Ember

 I was lucky enough, through Kaylee's original owner, Dave, to find a puppy for my sister. Met the guy who bought 2 of Kaylee's sisters which he had bred to an AKC registered dog named Cash. Between Abby and Sadie there were 17 puppies. Abby's were born on Sept 7 and Sadie's on Sept 27th. My friend Tom and I drove out to his house on Friday and I asked for one showing retriever tendencies and she also seemed to be the biggest of the 11 still available, one of Abby's daughters. So Kaylee is an aunt, just like Luna was Lyra's aunt. Kind of cool.

My sister named her Ember and will finally get to meet her mid December. Here are some photos in no particular order.

trying to keep up with the big dogs

we visited John and Seamus before we got home

last night Kaylee made peace with her

yes, another photo

nope, nothing to see here

don't know what it was but it must have been important

we stopped just before we got home for her to pee, (she didn't)

day I brought her home

This is Abby, Ember's mom and Kaylee's sister.

Lyra

 On Monday, November 15 at 6 pm EST my sister's yellow lab, Lyra, whom my brother and I picked from a litter in October of 2008, and I got to raise for 5 weeks, passed across the Rainbow Bridge. She was a sweet dog, loved riding in his dad's truck, hanging with my sister while gardening, loved walks. 

A few short months ago she was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen and my sister was told she could go at any time. But Lyra kept hanging on, her heart too strong and she was starting to suffer at the end so she and her boyfriend made the heart wrenching decision to take her to a vet to end her suffering. Took numerous phone calls to find a vet willing to do it that day. Their own vet, who told them about the cancer in the first place, said they couldn't get her in for a week! I don't care what kind of excuses they had, covid, or whatever, that is sickening.  But they did find someone and she is no longer suffering. Here are a couple photos from happier times, Christmas 2020.

L to R: Kaylee, Ziggy, Lyra

Lyra always looked so serious in photos!

She is missed.

Kaylee is 6 Months Old

She hit 26 weeks over the weekend and as of the previous Tuesday weighs 60  pounds. She is a big puppy. Currently I am treating her for her second urinary tract infection, she's doing better, hopefully 2 weeks of antibiotics will clear it up. Otherwise she is bouncy, adorable, naughty, chewing all sorts of things, including my mahogany entertainment center, but she is a wonderful pup. And most of the time Ziggy likes her, too. I took a couple photos of her in the rare sunshine we had Saturday and here they are.

So dignified in her new pink collar. 

 I can barely believe I got her to sit still for so long because as you can see, Ziggy and Lyra were not cooperating at all!

Back for the Holidays

My younger sister, boyfriend and pup Lyra, Luna's niece came back to the swamp for Christmas on Friday. Lyra had her head out the window and was making all kinds of noise, she knew where she was going, it was funny. And when Ziggy heard her he started doing the same thing, running about like a maniac like his long lost friend had come home. Here is a video of the insanity when they met.

The next day we went out on our first walk and surveyed possible Christmas trees including the one I had originally picked out a month ago. And then Lyra found a good spot to sniff. and Kaylee had to join her.

On our second walk, later in the afternoon while Lyra ranged ahead, Kaylee found a stick and Ziggy decided he wanted it, too.

What's Been Happening?

This is sort a catch up post, probably won't be that detailed but more of a list of things that have happened or are going on etc., whatever I can think of in the next half hour before I go to bed.

In no particular order.

Tonight one of my upper right molars, one that had a root canal and that broke a year ago and was rebuilt and recrowned by my dentist the first time it broke, fell out. Knew it would happen, just didn't know when. I have opted to get an implant because I refuse to need dentures some day. Have to pay fot this whole thing myself as we don't have dental insurance. Ah well, it's a lot of money.

Bought a used small camera last month from a guy on dpreview.com who at first had offered to just give me the same camera I already had because he saw my post about mine have dust on the senosr. Instead I got the Panasonic ZS-50 for a very good price. I haven't been able to do too much with the camera outside because of extremely lousy weather in th month I've owned it but I'll keep trying. Here's a photo I took with it.

metal chicken on the plastic tree

My younger sister and her BF and Lyra were here for 2 weeks at Christmas. We had a very good time. There was food and the men hunted and there was more food. Looking forward to their next visit.

I bought another camera Sunday night and it was delivered yesterday. This one is the Panasonic FZ300. It's almost one  f-stop faster than what I had, 2.8, is weather sealed and has been getting very good reviews. I've seen lots of excellent photos. It's not perfect but for a fixed lens camera with a 600mm zoom for the price I got it for, I'm pretty happy. The weather has been lousy of course, but I managed to go outside with it and take a few photos but they're still in the camera so there won't be any here tonight.

We're dumping DISH as our internet service provider and switching to Exede. Ever since we both got Windows 10 installed on our laptops, the only reason I can think of, we run out of bandwidth less than a week into each month and end up with our download speeds throttled down to somewhere around 128 kbps. It's ridiculous. Five, 5, GB a month? We can't watch you tubes, photo heavy sites are killers. I take photos I am a member of a photo heavy site, both Hal and I are on Facebook. Exede claims we will get 150 GB a month for barely much more. So hopefully, they come tomorrow and internet will be fun to use again.

I bought a shock collar for Ziggy. He has been bad. I won't go into the things he has done but I determined in mid December it was the only thing left to try. It is my second brand, the first was dead in the water when I got it. The new one works great. It has a beep mode, a vibration and the shock. I have not used the shock once. not once! The beep works. I've used the vibration a couple of times and now it's just hit the beep and he comes running. No more screaming my head off for him to come. He's such a well behaved boy now. I hardly even use the beep. I blame the stubborn beagle half of him for having to resort to this but it works. Now Luna is less well behave on our walks.

Okay, it's possible the satellite person could be here at 8 am so I must head to bed.

Good night and Happy New Year!

A Few Dogs

I have been ignoring my blog, so here's a photo of dogs taken with my "new" used Panasonic ZS50. Ziggy is the little black one, Luna is the yellow one on the left, and Lyra, visiting from Massachusetts is the creamy one in the back. I think they are enjoying the snow.

Photos from Christmas 2015 and Early 2016

I have been so busy I haven't been posting. I know I play too many Facebook games and am trying to wean myself off those. I get so much more done not wasting time doing stupid things!

While looking at my photos I and past blog posts I realized I haven't posted any of the dogs during the holidays or really any other time. So, here are a few from then and later in January.

The Christmas tree

I had bought Luna a nice Serta dog bed from Sam's Club because it was a great deal, it has great cushioning for the arthritic older dog, and also cooling gel. I should have bought 2 because Ziggy decided he wanted it for himself.

My wonderful sister-in-law, Hal's sister, went and got me another at a different SC, when the first store no longer had any. Now they are content.

 Although, occasionally, Ziggy still wants to be wherever Luna is. Especially if she is eating something.

 Lyra came to visit at Christmas, of course.

  Ziggy snoozing happily on his bed.

For some reason I can't remember, Luna panicked Christmas morning and just had to climb onto my lap to be rescued. Poor thing is such a nervous Nellie!

Luna in my lap

Getting 3 Dogs to Pose Isn't Easy

Luna, Lyra and Ziggy

This was the best shot I could get. Many of them had a blurry pup. As you can see in the bottom one Lyra was already losing focus. Shot is rather washed out, too. Maybe I'll be able to get a better one next year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Had a wonderful day. Slept well the night before, too as sis and I had everything done just before 11 and I was able to relax with a glass of wine while watching The Ref with Hal and family. I never have relaxing Christmas Eves!

Here are some photos of the past 2 days.

The home on Christmas eve and then Christmas morning. Notice the difference? Less than an inch, but Bing would be pleased.

Ziggy under the tree

A few gifts from my oldest sister. Is that a Vera Bradley backpack?!

Luna, Ziggy and Lyra being serious on their Christmas morning walk

 A little yule log enjoyment, thank you Hallmark.

Really has been a wonderful holiday. Merry Christmas to all.

The 2014 Christmas Tree!

not quite finished

Little sis and boy friend and Lyra arrived last Friday night. Saturday sis and I went out to the woods to the balsam Hal and I selected and cut it down. It would have been shading the apple tree behind it by the end of summer so it had to go. Turned out to be about 14 feet tall and I had to cut it down a bit which I did about a foot at a time. It's now about 8.5 feet tall. We decorated it the next day and finished Monday morning.

Here are a few more photos.

just needs a heavenly light shining on it

That's me sawing the trunk

Still sawing the trunk

spending the night in a bucket

adding the garland

SQUIRREL!!!

Finished tree

in the dark

They're on Their Way There (Massachusetts)

Well my sister, her BF and Lyra left for Massachusetts this morning at 7 am, the Subaru packed tightly and Lyra snug in the back seat on her bed. I missed them the second their car disappeared up the driveway. I think Ziggy misses sleeping in the guest bed with them, too. I've gotten a few text messages and there was ice in a couple of spots on I-75 but they still made it to Dundee and the Cabela's there in about 4 hours. Now they're stuck in traffic just south of there, not quite to the Ohio border. (turned out to be a jack-knifed trailer truck)

The weather here is cold, only 7.7 f already exceeding the forecast high by 3 degrees. The low was only -7.3 but the wind is making it feel much worse. Wind chills are supposedly in the -20s and during the 6 minute walk the pups and I took after adding wood to the wood stove for the third time this morning, I believe it. I had to turn my back to the wind whenever it gusted. The dogs seem very content to stay inside. I didn't even open the pop-door to the chicken coop, don't need the wind to suck out what little heat they're generating on their own. And having just check the coop temperature I think that was a smart idea because it's already risen 10 degrees to 19 f. I may just keep them trapped in there till Thursday, they don't like walking in the snow anyway.

Yesterday I started taking a few decorations off the tree, but really got to work on it this morning. I'd have more done if I hadn't had to go outside those 3 times to work on the wood stove. (It's temperature was down to 128 on my first trip to it, then 126 which demanded a 2nd trip, and then 125 even though we'd turned the internal house temp back down to draw less heat from it. It's finally back into the 150s, needs to be between 160 and 170 for optimum heat, but I'm thinking it's time for Hal to get out there and throw in some bigger logs, I can only lift so much weight and with this weather, it's really burning wood fast.

I suppose I'd better get back to the tree now, it's not going to un-decorate itself. But first another dog photo taken Christmas evening.

Luna, Lyra and Ziggy

Still Chilly

We've had a pretty major cold snap here. Been a long time since it's stayed this cold this long, don't know what last night's low was but the night before it dropped to -18.6 f. The night before hit -19 f. Yes, it's a bit nippy. The high yesterday was 12.7 f, it's 8.7 f now but not supposed to get any higher than that according to the forecast. No snow in the forecast either, I know I read some where that the old saying "it's too cold to snow" is just that, a meaningless old saying but so far it's holding bearing out. When it was in the 20s on and off the week before Christmas we were getting an inch here a couple inches there, but not now. Though we are having a light snow shower right now, it's not going to accumulate as it doesn't show up on the radar. (and maybe, it's too cold!)

For the most part the dogs don't seem to mind it, occasionally Luna or Ziggy will stop walking and hold a paw up in the air for me to dig out some crusty snow and off they go again chasing after interesting trails and wrestling right in front of me so that I have to walk around them. Sometimes Lyra will get into the wrestling as well.

Ziggy and Lyra

Looks like we'll actually get the temps up to 30 Saturday. We'll have to wait and see.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (this post is for you big brother!)

Today my brother took the bus from Harrisville, MI to Toledo, OH to be able to board an Amtrak train to Boston tomorrow morning around 3 am. He'd been visiting us since December 11th when he arrived with Hal who had spent the previous week hunting in MA and NH with my younger sister's boy friend. I'd say we had a pretty good time. Walked the dogs a lot, watched a lot of movies, ate too much food, and talked a lot. We hadn't seen each other in the 3.5 years since our mother passed away.

A few days later my younger sister and her boy friend arrived with Lyra and much chaos and merriment ensued. (YAY!) More shopping, movie watching and of course, on Christmas day the opening of a few gifts which actually didn't happen till about 7:30 pm, the day was total chaos which seems odd for 5 adults and 3 dogs.

Christmas Morning

Dinner was a roast duck and a chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, hot rolls, stuffing and gravy, wine, and pumpkin pie. I swear my sister and I spent all day in the kitchen though. Next year I'd like not to do that so I'm thinking a ham and side dishes instead, quite a departure for us, I think I've always had some kind of bird for Christmas dinner.

We had quite the cold snap here, too. One night the low temperature was -11.6 degrees. Now it's been colder than that here but not in a few years. And we have had lots and lots of snow! It seemed we'd get 3-4 inches, then an inch a couple nights, then another 4-6, it just kept adding up and not melting due to the cold weather. There was eventually over a foot of fluffy snow till yesterday when it hit close to 40 degrees. But it's back to cold weather and wind tonight and probably more snow in the near future.

Home on Christmas Evening

My 2 siblings and I went to Alpena to see the second Hobbit movie. It was very enjoyable. We ate 2 big buckets of popcorn, the first before the movie had even started. What can I say? We didn't have lunch and it was a 4:30 matinee.

But I am tired now, went back to Alpena with my sister and Hal's sister. Bought an artificial tree, a crock pot, a shower curtain rod and miscellaneous Christmas stuff at half price. A couple future Christmas gifts for some lucky person, too. Time for bed and a good book.

edited to add photos