The Path of Opportunities

We're walking every morning around 7AM.  We walk about 3-4 miles each day.  We LOVE to walk!  I think we'd like it better if we weren't forced to wear our pinch collars, but Mommy reminds us that it only hurts when we pull in the opposite direction!  Doesn't she understand all of the GOOD stuff is in the opposite direction???

It's fairly cool in the mornings when we're out walking, but we still get HOT!  Who wouldn't while wearing a black fur coat in the middle of summer?   Several yards along our route have a sprinkler system, and of course early morning is a good time to run those sprinklers.  We don't really like to play in the sprinklers, but we DO like to lap up the water that collects in the edge of the driveways.

We do this for a couple reasons.  First, we need to cool off.  We cool off our feet and we lap up the water to drink.  Second, birds like to cool off in that water too.  And you know what else they tend to do in the water?  Poop!  We've developed a taste for bird poop lately much to Mommy's dismay.  Don't blame me.  Jenna started it.  I just picked up the bad habit from her.

We also enjoy our morning walks because of the rabbits we see along the way.  We used to have cottontails in our old yard, but the rabbits here tend to be BIGGER!  Mommy refuses to let us run after them.  The rabbits at our old house used to bolt as soon as they saw us.  These rabbits think they can perform magic.  They like to hunker down in the grass and try to disappear.

On another morning, Mommy captured pictures of these rabbits!  Can you see them?  I can't believe they don't see us coming and hop away.  It's probably a small miracle we don't hear their hearts beating or they don't have a heart attack!  (Mommy calls this nearby area the "normal" neighborhood.  It has normal size houses, normal size yards, and has trees!!)

It's so much fun to spot the rabbits along the way.  If only we could chase them.  [sigh]  Maybe one day!

Dixie


PS: Happy 280th birthday to Uncle J!!!!!  You're definitely getting OLD!  May you live a long, happy life full of opportunities!

Yard? What Yard?

Some people say we are spoiled and I guess they're right.  We do live a GREAT life!  But what I've come to realize since our move to a totally different part of the country is that our YARD spoiled us!  (Go ahead and admit it; that wasn't what you were thinking of when I said spoiled was it?)  We had almost an acre and a half at our last house.  We measure our yard now in square feet!  It's soooooooo tiny compared to the previous yard.  We also had wonderful grass that looked nice and green.  Our parents had worked hard (as well as paid others to work hard) to make our yard what is was.

Remember this?

[sigh]       [sigh]      [sigh]      Those were the good ole days . . .

Now we have this:

A privacy fence that prevents us from seeing the world walk by . . . although it does NOTHING to prevent us from HEARING the world walk by!   Hmpf!  Can you comprehend the kind of chaos that causes???

And a tee tiny yard that barely allows room for me to run and retrieve the frisbee.  It's preposterous!  Mommy has already thrown the frisbee over the fence!  I'm sure that was just the first of hundreds of times!  See that tennis ball?  We don't actually throw it; Dixie just likes to walk around with it in her mouth!  And do you know why???  Because there's no place to throw it!  Not to mention bare spots in the yard, sandburs (aka goat heads), and lots of places where the grass just isn't green!  Mommy told us she met a lady who had lived here for five years and she said this was the greenest she'd ever seen it!  NOOOOOOOO!!!   Please say it ain't so!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are up in paws about this situation.

And to make matters even worse, there are no dawg parks (or dog parks either!).  This is a crisis.  We need action!

Any suggestions?
Jenna


PS: More to come on those goat heads . . . 

Look What the Wind Blew In!

Last week Mommy got to experience her first dust storm.  She was outside watering plants despite the fact that it looked like a big storm was brewing.  There were huge dark clouds and it was thundering and lightning.  Daddy thought it was going to rain so he went inside.  Mommy wasn't sure.  It frequently looks like it will rain here and then it'll blow over.  She had plants she'd just purchased and didn't want to take a chance with them in the heat. 

She noticed the wind was picking up and at first thought it was just the storm approaching.  She started looking in either direction of our house and noticed the sky was changing from dark to red!  As in red dirt flying!  She was very excited and ran inside to tell Daddy a dust storm was coming.  He'd seen this strange phenomenon before since he's been living here since Easter, so he wasn't impressed. Mommy grabbed her camera to record the moment.  This might be something she regrets since she had to take a shower afterwards!  She had dust all over her, her clothes, and in her hair!  Ick!  But you know Mommy, she loves to take pictures!

It doesn't look like much in the pictures, but it was quite a sight in person.  Or so she says.  She didn't allow either of us to go outside with her.  Probably a good thing since she almost lost her balance at one point.  We'd have been flying in the wind like Toto in The Wizard of Oz!

There wasn't anyone outside taking pictures of Mommy, but she probably looked like this . . .

 Daddy says give Mommy a bicycle and it would look more like this . . . 

remember who Miss Gulch turns into??

But we digress.  Here's what the dust storm looked like:

 One end of the street . . . and the other . . .

And then it was over!  The whole thing probably lasted less than fifteen minutes! 

And it NEVER rained that day!

This dust storm was pretty amazing to Mommy, but it wasn't as bad as a haboob!  Wonder if we're going to experience one of those one day?

Dixie and Jenna

New Place, New Vet

Since we've moved, we've had to find a new vet.  Ugh!  It's so frustrating to have to find someone new to take care of you.  Someone you can essentially trust with your life.  We're still mourning the passing of our beloved Dr. Stoneback from two years ago.  We've been through LOTS of vets in the past two years.  We went from having one vet to a group of vets taking over his practice.  We grew fond of them, but it wasn't the same and now we have to start all over again!

Mommy went online to read reviews of the many local practices and chose one she thought would be best.  Then she scheduled a time to take both of us in to meet the new vet.  We were due for a few vaccines to keep us up to date.  She should have taken us to our old vet BEFORE the move, but . . . instead she apparently thought the torture of meeting someone new would be good for us.

 

Actually, the experience was much worse for Mommy than for us.  The new practice is close to our house and is open until 10PM!!!  That's great should we have some sort of emergency.  What Mommy didn't realize was that the new practice was in a strip mall type of area.  Do you know how difficult it is to get both of us out of the car in a tight space??  We don't either, but Mommy wasn't thrilled with this trip from that moment on.  We were both very well behaved in the waiting room (seriously, we were), but the doctor was running about thirty minutes behind.  Nothing sets Mommy on edge like someone being late.

This new vet practice is large and has several doctors.  EVERY practice Mommy looked at online was the same way.  We are SURE we'll see a different doctor the next time we have to go . . . at least we'd better!  Mommy was less than impressed with the young doctor (girl) we met.  According to Mommy, the vet had the handshake of a fish, never introduced herself, and was probably almost half Mommy's age!  For those reasons alone, Mommy was NOT impressed!

I really liked her because she had squeeze cheese in a can she kept squirting on the floor for us to lap up while she checked us out.   Mommy said on the one paw she thought this was a cool idea, but on the other paw who knows what kind of contagious germs might be on the floor of the vet office.  Do they scrub those floors between patients?  Mommy thinks not!  I don't really care so long as the cheese keeps coming my way!

 

Perhaps the best part of the visit (besides the endless cheese) was that I am still the reigning SUPERMODEL!  I weighed in at 45 pounds and my sister Dixie weighed a whopping 46 pounds!  Whoo hoo for me!

So, the point of this post is that we have made a vet contact, we hope to make a better one next time (or else Mommy will be forced to continue the search), and that I reign supreme!  Wish us luck with the vet.  Of course, wish us more luck that we don't need to see the vet again any time soon.

Jenna


PS: Happy Birthday Mommy!  Hopefully there won't be any vet trips in your day!

It's HERE!

Remember that large blue and white truck that took off with our things?  Well, it's HERE!!!!  It arrived after almost TWO WEEKS!  Mommy and Daddy lived on an air mattress in our new house for that time.  They used two packable bag chairs to sit in and a large cooler as their coffee table.  Thank goodness they brought our crates and beds in the car.  Even though Mommy and Daddy were a bit uncomfortable, we weren't!

That truck didn't have nearly the road space here as it had at our last house.  See that green grass?  First, it's probably a miracle it's actually green considering the climate we now live in and second, that's all we have in the way of a front yard!!!!  Our space here is SUPER TINY!  Where oh where is our big yard????????  Why did we have to leave it?????  Mommy says although she misses our old house and her friends, this move was an answered prayer, so we would have to take our complaints to a Higher Power!   [sigh]

This house is a bit smaller than our last house and it doesn't have a basement.  Do you know how much stuff our parents stored in our basement???  A LOT!!!!!!  When the truck left, there were boxes EVERYWHERE!!!!!

There was only one small path in the garage from the front to the back.  Mommy's pretty sure she will NEVER park in there!

We were very excited when Mommy found our outdoor dawg beds in all the boxes.  She put them outside on the patio for our relaxation pleasure and to give us a sense of home.  It's not the same, but it's the thought that counts.  [sigh]

Mommy began the long, grueling, unpacking process.  She broke all of her fingernails all the way down from tearing into boxes.  She also had bruises all over her legs and arms from running into boxes and carrying boxes through the house.  She even gave herself a black eye!  She bent over to pick up something in the garage and hit herself in the eye with the pole attached to the American flag that was waiting to be hung and lying on top of boxes.  She didn't allow us to post a picture of that!

The good news is that Mommy's finished unpacking!!!!  We are finally settled into our new house.  (The garage is still in progress, but it's looking MUCH better.)  We aren't quite settled into our new yard.  Of course, it's a small yard, so it won't take long!  Or we may never be settled into our new yard.  It's going to be tough to get over the wonderful, BIG, green yard we had at our last house . . . sigh.

We'll share more pictures of the new house eventually.  So glad we're up and blogging again!

Dixie and Jenna

Road Trip

What's the longest road trip you've ever taken?  We bet it's not as long as ours!  After a traumatic two days of watching our things being packed up and toted away, Mommy and Daddy loaded us both up in the car.  That's strange because the four of us are hardly ever in the car at the same time.  It's only happened a few times and that's when Mommy and Daddy are headed to the airport and the drop off to the kennel is on the way.  We thought surely one of us must be seriously ill for all of us to be headed to the vet together.  That's where most of our road trips take us.

But this road trip was different.  The car was packed with the four of us, our crates, beds, a suitcase or two, and a few other items.  We started heading in the opposite direction of the vet.  We drove and drove and drove.

 

And kept driving and driving and driving . . .

 Check out Dixie's "breath" on the window.  She loves sitting up and watching the world go by.

Look at Jenna sleeping on the snack food!  She's showing a great deal of restraint, isn't she?

We didn't stop traveling for two days!  Well, we did stop at a hotel for the night.  That was a new experience for us.  You'd be surprised at all the hotels that allow dawgs.  We stayed at a Fairfield by Marriott.  Mommy says when they made a similar road trip with Hunter over ten years ago, their only option was a Red Roof Inn.  (Still, no one's talking about WHERE we're going!?!?)  We got to ride on an elevator in the hotel.  It was a bit scary at first with that feeling of movement beneath our feet.  But after going up and down several times to go outside to potty, we were pros.

  

Mommy brought an extra sheet to put on the bed for us, but Daddy told us to sleep on the floor.  Slumber party pooper!  [sigh]  The next morning when they woke up, Mommy found Dixie on the floor and Jenna on the sofa in our suite (the only room available).  

Let's go!  Time to roll!

The hotel had a breakfast bar, but we weren't allowed to partake of it.  They also had bunny rabbits outside, but Mommy wouldn't let us chase them.  I guess we had a good time at the hotel, but it could have been better . . . sigh.

The next day was more of the same.  We drove and drove and drove.  The only thing that changed was the scenery.  The land grew flatter and flatter. 

Dixie looks like she's face planted in a food bowl, but in reality she's leaning over behind the tote.

  We put our heads together several times to try to figure out where we were headed . . . 

TWENTY-SEVEN HOURS later, we arrived at our final destination.  We've MOVED!  Why didn't anyone tell us that was happening?  We could have said our proper goodbyes and enjoyed our yard a while longer.  Our new yard is well . . .

More on that later,
Dixie and Jenna

PS: Happy birthday to Cousin S today.  We missed Cousin K's and Cousin A's birthdays a couple weeks ago.  Sorry about that.  We thought about you; we just couldn't write about you.  We were a bit preoccupied . . .

PPS: For the most part, our parents split the driving duties.   We were hoping they would allow us to drive, but that didn't happen.  Thanks to Aunt K for trying to give them a hint.  I bet we could have made the trip fly by!

What's Happening? [Part 2]

On Tuesday, a group of men showed up with a LARGE truck and started putting our boxes of stuff on the truck.  Where are you taking our sofa?  Where is our toy box going?  We need those . . .

 

Daddy helped out with the packing of the truck too!

The men stayed ALL day!  From 8 AM to 10PM!!!   Where are they taking our things????

Because those men took our belongings away (to who knows where??) we had no bed to sleep on.   Well, Mommy had the foresight to keep OUR beds, but not hers!  Thankfully our neighbors loaned our parents an air mattress for the night. 

Seriously, what do you think all of this means????  If you see a large blue and white truck loaded with dawg toys, please call the police.  HELP!

Dixie and Jenna

PS: Happy Birthday to our Daddy!

What's Happening?

We apologize for our silence during the past month.  Other bloggers sometimes say "life" took over when they go on hiatus.  We had something a bit more drastic happen . . .



There is something seriously strange going on!  A man and two women showed up early Monday morning and began to put all of our belongings in cardboard boxes.  Don't we NEED those things???  What will we do without them?  Are we making a large donation to charity?  Did we win the lottery and we're planning to buy all new things?

We had to stay in our crates part of the day despite the fact that BOTH Mommy and Daddy were home.  What did we do to deserve this???

A few times we were allowed to come out and visit.  Thankfully everyone loved us.  Can you blame them??  We didn't get in the way at all!

Mommy took us outside to play throughout the day as well.  She kept saying we were going to miss this.  What's she talking about?

When those nice people left, it looked like this at our house:

Wonder what will happen next?  
 Dixie and Jenna