The door to the back bedroom has a kitty door cut into the bottom of it, and sometimes while we’re back there working Barclay likes to lay there with his head through the kitty door watching us.
Sometime Navi likes to get in on the act!
Good thing Barclay is so patient!
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Today I got new ID tags for our crazy pack of dogs. Well, actually Jack didn’t get one, I just got tags for the other two. Last week Navi got hung up on the heater vent, and the next day I was leaving for work and found her on the bed in a funny position, wagging her tail, and when I looked closer I realized her tag was caught on the blanket! So I looked up Boomerang Tags, which is where I’ve been getting my tags for years. They make excellent tags, ship them out fast, and they last forever. All our dogs have had their tags, and I even had tags made for the llama’s harnesses.
They have a new kind of tag called CollarTags. They slip onto the actual collar, instead of dangling. They are guaranteed not to come off, and it looks like it would be impossible to catch them on anything.
I received them today. They fit perfectly, and of course look very well made and are easily readable. I think the only downside is that if the dogs got lost and someone glanced at them, they would think they don’t have any ID, because there are no obviously dangling tags. Because the eskies are fluffy, the tag isn’t immediately obvious on the collar like it would be on a short haired dog. However, I haven’t lost a dog yet, and these two are shaping up to be the best trained dogs I’ve ever had, so they are less likely to get lost all the time! On the plus side, without the jingling of tags, the dogs are running in ‘stealth mode’. No, wait a minute, maybe that’s NOT such a good thing!! 😉
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I came home this afternoon and found Navi wearing a little something extra around her neck…
That’s one of the furnace vents! Apparently she had been sleeping on the vent, and her tag slipped between the louvers and got caught. When she stood up to greet me at the door, it came with her. When I opened the door, instead of jumping up and down, she sort of staggered up to me, and I reached down to check her and found this hanging below her neck! I’m surprised the breakaway collar didn’t pop open, it probably would have if she’d moved around a bit more, but she had probably only gone a couple feet between getting up and meeting me at the door. I unhooked her collar with one hand (other hand was full of groceries), and she was free to dance around like usual!
The tag was really stuck in there too! There was no way she was getting out of that without help. It’s amazing how much trouble your dogs can get into when you leave them alone.
Two weeks ago I put my big blue roo up on CL to see if I could find him another home. I was going to replace him with one of my young blue/buff roosters that was coming along. I found a home for him a couple blocks away, so he is happily bossing around a new group of hens. He was such a handsome boy, I knew I could find him a home where he wouldn’t end up on a plate.
After looking over my blue/buff chicks again, I wasn’t sure about the cochin part of my project. Cochins are beautiful, but the feathered feet aren’t great here in the NW, because they are muddy most of the time, then they are jumping on the hens with these big muddy mops, and the hens get filthy, and it’s kind of a mess. So I decided I would wait and raise one more year of blue mix chicks, but this time with a blue orpington. I managed to find one in Sandy, Oregon, and a friend happened to be going over there for something else, so she picked him up for me.
Our pasture is full of wildflowers, or as I like to call them, invasive weeds. It’s all a matter of perspective. They’re pretty, but if you don’t keep them under control the county will show up and talk to you about it. So I mowed about a third of it the other day, then let the dogs out to play for a bit before I finish the job.
Navi walked all around the field with me, then waited for Barclay to catch up. He kept stopping to dig up field mouse holes.
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I had a great day, but I didn’t take any pictures. What’s a blog post without pictures, right? Well, I’ll tell you about it anyway…
I got up and got right to my chores, then went to the hairdresser and got a long-overdue haircut. While I was there I got some gloomy news about how bad the economy is for them right now. I’m tired of hearing how bad it is for everyone. Wish I had better news to share myself.
Then I came home and worked in the garden. I tore out the overgrown lettuce last week, and today I put down compost to get those areas ready for planting my winter garden. Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli starts are growing in little pots on the back porch, ready for their new digs. It’s always nice to make progress in the garden. I also picked up a glass window to be the top of my cold frame, so I need to get that built soon. Winter lettuce needs to go in in September to get it’s growing done before the days get too short.
Then we went Letterboxing. I have put off letterboxing for a long time because I didn’t have a homemade stamp and wasn’t keen on making one. I finally carved one out of an eraser, a little dog paw print. So I finally picked up an ink pad for it, and printed out a couple local letterboxes and we went and found them. No problem, found 3 out of 3 – I won’t expect that all the time! To my surprise, when I checked the log almost everyone had stamped it with professionally made stamps! Well heck, I should have just bought a cute stamp ages ago and got busy looking! Well, anyway, it was fun. I miss Geocaching, but since we don’t have a GPS anymore, this will do for now. Looks like there are lots of Letterboxes in our area to find.
Came home, had a late lunch, saw Dave off to a meeting in town, and then I rounded up the eskies for a little walk at the park. We walked down the road to the secret entrance to the horse trail. Then we followed the horse trail up past group camp. There were campers there, singing songs, and Navi didn’t like it. She kept stopping to look around and growling at the sound, since she couldn’t see the campers! We left that park at the group camp entrance, came back down the road and then took the abandoned railroad tracks back to the house. Along the way a lady sitting on her back porch near the tracks chatted us up and complemented me on how pretty the pooches were 🙂 They behaved pretty well on their walk. I have them on a Y adapter, and most of the time Barclay was walking next to me with his half of the Y hanging loose, and Navi was pulling ahead. I need to work on her loose leash walking skills, then the two of them will be a joy to walk!
Then we played some fetch, the dogs took a dip in the pond, and finally everyone has worn down. Dog nap time! Now we just need Dave to get home with the pizza, maybe watch some Doctor Who, and life will be perfect.
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The baby chicks are doing fine, even in the hot weather. Everyone is eating and drinking and hopping around.
Barclay and Navi. Navi has survived a week of limited activity since getting ‘fixed’. Or I should say WE have survived a week of trying to limit her activity! This dog needs a LOT Of exercise. I can’t wait until we get back to a normal routine!
Steff Does Stuff! 
