Finally! Spring!

We FINALLY had some close to normal weather this weekend so Mommy and I got out early today for a hike.  We drove down to the southern end of the river hike that I like so much and hiked for 4 hours, with a 45 minute break in the middle.

Here I am ready to start. You can see how happy I am to finally have a good day and clean trail to hike on.

We saw a lot of burned stumps.  They also stunk of herbicide.  The trail has a problem with buckthorn and they try to control it by chopping it down, burning the stumps and then applying herbicide around the charred stump.

This is the 1/2 way point.  This is a vernal pool and the sound you hear are the chorus frogs.  Mommy and I were going to eat at the bench by this pond, but there were people on it.  Grrrrr.

So we turned around and went back to the previous bench to eat lunch.  Mommy read for 45 minutes and I took a nap.

Mommy took a picture here because this spot used to be great big trees, but then when we had the storm that knocked over my squirrel tree all the big old trees here got knocked over too.  Now this spot seems to have decided to become prairie.

OMD! Look what I found on the trail!  What is a crawdad doing on a trail?  When I tried to sniff her she stood up and threatened me with her pinchers.  

Here she is bigified. She had a whole tail full of eggs and was trying to get to the other side of the trail.  Mommy was worried she'd get run over by a bike and couldn't believe she was trying to leave the swamp on one side for the prairie on the other so she scooped her up in a poop bag and carried her back to the swamp side.  The crawfish turned right around and started walking towards the prairie side again so Mommy picked her up AGAIN and carried her to the prairie side and the crawfish happily headed off into the dry prairie.  Weird.

We stopped when we were about a 1/2 mile from the car to watch this bird fish.  We think it is some kind of grebe, but we aren't sure.

Here it is bigified so you can see what a great meal it caught!

We got back to the car and I fell asleep as soon as Mommy started driving.  It was a great 5.5 mile hike.

My Monthly Diary for March, 2013

Well, March is over and they are telling me it is spring, but I'm not believing it.  I'm not feeling too good today. I pooped in the house last night and I don't want to go for a walk, which is really not like me.  I wanted to walk right after I had my toe amputated after all.  Anyway, Mommy is a bit worried right now, but I figured it would be a good time to tell you what I did in March.

The big news is that the Tastee Freez opened on March 1st and Mommy and I took a short hike in the snow on March 3rd and then, after the hike, we stopped at the Tastee Freez and I got my first Pup Cup of the season.  Mmmmm Pup Cups...

Because Mother Nature decided to give us all our winter snow in March, Mommy had a snow day this month.  I like snow days because it means we go for walks and I get to hang out in the backyard and bark at the snowblower and stuff.  But this snow day Mommy did some in the house chores and then decided to catch up on some of the tv shows she had recorded and not watched.  This is okay, except when it was time for me to shift my napping spot from the kitchen to the livingroom MOMMY WAS ON THE COUCH!!  I went over to my livingroom bed and turned around and turned around and turned around and turned around and glared at Mommy and turned around and turned around and turned around. Mommy looked over at me and I glared at her harder and I turned around and turned around and FINALLY Mommy said, "Do you want to sit on the couch? Here, I'll move over." and she did and I climbed up and lay down and went to sleep right away.  Seriously, how slow on the uptake can she be?  A little while later we looked out the window at the bird feeders and we saw that a whole flock of red-winged blackbirds had flown in during the storm.  It is wrong for summer birds to arrive in town in the middle of a snow day.

As you know if you read my previous post, Mommy insisted on taking our Daylight Savings Hike even though it was pouring down rain all day that day.  I was not amused.  Mommy and I also took a New Year hike too to celebrate the beginning of spring.  It was much better weather that day.

Also in March I got prescribed a new walking schedule by the vet.  See, I've been having these rogue pooping incidents like I mentioned at the start.  Mommy got really concerned when one morning she heard me rustling around in my bed and then she suddenly smelled poo.  I had pooped while lying on my bed.  Luckily my butt end was off the bed, so I hadn't pooped on the bed, but I had made a circle of poo around the bed.  Mommy yelled, "What the hell?!!" and sent me outside.  She wasn't mad at me but worried because I hadn't even asked to go out.  Then that night just before we fell asleep I suddenly realized I had to poop so I jumped off the bed and ran out of the bedroom pooping all the way.  Mommy called the vet and the vet said that she thought that one of three things was happening.  They were:

1. I wasn't totally pooping when I went outside because my back hurts so I was having to poop again sooner than expected
2. Because of my back I'm not getting much warning when I have to poop and so I am surprised by it
3. Both 1 and 2

Mommy said she thought it was #3 so the vet told Mommy that I needed to

1. go out right away in the morning and not get to lie around in bed until I feel like getting up.
2. be sure to poop before bed which meant I was supposed to either be followed around by Mommy in the backyard or take a walk

Well, I DO NOT like taking walks before bed.  The first night I walked with her, but as soon as we were about two houses down I kept trying to get her to go back home.  She wouldn't, but I got my revenge by refusing to poop.  The second night I refused to leave the driveway, so I won that battle.   Then Mommy started following me around the backyard.  Well, I don't like being followed around in the backyard by Mommy when I am trying to poop either.  So when I saw what she was doing I stopped and stared at her until she went and did something else.  Our compromise is that Mommy lets me out about an hour before bed now, and then about a half hour after that and then again right before we go to bed.  This has worked really well until last night when I realized at two a.m. that I had to poop so I ran out of the room and pooped in the middle of the plant room.  Mommy wasn't happy about that wake-up call.  I have my next laser treatment on Saturday and Mommy says she is going to talk to the vet about today.  Hopefully the vet will figure out how to stop this.

Mommy is Crazy, or, Our Daylight Savings Day Hike

Mommy and I have a tradition of taking an all day hike on Daylight Savings Day.  This started because we didn't do it on my first Daylight Savings Day and when Mommy told me it was bedtime an hour earlier than usual I thought she was kidding.  She went to bed and I joined her and jumped up and down on her and poked her with squeaky toys and bit her feet and stuff and got myself so wound up I didn't go to sleep until 2 hours after our regular bedtime or 3 hours after Mommy TRIED to go to bed.  So, the next year she started the Daylight Savings Day Hike.  We'd get out early in the morning and not come home until sunset.  We'd usually hike between 20 and 30 miles that day and I'd be so tired that night that bedtime couldn't come too soon.

This morning Mommy woke up and looked out the window and said, "Oh, its raining. No all day hike today, but we can go somewhere this afternoon."  When this afternoon rolled around it was STILL raining.  Mommy hated to not take a Daylight Savings Day Hike so she packed up our stuff and off we went to the state park for a short hike.  When we got there there were two cars parked in the lot with fishermen huddling in them and the ranger truck was there with the rangers huddling in it, but Mommy would not be deterred and off we went.  The trail was a combination of ice and slush and besides rain, there was fog.

The beginning of the hike, looking out over the frozen lagoon

Mommy thought the fog was bad when we started but about a half mile into the hike the trail looked like this

 I'm glad it is a new moon tomorrow and not a full moon

or there might have been werewolves in that

When we got to the half way point we heard a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and grackles complaining and then Mommy spotted them up in a tree yelling at this guy.

 See the little bird above him yelling insults?

He is a young hawk of some kind we think either a red-tail or a red-shoulder, but we don't know for sure because the fog obscured him too much.  It started to really rain hard after the bird spotting and about a quarter of a mile down the trail we discovered that the runoff from the snow melt and rain combined to make a small creek for us to wade through.  It was about 24 feet wide and eight inches deep.  It is a good thing Mommy has hooves instead of feet or she might have been cold walking the rest of the trail because her boots did not keep her feet dry at all once the water went over the toes, and in fact her left boot split on the instep when she was half way across so her left boot totally filled with water.  Shortly before we got back to the car the rain turned into more of a solid mist, but that didn't help us much. Mommy stripped off her soaked jacket, hat and gloves when we got to the car and she debated about taking off her boots but decided against it.  I got a nice rubdown with the towel and home we went.

What I look like after hiking two miles in the rain

I'm not talking to Mommy

I think maybe Mommy should reconsider sticking with some of her traditions.

My Monthly Diary for February, 2013

Mommy always complains that even though February has the fewest days of any month it lasts longer than all the others and, even though the days are supposedly getting longer, they sure seem dark to her.

This month We finally got some actual snow.  We had hardly had any snow all year long and then it snowed, and it snowed and it snowed and it snowed.  I love when it snows and I always insist on playing fetch in the snow.  This is because in the summer I tend to get overheated rather quickly when I play fetch, but I don't get overheated in the snow!  This year though Mommy limited my snow fetch games because of my hind end.  Just because I fell over every time I ran after the ball and took three days to recover from each ball game doesn't mean she should limit me, but she did. Mean Mommy.

When it was time for my laser treatment this month my normal vet was on vacation so I had to see the man vet who I like well enough, but I don't really trust ever since he thought he could dry my toe stump with a blowdryer during my amputation recovery period.  Mommy and I got there about 10 minutes early, which is our habit, and we waited.  When the ten minutes were up and they hadn't called me yet I started barking at the receptionist.  She was the weekend receptionist not the weekday one and she seemed a little slow.  She just kind of stared at me and didn't apologize to me or jump up and get the vet.  Shame on her.  Mommy told me I had to quiet down and I grudgingly did so. About 10 minutes after that we FINALLY got called (Mommy said that is because the man vet is just as nice as my normal vet and he sometimes goes over on his appointments answering questions).  Anyway we went into the exam room and I stood by the back door and stared at it waiting for the vet.  Finally he came in and when I saw who it was I went back to Mommy until I was sure he didn't have a blowdryer.  Mommy told him I'd taken a hard fall on the ice the day before and asked that he work a bit more on the hip I fell on and he said he'd see what he could do.  Then he took my leash and I dragged him to the door.  When he opened the door I dragged him out of the room and all the way to the laser room.  When I got in there I lay down on the pad and stared at him until he started up the machine and did my treatment.  As soon as he started I fell asleep and had to be woken up to turn over and again when it was time to go back to Mommy.  I'll admit he did a good job.

Mommy got sick this month too.  It wasn't the fun sick where Mommy goes to bed and I get to cuddle all day with her. It was the annoying sick where Mommy goes to bed and just when I get all comfy cuddled up next to her, she gets up and goes to the bathroom and she keeps this pattern up for the whole day and night.  I find this kind of sick very annoying so I told her towards the end of day one that I'd had enough of it and when she got out of bed I moved and took all the pillows and refused to give them back.  The next day Mommy kind of moped around doing her chores and sitting down a lot which was boring so the day after that, since it was a Sunday, when she let me out in the backyard, I told her I wanted to go hiking.

Mommy said, "No, we aren't hiking today. I've been sick for two days. I'm not hiking."  I stood by the back gate and stared at the garage. Mommy said no. I stared at the garage. Mommy said no and told me to come inside.  I looked right at her then turned and walked out to the middle of the backyard and lay down in the snow.  Mommy said, "Fine, pout in the snow." and went inside.  Twenty minutes later she came back and called me to come in.  I ignored her. She called again. I ignored her. She called again. I ignored her. She finally sighed and said, "Fine, we'll go for a hike later this afternoon." I got up and trotted back to the house and came in.  A couple hours after that I walked up to Mommy and barked at her reminding her that it was afternoon and time for our hike.  Mommy grumbled and got dressed and we went on a 3.5 mile hike.

 There are so many good things to smell when you hike in the snow

 We saw lots of coots

 And some redheads

 Mommy was irritated by the snowmobilers

The sign tells them to use the small path on the left

which turns towards the woods

but see how many of them took the hiking/skiing path instead?

Bad snowmobilers!

Mommy got warm towards the end

and didn't want to wear her scarf anymore

so I wore it for a while

Mommy went to bed early that night for some reason.

My Monthly Diary for January, 2013

Wow, 2013 already.  That means that Mommy started telling people I am 12 1/2 years old.  We don't know when my birthday really was, but it could be anywhere from the end of June to the beginning of August, so at the end of January Mommy puts that 1/2 on.

This was a mostly quiet month until the end.  We had odd weather where it would be really cold (9 degrees) and then a few days later be really warm (64 degrees!) and then drop to really cold (12 degrees) again.  On one of the warm days we went out in 44 degree weather and took a 2.5 mile morning hike and by the time we finished it was five degrees colder and very windy!  The sidewalks were often covered in black ice this month because it would rain one day then freeze the next.  I find very hard to walk on black ice because of the lack of control over my hind end, so we had to take short careful walks.  Because of the weird warm into cold days I had a terrible thing happen one night.  I took Pyramid out with me on a warm morning and left him out to play in the rain.  Then when I went out before bed to get Pyramid so he could come to bed with me he was FROZEN TO THE GROUND!! I couldn't pick him up at all.  I got panicked and barked and barked my "HELP ME!!" bark and Mommy (who says she thought maybe I'd fallen and couldn't get up or there was a coyote in the yard) came running out in her boots and bathrobe to help me.  She wasn't very happy to see what my emergency was, but she did manage to rescue Pyramid so he could come to bed with us.

I celebrated my Gotcha Day on January 19 and then I got a really exciting present from Oztralia a few days later!  And I went on two other hikes when we had warm days which was nice.  Finally at the end of the month Mommy packed our suitcases and we went on a trip.  I thought we were heading up to Wisconsin, but we drove into Minnesota again because this time Mommy's grumpy oldest brother was getting married!  Last time we went there it was for his daughter's wedding.  We stayed at the same hotel because they were so nice to me last time, but this time we were not happy with our neighbors.  They had a toddler who threw a tantrum from 1:00 a.m. until 3:00 a.m. on our first night.  Because the wedding was a morning one Mommy and I had to wake up at 6:30 a.m. and Mommy got very grumpy and loudly said things like "throw it in a tub of ice water" and "maybe you could just strangle it" but they didn't take any of her suggestions.  If I had barked for 5 minutes at 1 a.m. we'd have been told to leave, but not that little brat and his family.  So, Mommy decided to do something she used to do at college when her neighbors were rude and had loud parties until the early morning hours during finals week.  She took the clock radio (which she had already set to a rap station to ensure she woke up on time) and turned the volume to full blast.  Then she set it up so its speakers were pressed against the wall between our rooms and we went back to sleep after the brat stopped howling.  At 6:30 when the radio went off she left it playing full blast through the wall for the half hour it took her to get dressed and feed me and stuff.  Then she turned it off and we went out for our walk.  When we got back we were very happy to see a pair of bleary-eyed adults with two small children in the lobby eating breakfast. I waited in the hotel room (and did not bark) while Mommy went to the wedding and then we went to the park with the tame lake and took a short walk around part of the lake.  I was happy Mommy packed my Oztralia coat because it was only about 15 degrees there and I needed it.  The whole tamed lake was cleared of snow and smoothed down so people could ice skate on it, and they also had little chairs with runners on them so you could push non skaters around, which we thought was very nice.  Neither Mommy nor I brought our cameras this time so we didn't take any pictures, but Mommy fixed one from the summer to give you an idea what it looked like:

The second night at the hotel the brat did not yell, Mommy and I slept well and then we got up and drove home.  We drove through some ice storms which weren't so bad and then when we got to our county we drove into heavy snow which Mommy said wasn't a whole lot of fun to drive in.  Right after we got home it started snowing, raining, sleeting and hailing all at the same time!  This January sure had weird weather.

I Got a Present from Oz!!

Mommy came home from work tonight and there was a package waiting on the front stoop.  It came all the way from Oz!  (That is what Mommy calls Australia).

 See, you can see it says AUSTRALIA right there on the postage!

 The package was addressed to Mommy because my friends in Oz tried to send ME a Christmas card and the poophead mailman sent it back saying that it couldn't be forwarded to me!  I've gotten mail before without any problem, but our new poophead mailman seems to have been confused by the fact that I have a different last name from Mommy.  Poophead!

Anyway, Mommy opened the package up and inside were TWO Christmas cards, one from my internet friends Siobhan and Shiro and their daddy and one from  Ebonie and Siobhan and Shiro and Ebonie's mommy!  AND there was a WONDERFUL genuine Australian oil skin dog coat in it too! 

 See, it says so right on the package that it is a genuine Australian oil skin dog coat.

I tried it on and it fit wonderfully.  It has a nice fleece inside and an oil skin outside.  I can't wait to wear it tomorrow on my morning walk. This coat will be MUCH classier than Mommy's old sweatshirt which I have been wearing for the past two days.  We have been having very cold weather lately and it is around 0 when Mommy and I have been taking our morning walks.  This coat is going to be very toasty warm.

 

 Me barking "Thank you, Auntie Sarah for the classy coat!"

A photo from a few years ago of me in my not classy hand-me-down sweatshirt

The funny thing is that just this morning Mommy was saying, "I wish I could cover your hips on your walk, you really need them covered these days, and the sweatshirt just isn't cutting it."  You can see from the picture above that my hips are covered perfectly.  No more cold arthritis hips for me!

 

And thank you Uncle David for the card and for mailing the package for Auntie Sarah!

And Ebonie, Siobhan and Shiro I hope you stay cool since Mommy tells me it is summer where you live and you've had a lot of really hot weather lately.

Happy Gotcha Day to Me!

Today is my gotcha day!  I've been with Mommy for 12 years now.  I'm a bit sore from having fallen on the ice a couple days ago so Mommy and I kept the celebration mild today.  I got to sleep in this morning and have a long snuggle after we woke up.  I got 1/2 a toasted cheese sandwich with breakfast and then we took a three and a half mile walk around town this morning and I stopped for cookies at the feed store.  This afternoon we took a mile long hike.  I also got a fried egg after dinner, which was very yummy.  Mommy says tomorrow she will make me some chicken.

Here is a picture of me on my first ever hike with Mommy all those years ago:

and here is a picture of me on today's hike: