Category: pets

Mighty

On By stefrobrtsIn cats, mighty, petsLeave a comment

June ’23

On the last day of our trip to Vegas, Sherry called to say one of Mighty’s eyes looked goopy and weird. Since we were flying out the next day we couldn’t do much about it but wait until we got there. We figured Mouse had probably scratched her in one of their little squabbles. When we got home her eye looked pretty gross, so we took her to the emergency vet, where they thought it might be a tooth abscess pushing on her eye from below. Then we took her to East Padden Vet, who did an x-ray to figure out how to treat the abscess, and instead found a tumor. Mighty was feeling pretty poorly by then, and so we had to let her go. She had made it to the ripe old age of 17.

When we got our sister kitties in 2006 they didn’t look like twins, but the older they got, the harder they got to tell apart. Also, they snuggled and played together for the first few years, then decided they hated each other, and after that it seemed like every time they ran into each other the fur was flying. We bought them to keep each other company and so they would have a playmate, since they were supposed to be indoor kitties, but that didn’t last long.

I thought I was a kitty person, but all of our cats have loved Dave best.

They grew up to be very pretty kitties!

Mighty had a tendency towards ‘resting bitch face’, but she never really meant it.

Well, most of the time at least.

Both kitties grew up with dogs and so they loved the dogs. Here’s Mighty exploring Baby Barclay’s playpen, wondering what sort of creature this is!

The last few years she really got into using her paws for attention, which was so cute!

They had a great time growing up on the farm, and then spent the second half of their lives in suburbia at The Rancho. Things were a little more relaxed here.

Mighty was a very good kitty. Except for the part about hating her sister, life would have been a lot easier without that! And she definitely had opinions about things! But mostly she liked to be petted and cuddled, and be in the center of whatever was going on. We will miss her.

The Only Dog

On By stefrobrtsIn mighty, navi, petsLeave a comment

Navi has handled losing Barclay better than we have. She quickly realized ALL the toys, treats, and attention were hers (well, some goes to the cats, but they don’t count). She was a little scared going for walks alone without her gregarious big brother by her side, and the first few walks she spent slinking around with her tail down. I tackled this by taking treats and a clicker, and clicking whenever she saw something scary. The idea was to teach her that 1) those things get her rewards 2) quit looking at the scary thing and look at the person with the treats. That has been working really well, and she is getting much better at walking on a loose leash too, because I’ve been clicking for that as well. She’s getting more confident and likes going on a walk to sniff things and get treats.

Since it’s Christmas season we are getting lots of deliveries for her to bark at, so she’s happy to have a job. When she’s not barking at the front window, she is under my desk or trying to get pets from me while I’m trying to work. She comes up and lays her head on the desk next to me to get attention. So cute!

She’s a good girl.

Lately she’s been getting snappy about having her nails trimmed, so I am working on training her to let me use the dremel on her nails. It’s so much easier to train one dog than two. With two dogs, the other one is always trying to nose in on the other dog’s training time. Now we only have to worry about cats.

Lockdown in the time of Coronavirus

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, blather, family, mighty, mouse, navi, pets, photography, TheRancho, Uncategorized, xboxLeave a comment

I guess we’ve been hearing about the virus in China for a month or so, but it has suddenly hit us hard. With the knowledge that this bad new flu is circulating, but without testing capability, and an already overtaxed medical system, we are now in semi-lockdown. The play we have been rehearsing for over a month (Much Ado About Nothing) is on hold until later in the summer, I’m working from home, and people are wiping out the grocery stores (glad I went to Costco with friends and stocked up a couple weeks ago). Crazy times.

I had just settled on a plan to expand my photography into family portrait work, and decided that this summer I would train and do any odd jobs I could get, and hone my craft. I bought a new (used) lens just for this pursuit.

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This is a Sony f/4 70–200mm. It takes really sharp pictures with nicely blurred backgrounds. I’m really happy with the few test shots I’ve done.

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Combined with my full-frame a7ii, this is certainly a rig capable of producing high-quality images.

I also plan to dedicate any ‘hustle money’ I can make to my meandering Mustang project. But who knows when things will get back to normal, when I can start hustling, if I will even care about the Mustang when this is all over. Maybe priorities will change? Right now the poor Mustang is buried in the garage under shipping materials leftover from Christmas. The toy shipping season has stretched out significantly. Things are still selling now in March!

But I don’t mind working at home. I’m hanging out with my hubby and dogs and cats:

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surrounded by all my craft projects I’ve been putting off. Like my ‘learn to paint’ project. I’ve got my paints, I’ve got my easel, all I need is time.

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I can FINALLY follow along with BOB!

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It’s actually kind of nice, but I’m only a few days in. We will see how it feels by the end of the month! I hope to sneak off for some fishing when the weather warms up next week. We will see how it all goes. I’m just hoping people handle this sanely, take care of each other, remember to be kind and considerate, and we will all ride out this strange time, stay healthy, and be back to normal sometime this summer.

Until then I’ll try not to spend too much time riding the range in Red Dead Redemption.

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Winter Artwork

On By stefrobrtsIn art, barclay, cars, navi, pets, photography, snow, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Wow, it has been a long, cold, boring winter. I don’t remember a winter that has been this cold, or snowed so many times. We usually barely get any snow, and usually get none at all. But this winter…well, at least the dogs enjoyed it!

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Not sports car weather!

 

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I do love it when the trees look like this, especially against a bright blue sky.

 

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And I love the dramatic shadows cast by the low winter sun.

 

Tree Shadow

So I cleaned it up in photoshop and made a piece of art of it. That is actually a pretty nice way to pass the time when trapped inside by winter cold.

 

Mount Navi

Winter Navi.

We also went to a Winter Woolies horse show and took some photos. I love doing horse photos.

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And then for something completely different:

boats in the bay

This piece was made from a screenshot from Red Dead Redemption 2. I added the textures to make the sky-glow and painted it. I was really happy with how it turned out.

So that’s how I’ve been fighting the winter doldrums! Luckily it is almost over, and spring is on its way.

A ‘Me’ Party!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, Me, navi, pets, photography, TheRancho, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Photo Club assignment for this month was to make a composite photograph, so I composited the heck out of that challenge! I set the camera up on a tripod and raced around changing clothes and setting myself in different scenes around the room, then merged them all together with a little photoshop magic, to produce a party of ‘Me’s hanging around the house with the dogs.

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Navi is my digger

On By stefrobrtsIn navi, pets, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Navi is 7 years old, but she is still a digger. She dug a HUGE hole in the backyard chasing down a mole, which she finally caught after several days of expanding her hole! Luckily she hoses off and dries clean. Of course in this pic she had just come in to visit me in the office after working on her project – dirty dog!

 

Trout Lake 2018

On By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, dave, navi, outdoors, pets, photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Over Memorial Weekend we took our annual trip with our Airstream friends to Trout Lake, to our usual campground snuggled under shade trees with a gorgeous view of Mt Adams. This year the weather was windy, but otherwise fine. I was a little worried about reports of ticks being bad this year, but we tried to stay out of the grass.

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We set up the X pens in front of the trailer door to make a little yard for the dogs, and the door was pretty much open all weekend, so they could hang out inside or out, and watch all the goings-on around the site. Of course there were also lots of walks, including walking into town to get lunch at the hamburger/milkshake/gas station/coffeeshop (it’s a small town!)

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Sunday morning I woke up at 5am and realized the trailer was lit up pink, so I pulled on clothes and grabbed my camera and went out to see what was going on.

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Just a beautiful mountain sunrise. I was enjoying photographing it when I thought, what this picture needs is an elk.

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Why, thank you very much! I was so excited to see the elk, I was almost shaking! How cool is that?!

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The river behind our campsite was high, and I would have loved to fish it, but it was not open until a week later.

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Everyday there was gorgeous. I just can’t believe we get to hang out someplace with this amazing mountain right there on the horizon, it is in the background of everything we do.

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We had a tinfoil hat contest (Dave and I just watched):

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Everyone was so creative!

And every night it was music and sing-along beside the fire.

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Full-moon night-shot.

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I brought a book to read on my kindle. Dave played a game of cornhole and got into a card game. Navi snapped at our friend Gary when he wouldn’t quit petting her. Barclay was chill as usual.

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The trailer functioned perfectly – not bad for a 50 year old trailer. Basically a good time was had by all. In no time another fun long weekend was over, and we all went our separate ways, until next year.

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Just for fun

On By stefrobrtsIn navi, petsLeave a comment
I wanted to get the dogs photographed against a beautiful blue-sky-puffy-cloud background. Finally had the perfect sky for it, so I enlisted Dave’s help to get Navi to pose up on a bench, while I got down low to try and get the sky behind her. Barclay wasn’t interested in participating.

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Navi is so eager to do right and be good, she is just delightfully goofy sometimes.

What a pretty girl!
“The hand of God” 🙂

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Just hanging with the dogs

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, petsLeave a comment

Playing stickball a couple days ago. There was a standoff, Navi had the ball, Barclay just calmly hung onto the rope until she gave up and dropped it – just as I snapped the pic, of course.

Anyone for some stickball?

Today I gave the dogs chewies, and they both took them outside and sat in the grass to eat them, in a drenching downpour! They did not care a bit about the rain! They could have chewed them inside, or at least under the patio cover, but they both sat out in the grass and got soaked!

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Barclay & Navi

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, petsLeave a comment

Mr B gave me a terrible scare a few weeks ago when he had a seizure or something. It was pretty terrifying. I called Barclay in after dinner and he was walking weird, then he started staggering and taking big exaggerated steps, and then laid down and flopped over and looked really out of it. So I called Dave (who was on his way to the theater) and bundled B into the car and drove straight to the emergency vet. He was feeling better by the time we got there, and was pretty much his normal self by the time we left. Vet couldn’t find anything abnormal. She said it could have been a seizure or a heart arrhythmia. She said to watch him closely the next 48 hours. Nothing happened, so I guess it’s all good.

Navi is doing well. Nothing going on with her lately, which is good. She’s just such a sweetie.

She contorts into the funniest positions while sleeping.

The other night Barclay had the nylabone, and Navi wanted it, so he set it in the middle of the living room and waited for her to try and take it. But she knew it was a trap, so she just sat back and waited. And he waited. And eventually they both fell asleep.

These dogs are nuts, but I sure do love them.

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