove that but the biggest problem is all the bacterial that would be involved if I chipped it away, possibly leading to an infection. I'll leave it there.

Recommendations?  Yes, I have a child's tootbrush with dog toothpaste but I admit I have not been brushing her teeth every day, but some.

They were not too interested in hitting the yard later ... both headed back inside after some deep thought.

Although I am getting use to the way Wordpress's new editor works I am still not happy that I have to insert each photo one at a time if I want them listed in an individual list. I could group any number of them in a gallery format but I like having the photos as big as the theme allows. I don't like the word "theme" either compared to template or design.

Some of you might have seen that I made a change last night back to having a sidebar on the right side. Different reasons for that but I think I have finally decided on a design I like. Since buying the Premium Plan I had a few hundred new 'themes' I could choose from but in the end I chose to keep the one I had.

After that dark and overcast morning I was shocked but happy that the sunshine popping out of those clouds as I finish this post. With nice temperatures and sunshine with no rain ... perfect day.

Since I am a self-proclaimed hermit, I don't get out much. Therefore I am not surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Christmas panic for last minute gifts. If I had not glanced at my calendar a while I ago I would have never known we are only 9 days away from Christmas.

For new readers/followers ... a little warning. Since I am a world renowned scholar I blog about a variety of topics on this blog. This post here is one reason I decided last Sunday to move in a different direction. This was a daily type post on our other blog. I always try to include 18-25 photos in these kind of posts.

When I wanted to expand a little inside my demented mind I knew the topics would be much different and more random. I am trying to keep it at two posts per day because with that expansion of expertise coming out of my overactive brain cells, I cannot fit it all in one post per day.

Since I felt most readers saw the post yesterday that I would be changing the domain name from bhounds3blog.wordpress .com to houndsandotherstuff .com, I went ahead and started that process this morning. It has not finished yet. GoDaddy says it will take 4-6 hours to propagate the blog with her new url. Yes, I did put a space before the .com on purpose, in case you were wondering.

The blog title will not change ... uh, it might, it's probably best to have them match.

To see if this change will affect those that follow the blog by Wordpress Reader or by email, I too have followed my own blog with both of those options so I can see firsthand if there are any issues getting to the site or being notified of a new post after the change of the domain name.

I'll just say this about retirement living ... "its a dangerous job but I knew it would be dangerous when I took it." I still love every day of it, after 56 months of it.

The hounds are happy, I'm happy, it's another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

I Confused The Hounds Today

Last night after reading only a couple of pages of Dale Jr's book I stopped. I read a page or two of the other book about the 21st Century and stopped. I surfed through TV channels that I am forced to pay for and have not been deleted from my TV remote finding nothing to watch. I looked through the taped shows and movies on the DVR and found nothing to watch. It was about that time I remembered the hounds and I were up earlier than normal on Thursday morning ... so I went to bed.

At 8pm ... EIGHT PM ... EIGHT O'CLOCK ... what was that all about ???? My Garmin VivoSport shows that I lost consciousness seven minutes later.

So it didn't surprise me when I woke up at 4am ready for coffee and breakfast. But with two hounds in a deep sleep and Stella snoring, with it pitch black outside and inside, there was no way I was starting the day at 4am. Thirty minutes later I realized there was no way I was not starting the day at 4:30am because I was wide awake. The hounds were in for a rude awakening ... but they adapt well like any other dog breed does. Once that bedroom light went on Stella knew it was time for breakfast ... she was thrilled with the thought of eating.

Stella showed up in the computer room doorway whining to start that morning walk. It wasn't 6am yet and there is no way I was taking her for a walk in the dark. I have had to chase her in the dark a few years ago when a late night pee break for her went bad when she heard something and took off running ... that small LED camping flashlight I held wasn't quite strong enough to follow her. I was sprinting and yelling in the dark that night ... in a panic.

We did start the walk about 30 minutes earlier than normal though. That cold air felt the coldest I had felt yet this winter. By the end of the walk my hands inside a pair of gloves had never felt colder.

Stella had her first dose of the VeriScience Glucosamine this morning. This was a recommendation from Stella's previous owner when I asked what she used on all of her dogs and horses. Highly recommended. I realize this first dose would not make her more active or even running more ... but it's Friday, a day for energy and rambling ... she was more active than I had seen in a while.

She was already at the back of the field behind the house by the time I put my first foot into the field and she tried to stay in front of me on this walk as much as possible. She ran hard a couple of times away from me, trotted a lot and even jumped and did a 180 turn in midair once. Maybe that 4:30am wakeup time worked for her also. I mean she got to eat her breakfast a few hours earlier than normal and that's never a bad thing in her mind.

While we were out freezing our butts off Heidi was buried deep under the sleeping back breathing deeply in a deep sleep. She had breakfast too but I don't think she was a fan of getting up in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep. She was back to sleep within minutes of ingesting that last piece of kibble.

I noticed yesterday that Blogger was hanging up when I tried to save my blog post. Then it would not stop that spinning wheel when I tried to close the blog so I could close Firefox. Luckily when I got ready later in the afternoon to add some more photos, content and post that blog ... all that I had written earlier was still there. It posted okay so I did not think anything of it until this morning.

Same thing this morning, where I could not even close Blogger. So I shut off my extensions for Firefox that aid in blocking auto video and advertisements, shut Firefox off and restarted my computer ... I went back to blogger and it still was hanging up when I added some content and tried to save it. I've moved to Safari and Blogger has been working perfect.

One thing I have noticed already this morning on Safari, evidently their latest updates behind the scenes has stopped auto play of videos and it has always blocked advertisements with no additional extensions needed. Those websites that play videos were not this morning ... they were blank screens X'd out.

Glancing out the window this morning and seeing the weekly trash pick for my next door neighbor, reminded me of what I saw a few weeks ago. They had come home from work and left soon after on a Friday, leaving their trash can out by the road. This red pickup truck with extended tall wood sides on the truck bed, pulled out from the side country road and made an immediate stop in front of their driveway.

At first I thought he might have truck trouble or like many drivers, had pulled over to talk a phone call or even turn around. Not this person. They got out, ran around the back of the truck bed, opened the trash container and pulled out two bags of trash and threw them in the back of his truck on the run as he headed back to the driver's door.

Around here that could have been a friend of theirs but in my normal paranoid brain I thought it was suspicious and a little strange. In past years I have caught other drivers pulling into a neighbor's driveway and going through their trash. Then there was a time I shocked the living crap out of the lady that I caught just as she was opening my bag of trash. I've never seen anyone move as fast as she did to get back inside her car and take off before I got to the bottom of my driveway.

Cause for concern or just paranoid?

I am not being bombarded with emails about the "Black Friday Deals" but in my mind those three words have embedded themselves inside that light weight hard jello called my brain. I have the word "Deals" popping up in my thoughts at times. "Tech Stuff" is another tormentor. Will I be able to resist the reduced prices of high tech toys again this year like I did resist last year?

I had thought about having a 'low carb day' for my eating plans today but that idea died about the same time it lifted toff. It cannot be a 'low carb day' when I have plans to fix multiple huge burritos  on flour tortillas later this afternoon if not for dinner tonight. I've been resisting those craving spikes for Pepsi and candy for quite a while, yet I don't see a lot of the "lbs" sliding off the scale when I stand on it.

A faster than normal trot, it looked like Stella had other plans that didn't include me.

Now I know she is serious. She isn't running home because she is cold. She just remembered where some those frozen hard pellets of deer scat were yesterday and she thinks there has to be more today. She is smarter than she looks.

She is disappearing just like that inside that tall grass, straw or whatever.

Where did she go?

This is where she started to ignore me. She never lifted her head like she does sometimes just to let me know that she hears me but she is going to do what she wants. No, this morning it was just total, 100%, blocking out all sound ...

After a short tug on her collar and saying "lets go home" she finally headed in that direction.

She thinks she can sneak away to the Land of Burrs or I am not paying close attention to her.

Obviously the temps are below 32° this morning. It's no wonder why my hands and face were freezing.

While I was playing around with the camera trying to get the clearest, sharpest focus on those ice chips I was unaware that Stella was smelling something interesting. When I saw where she was I looked instantly at the fields across the highway from one side to the other, to see if she has spotted deer. It's never a good sign to see her looking that direction over by the fence this time of year.

I saw on sports news this morning that MLB had signed a new TV contract for 2022-2028 (doesn't that look weird?) to the tune of $1.5 Billion ... Billion dollars. I can't remember if that money is disbursed to all 30 teams but if not, I would hope so. The higher ticket prices go the fewer games I attend in all college and pro sports. I find that seat on my couch and the sound going through my tall Polk Audio stereo speakers is "free" and a great seat.

Speaking of money, I was thinking about Heidi's OraVet dental chews the vet told me they were getting great feedback. They are just hard enough that Heidi really has to work at chewing them up but they are designed that way to clean her teeth and prevent or slow down the plaque build up. Yet with my accounting background that cost just kept bugging me. The question is why should I pay $326.73 per year to keep her teeth clean when I can spend $124 per year getting them cleaned at the vets office?

Am I just confused or does anyone have ideas why the chews are better than an annual cleaning??

I see more and more bloggers coming off the road and spending most of their time at home. They have verified what I have blogged about a few times over the seven years that I have blogged ... there are days or weeks it is hard to find things to write about. Where they traveled and always had new places to talk about, now they have new routines and many of their days are really the same each day. For me that turns my blog into a boring blog at times but I still get a few readers to show up. I also like to write, ramble and take photos.

With winter just around the corner for those that don't live in the Northeastern part of the USA or in Canada, blogging is something to do when you are locked inside your house because it's too cold outside. Of course a lot of bloggers have gone to Instagram or are doing vBlog now. It might be a data usage thing with me but I've never been too enthused about podcasts, vBlogs or Instagram.

The times I sit here at the kitchen table writing a blog post on my laptop, I realized this small laptop is really all I need for a computer. I wonder if there will ever be a time where I use this as my full-time computer instead of a desktop computer. I did that back in 2003 when Gateway had a larger laptop and was marketed as a "desktop replacement" ... I did that for over a year. Once I went back to a desktop and a larger monitor I was never going back.

A few leaves are starting to fall again, all from the tall Sycamore tree. I am not going to panic yet because I want to see how many end up in my yard and how many naturally blog out into the field or down to the highway. I still have to do my annual burn pile fire. This year for the first time ever, I plan to roast hotdogs outside. Hopefully I can get that accomplished before it snows.

If even a 1/4 of the things that book says will happen in the 21st Century, we had better strap in and hang on. Yet, I still have a real hard time visualizing anything he is saying taking place here in small town USA ... then again, who would have ever thought a Chinese and Mexican restaurant would have been so successful in a small town that fights any kind of change or people from the outside?

Anyone a textile or clothing manufacturer expert?

I have a couple of questions. They don't deal with sports or hounds so I might sound like an idiot when I ask them.

• How can a Carthartt sock hat feel much warmer than a wool ski cap when it's made of 100% Acrylic instead of wool?
• How can two thermal shirts feel so much different in keeping you warm when both shirts are made of 60% Cotton and 40% Polyester? They are different in price and the more expensive one does keep me much warmer.

Well I have just missed a great photo of the squirrel that works my fence line. It's never too cold, too rainy, or too hot for him to go back and forth along the top of the fence collecting his food. I am still waiting for the Nikon D3200 battery to recharge.

I hear both hounds waking up with the sound of flapping ears as they do their full body shakes. With their unbelievable wakeup time this morning I wonder what time they will demand to be fed lunch. Yes ... it has started at 9:45am with Stella's alert of a soft whine. I am mistaken ... it's Heidi with the soft whine because Stella is still sleeping next to the kitchen island.

She just had to go outside. BTW, fleece lined jeans are one of the best inventions of all time. Why did it take 66 years for me to buy a pair? I am trying to remember the other best inventions of all time that I thought of the other day but being 66 years old, I have forgot what that was. With "60 being the new 40" I have no worries about what I remember or forget, I have plenty of time to remember what it was. 

I thank my lucky stars every day for my good health and a place to live ... and ... I am still not watching or reading any news. I have been watching the weather channel about the fires in Californian and winter weather east of here.

I've been a little addicted lately to a TV show called "Building Off Grid". It's great to see so many new ideas on how not only to build but how to heat it, supply water and even grow inside gardens. Some of the places they build these new homes are amazing. When you are hauling wood to build the cabin for 16 miles by snowmobile in Alaska ... you know you are off grid living.

I downsized years ago when I moved into this house that has less than a 1,000 square feet of living space. I also found out 30 years ago that a brand new house seems to have as many problems (not a lot) as a house that is 43 years old. How is that?

Well the camera is loaded with the recharged battery as I get ready to see that same squirrel again. I have also rambled more than I had intended to and am going to end this post that is too long. Besides, I forget what I was going to say.

A bright sunny day that feels like January here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.