Lots of little things to tell ya’ll today.
First, the sad- Kitty’s cat Rosie was apparently killed by the neighbors on accident a couple weeks ago, right after Kitty’s last visit. We received a very nice bottle of wine as a condolence gift. While I feel bad, I’m glad that I know what happened to her. And, in the neighbor’s defense, Rosie used to bolt across the driveway in front of our truck too.
Now, the bad- We went out for a bit last night. When we came home, we surprised two people in our house. We knew something was not right when we could see lights on in the house that shouldn’t have been on. They managed to elude us by running down the mountain and had a car waiting below the house on the neighbor’s drive. Nothing is missing. NOTHING. Well, ok, someone drank a soda and ate about a dozen chocolate chip cookies I made earlier in the day. Things got moved around, but none of the thousands of dollars we have in electronics were taken. Freya appeared ill/drugged. Don’t know if it was a lucky coincidence for them or if someone slipped her something. So, we spent the evening going over the house with a fine toothed comb and making a police report. We’ll be investing in a security system next.
The neutral- Lots of bits to fill in here. Because of the intruders from yesterday, we are looking into a personal protection dog or training for one or multiple of our dogs. And because of this, we have thought about training up one or more of our own dogs and perhaps adding another dog member to the family as Freya is getting up there in years and Luna is not really old enough to fill Freya’s paw prints yet. Which led to a few things…
Including finding a post on CL from a family looking to re-home their GSD (German Shepherd Dog) because the husband had lost his job, she is disabled and now they are losing their house. This posting just touched home for our family as that was us a couple years ago. So, we’re offering to long-term foster their dog until they’re on their feet again and/or adopt her. Cross your fingers and hope that she sees my email and it didn’t slip by in her bulk mail!
We are going to look into personal protection training for Luna as well. I’ll be contacting the trainers in Eugene and learning more about this process and their training style later this week. The training offered is much less costly than purchasing a fully trained dog for thousands of dollars and I’ll get to learn something along the way. However, Eugene is a couple hour drive from me and the course is 16 weeks long. And Lunny is still young. And this isn’t what we wanted for her life, but perhaps its a necessity-needed- and will be a good thing for her in the long run. Again, it’s not set in stone. Just an idea we’re kicking around.
Copper has a skin yeast thing again. CP and I are both wondering if the underlying issue is that Coppy is diabetic. We’ve both been involved in the veterinary world to know that there’s an underlying, big picture sort of thing that is making him ill and has been making him ill for the last year. We think the yeast is systemic. We also see other signs that point to diabetes. We’ll be getting Coppy tested soon and finding a vet who will listen and think outside the box and look at the whole picture instead of just treat whatever the current present symptom is.
We’re making plans to rip out the goat stalls and put in a single horse stall in the barn soon. As in, before Casey gets here in two weeks. Fortunately, the hardware from the goat stalls will be reusable and I’ll be able to use the track to put in a sliding stall door.
The storage room down stairs is all organized now. This makes life so much easier for everyone. Next up is getting all my tack organized into a cupboard down in the family room.
I’m going in for a hearing test tomorrow morning. I’ve definitely lost some hearing in my right ear in the last couple years, worse since we had pneumonia. I’ll be finding out to what extent I’m going deaf in the morning.
The good- Took Dude trick-or-treating down the mountain to a housing development by the middle school. Apparently, this is common among the families that live up here on the mountain as many other people were parking at the school and trick-or-treating through the neighborhood. Dude had quite the haul made in a short 45 minutes!
It was a perfect autumn day! Sunny with a gentle breeze and great for getting things done around the farm. Much needed and appreciated after all the rain we’ve been having lately.
Falling back an hour = more sleep! And none of the critters woke early either! Lucky me! I actually woke before any of them and there was no big, mad rush to get Luna out to potty and no cacophony from the dogs and Maddie as a whole. Yay for me!
Did you hear me when I mentioned that Casey will be here in two weeks?!?!! Can’t get much better than that!