Dog Videos!

It's gotta be hard being a puppy. Imagine if you will, you are 8 weeks old knowing nothing in your life but nursing to your heart's contentment, playing with your brothers and sisters and pooping and peeing wherever and whenever you want. Ah, life is good.

Next thing you know you are ripped from your mother's teat, put in a crate and you are driving down the road not knowing that you will never see your mother, brothers or sisters again. After the car ride you are given to a strange lady, a very, very strange lady.

Surely, I jest as I put human thoughts and emotions to the puppy. But puppies are very adaptable and live for the love of life. Living in the moment, for what is in front of them in the here and now. 

Maisie is adapting very well to her new home. She has a new momma who she watches every move of. When Barb gets up, Maisie gets up. If Barb goes to the kitchen, Maisie goes to the kitchen, although sometimes she will just watch from wherever she is at. Heaven forbid Barb goes out of sight, then she has to get up and find her. Barb now has two dogs that follow her into the bathroom and two dogs to talk to while she is in there. A very, very strange woman, but a happy one!

How's potty training going you ask? For the most part good. We have picked up most of the rugs in the house as she seems to gravitate towards those. We have also picked up on her cues, when she puts her nose to the ground and is thinking about it we have to jump into action. If we do not watch her, there would definitely be more accidents but as it is, maybe one a day which at 10 weeks I would call a success. 

At night she is in her crate which is right next to Barb. Maisie will sleep for about 3 hours, get up and whine at which point Barb will take her out and put her back into her crate for another 3 hours repeating the cycle. So far, she has not peed in her crate. 

It's a lot like having a newborn baby, except you cannot put a baby in a crate... or is a crib just a bigger crate? I do not know (or remember) how working people do this, as they have to leave their pet for 8-9 hours at a time. Speaking of that, when she naps we will put her in her crate with the door open as we want her crate to be a safe space, a happy space, not something to dread. We will also purposely put her in there randomly throughout the day for 20 minutes when we go to town or just out in the yard so she gets used to it as part of her routine, hoping she does not become a screamer just because we put her in there. 

As for videos, I have several. (I can just feel the excitement as Harry reads this part). As you will see, Zoey and Maisie are becoming best buds although I think Zoey will not be happy when Maisie can finally jump on the couch. Zoey now uses the couch as her "safe space" to get away from the annoying creature when needed. 

Barb has been working on her hillside landscaping project. She decided to redo the drain area where we have two black drainage pipes coming out from the west side of the house. 

One of my chores during the week is to make sure that not only we have enough water in the cistern, but to also make sure the critters have enough water as well. Our pond is all but dried up except for an ankle-deep spot about the 5' round. You can see the edge of it on the right side of the picture below. 

The first picture shows what is left of the pond on the 28th, the second is the 31st. It changed quite a bit in just a couple of days. 

We also have two water tanks; a 300 gallon one and a 100 gallon one. I also have a 250-gallon tote that I keep by the apple trees which I water 1-3 times a week depending on the week. I was on my way to the 100-gallon tank which requires going down a rocky embankment when all of a sudden, a front wheel on the tractor decided to pop off the rim which in turn caused the water tank to flip off. What a sh#tshow. So, there I was on a rocky downslope with a tire off the rim. I walked back to the house, got the Ranger, a couple of jacks, several blocks of wood, the impact and went back to see about getting the rim off the tractor. 

It went a little better than expected. Once I got it off, I texted the neighbor who has a tire machine to see if he could get it back on the rim and aired up. 30 minutes later I was back in action!

All creatures great and small use these tanks....

The forecast for the week was more 90's with no precipitation called for. But living where we do, storms can pop up in a moment's notice and that is just what happened on Friday afternoon. 

We were inside watching a movie, hiding from the heat when we started to hear the telltale signs of rain on our roof. Then came some minor hail, pea sized(ish). Then it started coming down a little heavier and a little heavier and then it was an absolute rain/hail monsoon! When it rains like this, the rain diverts on either side of the house with the west side becoming a river of sorts. We installed two drains on that side of the house to keep the rain moving and getting into the house.

Although we would have preferred a slow, steady soaking rain, we will take whatever we can get! For the next 30 minutes it rained/hailed over 1.5 inches. This of course started flooding things and our drains were working overtime, and from the living room I could see the pond was starting to fill up. As I watched through binoculars, I saw my camera was no longer on the edge of the water but in the middle of the water! Dang, I am going to have a hard time getting that out. A few minutes later I did not see the camera at all, so I jumped in the Ranger to see if it fell over or what. What I saw when I got down there shocked me. Just the tip of the antenna was sticking out of the water!

That's $100 camera, I am going in after it! OMG was that cold, in up to my waist and back out I was able to retrieve it. 

This is a picture from the camera right before it was swallowed up by the water

Water was still pouring into the pond from two directions. 

I am happy to report the camera still works! I could not believe the amount of water that was pouring in there. I did a quick calculation of how much water it would take to fill a 120'x120'x3'deep pond and the answer was 80,000 gallons! In a matter of minutes! Crazy. 

Barb's new drain area, although not finished, worked awesome!

If you stuck with me this far you must be a loyal reader. I know I lost Harry after the first puppy video. The next few posts will no doubt include more dog pictures and videos, it will not be as many as today as I leave for the farm tomorrow and it will be up to Barb to take pictures. I know the other dogs don't have much for pictures in this post, but Dakota pretty much just sleeps all day and that does not make for exciting pictures, but I will leave you with this picture of our (cute?) little Zoey. 

Just to give you an idea of how scary/amazing Ai is, here is the exact same picture....