(as drawn from a hat by Dude)
Book-Laura!
Coffee- Melanie!
Chocolates- Kacy K!
Congrats to all the winners! If you will be so kind as to email me your addresses, I’ll happily get these sent out! Thanks for playing!
Canine Chronicles/ Freya and The Mini Fuzz
It’s October. It’s time for all good creatures to be growing their winter coats. It’s the nature of all animals that are preparing for winter. Not Freya. Rather, she is blowing coat something awful! It’s so damned messy out of the blue for her. Usually, this is the time she is starting to acquire her winter down. Instead, I end up with this:
And that’s after only 5 minutes of brushing! I swear, the second I’m not looking, that pile will get up and shamble off to parts unknown hide, lying in wait for it’s chance to attack the unwary.
Is she trying to create her own mini-me? Will this hair gather itself up and form a miniaturized Freya as soon as I’m not looking? Is this the start of a clone army, preparing to take over the world?
Every year, I swear I’m going to collect her hair and save it to spin into yarn. There is probably enough collected off of her every year that I could have a dog-hair sweater knitted.
I’m taking requests if anyone is interested in making their own sweater. I’d be happy to collect it all up for you and mail it next November. However, if you want to start your own clone army of mini-fuzz’s, you’re out of luck. I get first dibs on that!
Wordless Wednesday: A Fall Day
The day started dark and omnious
Fall has come upon the mountain
Sunshine on the pony
Catching some rays
Hmm…
| You Are Lingerie |
 You love to be seen as attractive. Being seen as sexy is important to you.You drive everyone crazy… in the best way possible.You love to tease, flirt, and fall in love. You are the type most likely to be sleeping in someone else’s bed.
|
200!
Fall in the vineyard
This contest is now closed. Please see the results here
In honor of my 200th post, I’ve decided to do a giveaway!
I’ve decided that this giveaway is going to feature 3 of my favorite things from Oregon.
Hope Rising by Kim Meeder, stories from a non-profit horse rescue in Central Oregon from Amazon.com
7oz of assorted chocolates for wine tasting from Honest Chocolates
A bag of Sisters Blend coffee from Sisters Coffee Company (ground or whole bean, your choice)
Please enter by leaving a comment below by Wednesday, October 28th, 2009. Three winners will be chosen at random (one per giveaway item) on Thursday, October 29th, 2009. Winners will be posted here on this blog and notified via email. One entry per person, please.
Contest open to all residents of the US and Canada.
More This and That
We had Kitty this weekend and we celebrated her birthday a bit belatedly. I am always loathe to send her presents to her because we have had a history of them being intercepted, re-wrapped and gifted to her by people that aren’t me and being told that my package must have “gotten lost” in the mail, or I was lying and didn’t really send her presents at all. (Nice, huh? Can you imagine what that does to a 7 yr old? And can you imagine how I felt when 6 months later, she was at my house with the exact present I sent down for her but that came from her father?)
Anyways… I didn’t mean to take that trip down amnesia lane. Sorry.
So, we celebrated Kitty’s 15th birthday by carving pumpkins and making low fat- low cal mint chocolate cupcakes that she requested during the summer. As usual, Kitty made quite a haul off of me. New clothes, new shoes, books, makeup, her fav candy… You get the idea.
We had a great time over all.
The leaves are turning and everywhere I look I’m seeing little splashes of red, orange and gold in my green and brown landscape. Did you know that oak trees only turn brown? I didn’t know they weren’t colorful like the cut outs we made in grade school! However, I am glad that there are no more acorns falling on my head when I go outside now. That was quite annoying for a bit.
My shoulder seems to be healed up. It’s still tender, but I spend a bit of yesterday moving more of the 3-string hay bales out of my truck. Kitty managed to weasel out of helping by disappearing and then being “disposed” until about time to leave to return her to Grandma’s. I was careful to not re-injure it again. And, I crawled up into the truck and moved them the safe, smart way instead of trying to stretch my reach like I did last time. Today, I’m not really sore either! My shoulder is ok, still just a bit tender as it was yesterday, before I moved hay.
I’ve decided to move all my tack and stuff inside for the winter. It was slowly taking over the living room, my bedroom and the family room, which has drove CP crazy to no end. Now, I just have to get it all organized down in the family room, where it’s most convenient to grab before heading out. I’m also washing up my coolers and blankets so they’ll be clean and ready to go when I need them. Also, it smells fresh and clean like Pine Sol downstairs now! Something that couldn’t be accomplished any other way since there’s wall to wall carpet down there and Pinesol has no use down there besides cleaning the blankets.
So, from the 4 large pumpkins we carved this weekend, we roasted 4 1/2 cups of seeds. I haven’t had roast pumpkin seeds since I was little. They’re addictive! Man! If they sold fresh roasted pumpkin seeds at the theater, I’d be there all the time! They’re tastier than popcorn!
Copper has finally settled down when it comes to Maddie. He’s fine with her as long as she isn’t hanging on the fence line. I am so relieved that he’s not going psycho at the sight of her any more! He’s allowed off leash once again!
We spent a bit of time in Portland at Powell’s City of Books yesterday after putting Kitty on the train to head back north. I’d only been there one time before. It’s such an amazing place! We’re not too far away, so I’m hoping we get to go back more often. It’s 5 stories and one city block in size and full of new and used books! I could spend days there and still not see everything! And lets not talk about the money I could spend! I can’t wait to go back!
Well, that’s all for now. How was your weekend?
Training Thursday: Frustration
There are times in the lives of pet owners where we all get frustrated at one point or another with a behavior or a slow down in “getting it” while training our pet. Even me. And I hit that wall with Luna.
Luna wasn’t grasping the idea of house-training. She continually soiled her crate, sometimes right after we’ve come in from outside. I’ve tried all the tricks. Crate training- making sure the crate is not too big so she can’t go just in one area and still be able to lay down in another. Putting her on a schedule- during the day, Luna goes out every 2 hours. Praise- Luna receives a lot of praise for pottying in the right area, outside. Actually, I’d rather she potty in one area and not so much by the walk ways. But I’ve shortened it down to simply pottying outside for now. However, at 5 months old and after a little over 3 months of working on it, she wasn’t getting it. Because wasn’t getting it, her crate needs to be cleaned at least once a day, if not more. This causes great frustration. Great Frustration. And it’s enough to try the patience of a saint.
I’ve had to remind myself that Luna didn’t get the normal social upbringing most puppies do. She was hand-raised from the time she was 3 weeks old. Her mother wasn’t involved in the puppy rearing process from that time on. And herein lies the problem.
Hand-raised pups miss out on learning so much from their mothers. They don’t learn frustration tolerance, because they don’t have to fight for a nipple to feed (or be pushed away) by their siblings. They don’t learn acceptable social skills from their mothers and siblings. Bite inhibition is a great example of this. Puppies removed from their mothers and siblings before the age of 8 weeks tend to “not get it” when another pup (dog, person) squeals to let them know they bit too hard. And, apparently, there is some sort of potty habit taught by the mother dog.
When puppies are born, they can’t crawl away from the den space to relieve themselves. At a young age of a couple weeks, they still aren’t even aware of their bladder needs. To encourage their pups to potty, the mother dog will lick them to stimulate the pup to relieve them self. And she will clean them up along with any waste product produced.
At around 5 weeks old, the pups are big enough to start moving away from the den area and begin to relieve themselves away from their sleeping space. The question remains whether or not any of that instict/behavior is taught by the mother dog.
With Luna’s remedial house training 101, I quickly discovered that she wasn’t holding it beyond 1 1/2 hours. She also wasn’t signaling. She simply would wake up and relieve herself, then bark, cry and howl. However, she would hold it for 5 hours at night often, but not one second longer and not always. And after that middle of the night potty, she would move to her hour and a half schedule for the rest of the day.
For about a month, I washed her crate out at least twice a day. I took her outside to potty every hour and twenty minutes, exactly. I kept her crate near where ever I was (multiple crates as we have multiple floor levels) and kept my ears alert for the slightest stir from her. I was more sleep deprived and tied to the house than I was when Dude was an infant. And I was a lot crankier because of it.
And it wasn’t just house training that Luna was not responding to. She wasn’t responding to any other thing I was attempting to teach her. Not sit, not keeping her paws off of people, not coming when called. Just nothing.
I gave up on writing the Training Thursday posts because I was so frustrated with Luna’s inability to grasp anything that I began to doubt myself. After all, how could I teach my readers if I couldn’t get one silly pup to do anything I attempted to teach her.
Really, I gave up.
And then…
Luna suddenly became a dynamo with her recall. It was like a light switched on. And now she comes every. single. time. I. call. It’s amazing! Then she suddenly began to get the idea of sit and quit spinning around and jumping herself away from whatever position she was in instead of sitting. And, now we’ve had a dry crate for more than a week! She’s also holding her bladder for 4-5 hours at a time and all through the night! She’s finally got it!
So, the moral of the story here is if at first you don’t succeed in a reasonable time period, don’t give up! Keep trying and maybe try a few different methods. Keep setting your pup up for success and eventually you will succeed!
Better
I awoke last night to the sound of three very loud pops. After the initial shock and bit of searing pain wore off, I realized that my sprained shoulder had popped in 3 places, from my clavicle to the ball joint itself. Needless to say, my shoulder feels better today. Still tender, but definitely on the mend. Yay!
There was a 4-point buck on my back deck last night. Wish I could have gotten a picture of him but it was dark and the reflection of the flash off the kitchen slider would have prevented it. CP also saw about 10 deer on the drive down our road last night. Three of them were on the driveway by the garage and pasture. I wonder if they were planning on sneaking into the garage (it’s open, there are no doors) to help themselves to a snack of hay? Just in case, I’ll be buying a bit of extra hay as I don’t have a lot of space to store a whole ton yet.
Also saw a pair of turkey vultures sitting on a couple fence posts the other day. I’ve only seen these two up in the air above the vineyards next door. I’d have loved to have gotten pics, but we were driving. Still cool to only be about 10′ away and get such a close up view!
We’ve had quite the wind and rain storm the last couple days. Maddie insists on staying out in the weather under a couple trees instead of going inside the barn. Not sure that I blame her as the barn still needs some work. But still… I think I’ll be blanketing her soon. Would do it now, but still can’t do it alone with my shoulder. Then again, maybe I’ll have Kitty do it when she’s here this weekend. Only, I hate the thought of blanketing her as I want her to get all fuzzy.
Freya has been teaching Luna to hunt small prey. All together, our 3 dogs are better at catching rats and mice than our 5 indoor/outdoor cats! It’s not unusual to see Luna tagging along with Freya and mimicking Freya’s behaviors. Copper isn’t so interested in hunting and flushing prey or “patrolling” like Freya does.
Speaking of Luna, I need to get her a coat for winter. It’s so hard to judge her size as she’s growing. I *think* I’ll be better off getting her a foal blanket style coat and I really do prefer them. Now if I could only get all three of the dogs to tolerate boots… It would so cut down on the mud tracked in!
A Little of This, A Little of That!
Did you see? I made a difference in some poor pup’s life in Australia! With moving and some issues with Luna, I sorta stopped my Training Thursday part of the blog. After all, how can I teach if I can’t even overcome my own pup’s issues? Well, apparently I can make a difference! So, now ya’ll will just have to wait until Thursday to see how things are with Luna now!
I sprained my shoulder moving that hay the other day. Ouch! Of course, it’s the shoulder I tend to sleep on as I’m a side sleeper. So, my painting project for Kitty’s room is not completed. I’ve got at least another week of healing before I’ll be good to go again. That also means farm chores are suffering because I cannot steady the wheelbarrow on the steep grade of my pasture so that I can pick it clean.
I knew there was a reason I like geldings better than mares. It seems like Maddie is coming into heat so very often. Just when she returns to her normal self, she goes into heat shortly thereafter again. Ok, it’s not an abnormal amount of heat cycles or unusually long. I just prefer the non-hormonal times and geldings all the time.
It is not cool to find a miscellaneous creature’s rib cage at the bottom of your deck steps at dawn after a near sleepless night of listening to Maddie call to the sexy, studly deer crossing the property. It’s even more uncool to figure out that it’s old coyote kill and that Freya drug it home. The gristly sight was almost too much for my stomach.
Kitty will be here this weekend. We’ll be celebrating her belated birthday, but at least I get to see her. After this, she won’t be back again until Thanksgiving, and not here for Christmas. Maybe not again until after the custody trial.
I made a wonderful beef and barley soup yesterday! It was so yummy that I had some for lunch!
As you can see, it was chock full of veggies! The picture is a bit blurry because of the steam. Sorry!
I’m also blogging over at Cowboys Love Fat Calves if you’re interested in stopping by and lending your support!
