Where’s Duncan?

There’s Duncan!

Normally this room is blocked off. In fact this room, the office and the second bath are all blocked from the dogs.

The baby gate is usually further forward to give the cats a Duncan free zone. But Mom spent the night last Friday. And instead of making my short and still occasionally sore from surgery mom climb over it, I moved it to the office doorway.

I was sitting watching tv and got up to go to the kitchen. Duncan wasn’t in his usual spot on the living room floor; he wasn’t in his bed or kennel in the kitchen; he wasn’t in our bed. I knew he wasn’t outside; then it occurred to me to check the guest room. And what do you know, there’s Duncan. I guess he found a new bed.

Sunday Sleepies

Even Duncan is suffering from them today. Normally he’d be asking to go outside so he can chase squirrels. But not today.

Space Bags

Now available for storing your cat.

Duncan McDog

I’ve been neglecting to put pictures/videos up here.  But I have put them on Facebook, so if we’re friends you may have already seen this one. 

Cat Tails

A couple of weeks ago J and I were hanging out watching tv and enjoying having the windows open.  Boris was outside and we heard him meow.  That’s how he tells us he wants in or out, he meows.  Considerate of him, no?  So J opens the door to let Boris in, only there’s no Boris.  He looks in the bushes in front of the house and nope, no Boris.  But Boris is still meowing.  Finally J sees a shadow of a cat head on the ground and looks up.  Only to find…

 Yep.  Boris somehow got himself up onto the roof and he couldn’t figure out how to get down.  J could have easily lifted him off of the roof by simply standing, but Boris was having none of it.  So we hauled the step stool outside and Boris kept moving out of reach.  I tried, which in hindsight wasn’t a good idea.  One of my current post surgery restrictions is no reaching overhead for stuff.  Boris didn’t want to come to me either.  In the meantime, he’s meowing his head off the entire time.  J ended up going into the back yard, climbing the ladder onto the roof and picking up Boris.  He brought him back to the ladder where I climbed up a few steps (again, a current post surgery no no) and took Boris from J where he (Boris of course) promptly jumped down and went on his merry way.

A few days after all this occurred Boris found his way onto the roof yet again.  I got onto the step-ladder and was attempting to convince him to jump onto the bush/tree thing that grows right by the side of the house.  Boris had other plans.  Instead he decided to use my shoulder as a mid-way point to the ground.  Only I didn’t know he was using me as a mid-way point so I grabbed him and started down the step-ladder.  And Boris dug in his claws in an attempt to jump to the ground.  Thankfully Boris has finally figured out how to jump down to the ground from the roof and no longer requires our assistance.

On a side note, why does WordPress think “ladder” is spelled wrong?

Picture Pages

In my last post I said that I had been busy crocheting blankets for the Hillsborough County Animal Services Pit Crew. I managed to get three completed for them and here they are!

 As Tasha is demonstrating, this one is comfortable for all types of animals. I’m sure she thinks the same of the other two, but she was too busy trying to keep Duncan away to be bothered to pose for me.

And finally, J turned 40 last week and this was one of his gifts. I’m not 100% sure I’m done with it, I’m playing around with ideas to add color to make elements pop. J thinks I should do a “cross stitch” concept, or find a way to weave in embroidery thread. I’ve been contemplating dye and painting the areas I want to pop or just putting glitter on those areas. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Also, I’d like a decent, easy to use photo editing software. Nothing fancy, I’d like to be able to remove backgrounds, change background color along with the typical crop/brighten etc. I don’t mind paying, but I don’t want to pay more than about $100, however free is always better Any suggestions? What are you favorites?

Meet Duncan McDog

 Our newest foster dog. He’s a 5 month old Heinz 57. J and I have been playing the “What breeds is he” guessing game. So far we think there might be some Pit, some kind of water dog as his feet are webbed, and maybe some Shar Pei. His face has some wrinkles and J keeps saying his eyes have an Asian look to them. The shelter had him named as Travis, but he wasn’t really responding to it.

For being only 5 months old he’s already big. I think he’s actually a little bit bigger than Ciera, who has about 2 inches in height and length on a Sheltie. He is amazingly smart. He got “Sit” down in about 2 hours, and that wasn’t with consistent repeating. Like Hershey he wants to be a lap dog. So he keeps trying to jump up on the furniture. We’re working on “Off” and he’s starting to get that down. He reminds me of Ciera a bit, very smart but if it goes against what he wants he’s stubborn about following the command. In this case, he wants to be up on the couch cuddling with us, so that means he’s slow at following the Off command.

Duncan isn’t 100% house broken, but he does very well in the kennel. He is capable of holding it all night and, as we found out yesterday, all day. We are treating him when he goes to the bathroom outside and ignoring (except for clean up obviously) when he goes inside. Duncan is very eager to please and very food motivated. It’s definitely making training easier. Another thing we’ve started working on with him with is “Hold”. This is a command that was taught to Ciera a few years ago after she kept taking the screen door off the hinges at my old apartment because she couldn’t be bothered to wait until the door is opened before entering the apartment. Hold is coming along slowly for Duncan, but he is starting to get the general idea.

Duncan loves to give kisses and my face has already fallen victim several times. Usually when bending down to pick up something and he’s right there. That’s guaranteed to receive a face bath. Shoes aren’t safe around him. He keeps trying to steal them, but he does understand the concept of drop it when told. That’s a plus, now to get him to stop stealing them. I was sitting on the couch earlier and went to put on my slippers to get up. I could only put on one slipper, he stole the other one and relocated it to the bedroom. Where he then decided to leave it while he went and laid down on the dog bed in the kitchen.

When I brought him home he got in the car in the backseat. Then decided to stand on the console between the front seats so he could see out the window. Before I knew it he was making his way into the front passenger seat, where he happily spent the rest of the trip eagerly looking to see where we were going.

It’s Ciera!

Here’s a couple videos of Ciera.

Anyone have a boat to share?

Anymore rain and we’ll be needing one!  I woke up to downpours yesterday morning, something that continued on and off throughout the day.  And while we need the rain, we don’t need that much at once, because then there’s too much for it to soak into the ground.  Here’s an idea of how much rain we’ve gotten over the past couple of days.  I took this picture yesterday.

This is normally a deepish ditch near my apartment.  See the two little insets/peninsulas about half way down, one on the right and one on the left?  That’s probably about the normal width of this ditch.  Now there’s so much water that it’s almost even with the road.  And the water you can see behind the trees on the right?  That’s someones driveway.  I’ve seen a small, low to the ground car there before.  So I feel a bit bad for them right now. 

 

 

 

And I have to show Little Bit!  She belongs to my neighbor’s parents but is current staying at my neighbor’s place.  Her real name is Tia, but Little Bit fits her so much better.  She’s a Shitzu/Chihuahua mix and is only about 7 weeks.  I love when I get to take her outside, she’s very free with her kisses and she’s still got the puppy breath.   I’m not normally a fan of Chihuahua’s, they’re just not a breed I gravitate towards.  But Little Bit is cute as can be!  And yes, this was the best picture I could get of her.  Dang puppy wouldn’t sit still for 5 seconds.

On another note, J and I went and saw Public Enemiestonight and Johnny Depp is like a fine wine.  The older that man gets, the better he gets!  Public Enemieswasn’t as spectacular as I was hoping for, but it was still good and I still recommend it.  Johnny Depp made Dillinger very likable and very relatable.  We also saw some previews of upcoming movies that look good.  Leo DiCaprio is in something Island(the show Harper’s Island comes to mind, and that’s not it) and that not only looks original, but good and possibly slightly scary.  Matt Damon also has one coming out based on a true story, I think it has something to do with Anheuser Busch.  I also saw a poster for Fame, so I guess that’s also being re-made.  It’s sad that Hollywood has come to this already in our lifetime.

Woohoo! I did it!

This past weekend I took the Basic Rider’s Course and passed!  I can officially get a motorcycle endorsement added to my license and stop being a control freak passenger when out with J and everyone else.  The class was a lot of fun but hotter than hell.  I had to be at class Saturday and Sunday by 6:45am.  Yes, AM!  And when I left to head over there it was already hot out. 

Both days were in the 90′s with high humidity.  Sunday definitely had no clouds in the sky at all.  And we were covered.  Leather boots, jeans, long sleeved shirt, gloves and either a full or 3/4 helmet.  I didn’t need to worry about tying my hair back out of my face, the sweat that completly soaked it took care of that for me.  I had fun learning how to take curves and wide turns.  But I apparently am not capable of doing slow, tight U-turns without putting a foot (or 2) down.  So I’ve decided, any U-turns I need to do will be done with my feet on the ground.  Mom and Dad showed up Sunday morning too.  Mom said when she took her class Dad decided he absolutely needed to be there to take pictures.  So I got the same treatment.  Yay me.  So here for your viewing pleasure.

On another note, J and I watched Marley and Me tonight.  Stop reading now if you don’t want to know anything about the movie.  We’ve both read the book, so nothing was exactly a surprise.  Overall the movie is good.  I don’t think I liked Owen Wilson in the role, Jennifer Aniston did a pretty decent job.  And as a couple, I wasn’t really seeing it.  The end was really difficult though.  Reading about the loss was a lot easier than seeing it.  And throughout those scenes I kept remebering having to make that incredibly difficult decision to have my Cocker Spaniel put down.  Even though I knew it was the best thing for her, a question of quality of life versus quantity, it was still so hard.  And I felt like I was killing my dog.  Watching that be done for Marley brought it all back to me and I couldn’t almost see my own experience overlayed over the movie.  It’s been 4 1/2 years since I had to make that decision, but watching the movie it felt like yesterday. 

Here’s a picture of Sasha.