Can't Sadie & Stella Eat Only Dog Food?

It doesn’t matter what dog food I feed them. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is. It doesn’t matter what the temperature is or if there is snow on the ground. Sometime in the past 6-7 months, Sadie has decided to eat gross stuff in the field anytime she can get the chance. In the past month Stella has picked up on Sadie’s habit and has decided to join the fun.

They started their day like any other day, noses to the ground and off they went. Stella did have to start with a scratch before she could join Sadie. Oblivious to any of my commands to them or hearing their name called. That is the typical bloodhound though, so it’s not a surprise.

Here they are both in the concentration phase of their exploration. They hear nothing.

Glancing through my 200mm lens … sure enough, Sadie is ‘gobbling’ something down fast before I yell at her. She doesn’t know that I can see her and plays it off like nothing happened when she came back to the house.

Stella on the other hand wanted to show me how good she was when her name was called. She forgot to finish her ‘gobbling’ before returning. She also acted innocent and claimed nothing was going on.

We will see how the day progresses here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.

Thinking Of Past RV Decisions

First of all you will notice the new blog theme. I was looking around this morning at different themes I had found through my Google search and this one, called “Flat” jumped out at me. I’ve looked at hundreds of themes this past week and nothing ‘hit’ me like this one. So along with the permanent move to a hosted site and a domain ending in .net, I also have a theme that I feel will last a long time. Let me know if you have any problems with it loading, reading it on your smart phones and those that have tablets.

~~~ Found the sidebar on the new theme was too hard to read. Some where having problems loading the page. Voted to “go back to the white with red banner” ~~~

I don’t know why or where the thoughts of different RVs struck me but I did a quick journey back through RV Memory Lane. Not all the way but back to the 2013 summer. Long time readers remember that I have changed my mind a million times on motorhomes, trailers, trucks, tow vehicles … the list is long.

I will say that after I did all of this analysis again, I still feel I made the best decision of not selling the house and even not buying a motorhome nor a trailer. I’ll not go into details again about the pros and cons, but my ‘home base’ is paid for, low property taxes, great location and not much more than routine maintenance. As far as trailers or motorhomes go … how would I have been able to handle those last few weeks with Winston? Or fitting a 2nd large tall bloodhound into a small trailer?

So here is a short recap and photos of things I either passed on, bought and sold. In all cases, money had been put down for a purchase and not completed most of the time.

The Summer of 2013 I put a down payment on a refurbished Casita trailer, local seller and a tremendous refurbish job. I backed out of the deal because of the lack of space for a bloodhound and two basset hounds. Now in January 2016, that would be two bloodhounds that would have had to fit inside withe me and Heidi … I would had to sell it. It was a great trailer though, someone got a great deal.

It was sometime in August 2013 I had put a deposit on the 2013 Starcraft AR-ONE 17RD trailer. The only delay was their prepping the trailer for delivery. Those couple of days gave me time to 2nd guess my decision and change my mind. I really liked that trailer, although I am not sure how it would have done as a full-time trailer.

September 2013, Winston, Sadie and Heidi head to Arkansas to pick up the Lil Snoozy Trailer I had decided to buy. Hours before closing the deal I changed my mind and didn’t buy it. You can read about that 586 mile trip here.

It wasn’t 2 weeks later after backing out of the deal on the Lil Snoozy trailer and blogging that I would not travel with 3 hounds … blah blah blah, I turned right around and bought a 2003 Coachman 258db from a local seller. A week after I purchased it, due to a large oil leak, I had to replace the oil lines from the oil filter halfway back to the oil cooler in the radiator. (Thank you YouTube). I let it sit through the winter and sold it the 2nd day of great spring weather.

The day I bought it Sadie, Winston and Heidi gave it a close inspection … decided it was the way to go … it wasn’t long before Sadie used her Bloodhound Property Laws and claimed the couch as hers. That’s Winston in the driver’s seat.

 

 It snowed a lot that winter in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana … It was a good ‘leak test’ for the Class C.

In May 2014, on a whim, I bought a 2006 Chevy 2500 HD 4×4 short bed pickup truck. My friend had just pulled it onto his used car lot for sale, minutes before I stopped by to just visit. With a bigger tow vehicle than the 2006 H3 Hummer I had at the time, I investigated truck campers and larger trailers. I kept this truck for only a month. It was a great truck but when I saw my current 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser for sale online, I traded the truck for the FJ and that put me back int the area of small trailers.

It was toward the end of May in 2014, about a week after getting the Toyota FJ, that I drove up to Northern Indiana to take a look at someone’s Escape 19′ trailer. It wasn’t for sale but that is the way Escape Trailers in Canada work. They will hook you up with someone as close to you as possible, so you can take a look, if you express interest in their trailers. I lost a large deposit on that decision when I backed out of it. Fantastic trailer though. IF I were to buy a trailer in the future, the Escape 19′ or 17′ would be the one.

It was sometime in June 2014 that I came to the conclusion I wasn’t traveling full-time with two basset hounds and a bloodhound. I would continue to downsize here at home, enjoy what I had and the area I lived. I had the feeling of contentment from that point forward. Yes, there have been times those thoughts of traveling come back to the forefront … but never as intense as they were from October 2011 – June/July 2014. We did travel for a week or so last June 2015. It was a great trip and I found out that it is possible with 3 hounds. Although the number of bloodhounds and basset hounds changed since that time.

I guess all of this is like me changing themes (templates) on my blog frequently, only this is not as drastic financially.

Sadie and Stella had a great walk through the field today here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.

An Enjoyable Monday

An enjoyable Monday … those three words were rarely spoken in the years that I worked. Sure, I’d have good days at work, even Mondays, but starting the night before on Sunday I would always seem to dread the thought of going to work on Monday. That was different last night because I was sure of what I wanted to do today and by early afternoon if not before, I had finished what I planned on.

That plan was moving my blog once again from the WordPress free side to my own domain. So I have two domains, the same name except one ends in .com and this one ends in .net. That is something I’ve been thinking about doing for over the last couple of years.

I am already finding it much easier to come to one site, load images, post and do any of the editing work I need to do in the background. I’ve updated some pages that are located on the red banner across the blog. It was also easier to download images from my Apple Photos program into just one folder instead of four different folders, so they could be uploaded into this blog.

Just a couple of days ago setting up each of the hounds with their own blogs, they had their own folders for their blog photos to be uploaded into their blogs. I’ve always had separate folders for them in iPhoto and Photos.

Needless to say I have not heard even one objection from Sadie, Stella and even Heidi about losing their blogs. They must be okay with the new arrangement. At times I’ll add their ‘point of views’ to my blog post that day. They are still opinionated, still demanding at times and still spoiled. They will enjoy the additional time they will get with me spending less time on only 1 blog instead of 4 blogs.

With the temperature starting the day in the upper 30’s, it felt like spring had arrived compared to the single digit temps less than a week ago. Sadie, Stella and I started an afternoon walk but the ground had become so saturated with the above freezing temperature, it was very soft and muddy. We turned back to the house after only a few steps into the walk. Back inside they were given a couple of treats for wasting their time and letting me clean the mud off their paws.

Heidi? She didn’t do anything outside her normal routine of sleeping. She headed outside mid-afternoon and this is the only photo I was able to get of her. She is fast when she goes out and back in, rarely ‘posing’ for a photo. For concerned readers, she has gained a few pounds since her weight loss last summer. She is being fed twice per day and twice the amount recommended on the dog food bag. She saw the vet just last week for her annual check up. The vet is looking at some other possible causes for her weight loss, otherwise Heidi tested out “a healthy basset hound with a strong heart and a nice soft shiny coat”.

Sadie and Stella are still finding a lot of new scents to smell since the snow has melted yet that also leads to potentially new things for them to eat. It’s stuff that I don’t want them eating. Maybe I should just say heck with it and don’t look as they are gobbling down their fiber found in the field.  :)

No matter what, they always come running to the house when I yell anything about ‘eating’ or just the words ‘milk bone’.

Although the clouds became dark as the afternoon progressed, the winds picked up, it was still high 40’s today in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.

It's Too Much "Work" For Retirement

It’s not really surprising, at least not for me. It was something I questioned in the back of my mind during the time of writing down ideas and putting some of them into action. Did I really want to do this?

Multiple blogs, different accounts feeding into those blogs to generate new traffic. Spending time on the internet on other blogs, making comments to increase visibility of the hound blogs. Did I really want to make a commitment to do this?

Based on working full-time online from 2005 – 2008 and then part time around a job from 2009 – 2011, I know how much effort it takes to build an online business and even more time to maintain it. It is time consuming and hard work. It’s just not showing up on occasion to post on a blog or read those blogs of others.

Yes, I’m talking about the 3 different websites for the hounds – plus the plan to add Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus accounts for each of them. That is not what I want online. I do not want nor maintain that many online accounts. Less is better in my eyes.

I didn’t retire to work a different job, nor to work part-time. I retired to kick-back, do the least amount possible, downsize commitments and responsibilities — along with that, I was willing to live with a lot less income than I had been living on working. Some days in retirement means doing absolutely nothing and I am enjoying it!

Moab Area Hwy 128

So, there will be no Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus accounts for the hounds. I am not even sure if I’ll maintain their websites.

It was less than a year ago where I decided to take a break from blogging not really sure I was even coming back to blog. I did and I am glad I did. That is, working only 1 blog, not 4 plus my personal private journal. Last February I deleted my Google Plus account. I shut off my Facebook account and spent less time away from the computer. It felt fantastic.

How would that work with 4 different websites and all those other accounts?

Rifle Gap SP, Colorado

So it WAS something I kept thinking about while spending the past week building the sites, moving them etc. Was it something I really wanted to do, knowing it required a large commitment. All that was good and fun to do, even with the frustrations. Why? Because I was able to complete the job even with the frustrations. It was also something I needed for my frame of mind at that time. Too much dwelling on things is never healthy.

Now for all those readers that love reading about the hounds from their point of view … that will still take place. Those views will be posted on this blog, not every post but just as much as was being said on their own sites.

That is something I will think about. I’m sure some are asking if you can write their points of view here, then why not over their on their sites? That’s a good question. Is it worth $125 per year for hosting cost and domains. Okay…so I could move their blogs back to the free side of WordPress.

That’s the thing though … I don’t want to post on 4 different blogs/websites. I want to come to one blog and cover all of their and my activities.

The purpose of this blog remains the same as it did when I started the blog in October 2011. I wanted to document what I found out in my RV research, and any travels we did. That gradually turn into the direction of blogging about life here in the ‘tropics’. Then it was less RV talk and more photos and posting about the hounds or whatever projects I had to do around home.

That’s the way this blog will continue.

I cannot make the commitment to run a whole dog life online. I still want our lives to be less online and more in real time. As the weather gets warmer, as in the past, I will be spending less time on the computer as will the hounds. There will be more photography with better weather but that still means less computer time and more ‘living’ time.

We still have plans to travel this spring and/or summer. We still have plans to blog about what we do (even at home) and where we go … we just don’ have plans of waking up everyday with a job to do.

Retirement in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana means not working !!

Now What??

Basically the websites of the 3 hounds are up and running. There are a few more things to add to the sidebars but basically the majority of the work is finished. The feeling an ‘ex workaholic” gets when working non-stop is gone.

So, now what?  What’s next?

When I shut down my computer last night I was reminded of the time last June while sitting at the picnic table on a beautiful Colorado day, at Rifle Gap SP, thinking to myself “now what?”

Both seemed to be very similar in feeling but so much different in the task. One was building websites with most of the hard work furnished, so there wasn’t major building involved. It’s not like I was writing code, which I don’t know how to do. Yet, there is a lot of work to get the website/blog designed and working correctly … times 3 or 4 if you count mine.

Whereas in traveling, there was the planning, the packing, getting the hounds situated to travel, non-stop driving, setting up the campsite and then sitting back with a feeling “that’s all finished … now what do I do?”

Weird comparison isn’t it?

Not much was planned for today except watching some college basketball before the two NFL Playoff games play back to back (almost 7 solid hours of football). Not only am I out of high-speed data, using my 1gig yesterday for $10 … but I am also out of food and no motivation to go shopping. The life of being a single sports/computer addict.

Not much of a post today … I guess I need to look through the old photos I have on file and post some here. This blog is more about photos than just plain commentary.

On a side note … traffic reports show that 50% of my blog traffic has deserted me and has moved over to the websites of Stella, Sadie and Heidi, now following the hounds … so much for thinking you and your content were the reason people were coming back to read your blog … lol

It’s was a cold but beautiful sunny day in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana today.

Snow Is Melting Here In The Tropics

It might be covering the Northeast and the Eastern Seaboard but here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana, the ice cycles are running water and the snow is disappearing into the green grass. That is always a catch-22 for walking the hounds. Beautiful day to take the daily hound walk but the ground is too muddy and wet. Nothing like trying to clean the undersides and paws of wet, muddy bloodhounds while they are anxious to get back inside after a walk.

So we went outside to enjoy the afternoon sunshine, take some photos and sniff some new scents. Heidi of course refused to join us but didn’t hesitate later to sprint to the cabinet when the treats were being passed out. With all the food she is eating I hope that leads to her gaining that 10-12 pounds back that she lost last year.

The new websites seem to running smoothly so far today. They don’t see any comments from readers talking of things gone wrong. There are still some things to get finished to tie in the system of there. Finding out the NFL Playoff games are not until tomorrow, I should be able to get what is needed, finished.

The other day Al at The Bayfield Bunch had taken some photos of old fence posts out in his area with different barbed wire fencing. Some of you may have seen this fence post before in my past posts but there is a story behind this. It’s in my backyard near the area that I cleared last April and planted grass seed to increase the area of my yard.

My father who is now 87 years old was a teenager plowing the field for my great grandfather, that same field the hounds now roam. He claims that roll of barbed wire you see toward the lower third of the post has been there since approximately 1944, give or take a couple of years. I think that’s pretty cool that it has stayed intact for around 70+ years.

As you can see, the hounds and I didn’t get much done outside except enjoy the sunshine, warmer temps and melting snow.

The ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana is the place to be during these winter storms.

Hounds Have Dot Com Sites

After a lot of confusion yesterday and last night about building the 3 new websites for the hounds – each having their own .com domains – a friend mentioned something about how plugins worked and the cobwebs of my memory evaporated immediately. I remembered what to do. So I headed off for a good night of sleep, started again this morning and finished their sites in less than 4 hours time.

Here are the links that you will need to change your bookmarks to:

Heidi – http://heidithebasset.com

Stella – http://stellathebloodhound.com

Sadie – http://sadiethebloodhound.com

Now the reason you need to change your bookmarks or favorites to those links, I have to delete the .worpress.com sites each hound had because if I don’t, the google search engines say that each of the hounds have duplicate content. They don’t like that and would penalize the new sites of the hounds, thus they wouldn’t show up on the search engines.

Why did I build these sites and not keep the ones I made the last week?

Well the hounds are going to do a little affiliate internet marketing. They needed their own domain name to do that. They think it might be a chance to make some money online, buy a few more treats, maybe a camping trip here and there or save up for any unexpected vet bills they might have as they get older.

They don’t have the chance to join Obamacare, so they have to do something for some sort of health insurance.

Also, going to their own domain name makes it their site, they own it, they own their photos. Sure their slave Steve will have to do the work in the background, he has installed automatic updates so their sites are backed up without us even worrying about it. It will be the same type of work the hounds have me doing now FOR FREE … I don’t get paid by them.

All of the hounds are happy with the way things have turned out. They would like some warmer temps though.

This morning started out interesting. We normally go outside together to take the two normal photos for my personal use…the shot across the field and at the corner of the house looking back into the field. Just a sky shot to show what the weather is like.

For some reason this morning I didn’t let the hounds outside with me at the same time. I wasn’t going out that long, only to take 2 photos. During my first photo I picked up about 15+ deer running across the cornfield. By the time I focused the Nikon D3200, there were but 5-6 of them left. The last 2 turned and looked at me, then sprinted away when they heard my Nikon D3200 beep when it focused.

If I would have let the hounds out with me, like normal, they would have smelled the deer immediately before they did anything. Once they saw them, they would have taken off running after them, having to cross a dangerous highway to get to them … and they would have been “unconscious” during their chase. They would have never heard me yelling their names.

Nothing would have stopped them. So something prevented me from letting them out.

Afterward, they came outside for their morning trip, did a little snooping around and then right back inside.

Stella came when I called her name … she was happy to be back inside.

That’s about all from the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana this morning. I have more fine tuning to do on all of their websites, some double checking things to make sure they work and an IU basketball game on at noon I want to watch.

Be sure to check out their new sites, although, they have the same themes (templates) so they will look the same in appearance. Let me know if they are missing something you want or you find that something doesn’t work like before.

Thanks for visiting.

Sadie & Stella Have a Burst of Energy

It’s been one of those days here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana. Too warm to snow, cold enough to have to wear a coat, and the ground is too wet/soggy to go for a walk … but the bloodhounds had a sudden burst of energy this morning. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

I’m not sure they will get much more done today … they have been sleeping every since.

If you want to read about my efforts this morning or the 1st half of the day, to move Heidi’s blog and hopefully the other blogs to her(their) new dot com site, hosted by DreamHost then read from here on. There is some humor, a little frustration, few questions, a lot of head scratching and 2nd guessing.

First of all when I talked to a friend about this a few weeks ago, even before moving to WordPress, she told me “if you are not going to make money off of a site then why pay for a domain and a host for that site.” Estimated depending where you buy the domain and hosting service .. but a $100 – $125 per year.

So I decided to move my blogger blog to the free WordPress side. I liked the dashboard, all of the themes. I even found 4 different themes that I really liked for each blog. They all seemed to fit, if you know what I mean. In this story I am about to tell it will be important that you remember what I just said about ‘themes’.  :)

I had some good sleep Thursday night. No health issues like the night before. Stella wakes me Friday morning, I feel rested, a couple of cups of coffee and I am ready to move some blogs from here to their new domains, onto a host and publish online. Should be easy.

Over the years since I last did this type of work at home, everything seemed to be a one-click operation. I had Heidi’s blog moved within minutes. Her domain showed up online within 30 minutes which I thought was extremely fast. DreamHost had a WordPress app where with one-click it installed Heidi’s blog without an issue.

Luckily last week when I was uploading photos from my computer to WordPress’s “Media Library” I had made a folder for each hound. I did not find out until today why I did that.

I followed the steps furnished to me by DreamHost. Heidi now had a new WordPress.org site, hosted by DreamHost and showing up online with her .com domain. Once I uploaded the photos again from my computer, Heidi’s folder to her new WordPress “media library”, all the photos matched up with the imported blog posts and were correctly installed.

All of her posts were there, the categories, the tags, about page, contact page … EVERYTHING … but … the theme.

Remember what I said a few paragraphs ago about ‘themes’?

Sure they only showed 20 different themes to use in the default setting but after I clicked that “add more”, I had 2,168 themes to chose from and as I scrolled through not even a 1/3 of them I notice my data counter is spinning like you would see dollar/cents on a gas pump. When you only have 15Gb per month on your internet service plan and only had 700 Mb left for the month with 5 days to go …. data spinning out of control is NOT want you want to see happening!!!

The bottom line was, out of 2,168 themes available, NONE of the themes I am using on the free side of WordPress were available on the .org side of WordPress. They didn’t show up when I searched them, they didn’t get answers back when I asked on the support forums.

By the time I had noticed and shut off my browser due to data usage going out of control, I received an email from my internet service provider that I had used my monthly allotment of 15Gb’s. Of course there are options and that is an expensive option in my book … I can buy more Gig’s at $10 per 1Gb until my new billing cycle starts on the 27th.

Now that I have ran over my limit, I still have internet access but at “dial-up” speeds … if the page loads at all.

Or I can stay up from Midnight until 5am and use all the data I want, like I always can between those times of night. High speed will be the norm during those 5 hours, it’s called their “free data” on my plan.

Let’s get back to the blog issue and a domain name.

So I have a blog with it’s own domain name and that makes it look so official, yet there is not one theme that I want to use. I like the theme that Heidi has on her blog now, on the free side of WordPress.

I’m not sure I want to move forward on moving everything to a .com domain. Really what is the reason? Those words of my friend a few weeks ago, echo in my brain. I basically have 4 blogs set up the way I want them. All I have to do from now on is post, answer comments and “let it ride”.

Oh, I thought about all of this before and even from what I read I might have to rebuild some of the blogs that I would transfer to WordPress’s .org side of the house. Other writers kept saying it was just soooooo important that I own my own blogs, not letting a ‘free’ host keep control of them.

I just received an email from my forum question about my theme or the three themes. It’s sad that the solution is so simple. It is something I saw when I chose that theme early this week. The maker of the theme, WordPress.com has a “download” button on theirs to where all I need to do is download the them to my computer, upload to Heidi’s .com site. How easy is that … and how brain dead I am at times. LOL

So with that answer you can tell where this is going … back to Heidi’s site to get her theme uploaded. If that goes smooth then I will be able to move Stella’s, Sadie’s and even mine by the end of today.

Of course that changes all the domains again. I will will post them here and on the hound blogs once I know for sure that each site works.

Back to my Exede Internet provider. Due to my location I don’t have any other choice but satellite internet. Believe me I looked and called every possible provider in June 2014. This is it. My speeds will eventually trickle to where I can’t even load an email or a website, even though they tell me that’s not possible because I will always have access, just not high speed access.

It will become so slow I will have no choice but to buy more data or have to stay off the internet until January 27th. That might actually be a good thing … lol … a little vacation.

Now I’m headed back to some computer work and it should go fairly fast now that I know how to get those themes loaded. Will I have the internet speed to do it??