2011 Ch 2 ~ The Second Week

So the second week of January 2011. One I certainly could have done without. Exactly one week after I was rear ended I came home from work to find the boyfriend more upset then I'd ever seen him. He could hardly even get the words out. Cletus had been hit by a car, killed instantly.

It was surreal. I couldn't believe the words I had just heard. My Dude Man. I did not want to believe it. The boyfriend had already buried him, picked the prettiest spot on the property under a little fir tree and marked his grave with a nice rock.

It was an extremely rough time dealing with his loss. It's amazing what a gaping hole one dog can leave in your life.

Everything reminded us of him. The house was soooo quiet without the two dogs wrestling and playing and barking at the neighbors.

Of course it didn't help they Cheyanne was feeling the loss too. They had been such good buddies. They played hard and constantly. Wrestling in the yard, chasing the horses, picking through the frozen poo, the most interesting thing around when everything was covered with snow.

Chey didn't eat for a couple weeks, until I started hand feeding her and basically forcing her to eat. She just laid around, looking forlorn. That was just as hard to deal with.

The Dude was my buddy. He was the sweetest, friendliest, most affectionate and goofiest dog I've ever had. We had gotten in the routine of snuggling in the evenings when we were all stuck inside because of the winter weather. I would sit on the floor in front of the heater (my favorite spot when it's cold) and he would come snuggle with me. I would scratch his belly and play with him. Then when I would curl up on the couch and read, he'd put his head on the couch right by my leg (he knew he wasn't allowed on the couch) and stare at me with those big brown eyes and I'd scratch his ears and pet him while I read. His eyes would half close and he looked so content, just to be close and have a little love. He always chose sitting at my feet with his head in my lap over laying down to sleep or chewing on his bone.

I still miss him like crazy and would give just about anything to have him back. I do believe everything happens for a reason, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out why this had to happen. I am so glad to have had him in my life for the short time we did though. He was just a damn cool dog.

Sunday Stills Challenge - Moods and Emotions

Well howdy strangers! Long time no see! I have a confession to make...I haven't even picked up my camera in months. Months! I'm not sure exactly why, but I didn't even realize how long it had been since I really took some pictures until I picked up my camera Friday night with this SSC in mind. It felt weird in my hand and that made me very sad.

But I'm back! And hoping it's a regularly back thang, not hit and miss. I really want to challenge myself to take better pictures and learn more about my camera this year.

On to the Sunday Stills Challenge this week, which is Moods and Emotions. "This challenge is for you to get a shot that enables a response in the person who views your pic not one that is your personal emotion. For example if I see a pic of a tranqual stream or a sunrise I feel mellow, If I see a pic of a doggie smiles or a horse doing his rolling in dirt thing It makes me smile, you get the idea."

This is definitely a challenge, but I know my pets always evoke some sort of emotion in me (good and bad, lol) and May Belle (aka: Chunk, Fatty, Tubby, Chubs...she's a little....um...rotund) was a happy and willing subject for me. Each of these pictures makes me feel a little different, what do they do for you?

Chunk stretching out of her little ball to glare at me and the camera.

Chunk on her back. You might think she's all sprawled out sleeping, but no...the dog is on the ground just out of the frame and she's teasing her.

Bath time!

*YAWN*

And here we have poor, pathetic Cheyanne cuddling with her substitute kitty, the hedgehog, because the kitties are playing outside and she is stuck in the house. If that doesn't make you stick out your lower lip and feel bad for her, I don't know what will. :-)

That's all for this week! Hope to see you all again next week!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Toys

Well, I survived last weekend! More on that later. I haven't had much time to take pictures lately, let alone get them loaded and do a blog post, but I wanted to get back to the Sunday Stills Challenges so I'm making time for it this morning! :-)

My kittens are my new toys and they are a hoot to watch! They play hard and long and are always entertaining. Especially when they are attacking my toes when I walk up to the bed that they are under and try to climb up my legs when I'm wearing shorts. That's a blast, let me tell ya! lol

For the most part though, I am having so much fun with my little kitties. Still haven't officially named them, but right now they are Chunk and Legs. One is a little tub and the other one is tall and skinny. Nothing like giving a girl a complex early on, huh?

This was Legs playing with the camera lense from my lap. I thought it was hilarious. I was sitting down on the ground taking pictures of them playing together when Legs jumped on my lap and started swatting at my camera. I pulled back at first but then realized she only wanted the dangling lense.

On a side note: do you see those back claws digging into my leg?!? My poor legs have little kitty scratch scabs all over them. Ouchy!

This morning as I sat down to go through my archives for Toy pics I looked over and both the kitties were wrestling with Chey's toys.

Here Chunk is showing the hedge hog what's up! This poor hedge hog has been through the wringer! It's survived Chey for over a year now, been partially de-fuzzed and had it's ears and eyes gnawed off, but it's still going strong and even still honks!

At the same time Chunk and the hedge hog were going at it, Legs was over teaching Piggy a lesson. She hadn't spied me in this picture, though it does look like it. She was eyeballin' a fly that was buzzing around. She loves chasing flies!

Piggy is Cheyanne's favorite toy.

I'm interested to see what she does when she smells the kittens all over it!

Poor girl.

My Gray-ish GreenThumb

Well, I've said before that I don't really have a green thumb. I've called it my black thumb of death before because I can kill just about anything. I had a much longer record of killing things then keeping them alive. But this year, that is starting to change! YAY! So I'm considering my Black Thumb of Death more a Gray-ish Green Thumb. I'm still killing plenty of things, but I actually have just as many, if not more, things staying alive and thriving this year.

First up ~ the raspberries in the garden. They came with the house and are super duper low maintenance, they grew totally on their own last year, so they hardly count. I would like to think that all the weeding and rearranging and tlc I've given them this year is helping them produce more then they did last year though. They are really going to town so far this year so I'm thinking that may be the case. The first of the berries are allllllmost ready! Wohoo!

Next up ~ What is this I see? It's a little tomato starting to form! So cute!

Next ~ we have the Bachelor Buttons that I planted as seeds. They survived the last couple frosts (in May!) and are growing quickly. There is supposed to be a row of tall sunflowers behind them and shorter bushy sunflowers in front of them, but I don't see any of them coming up. I'm bummed about the sunflowers, but at least the Bachelor Buttons are coming up!



Here we have take #3 on the porch pot. Chey managed to get the purple leafy plant out of one of the pots and destroy it so I had to find something to replace it. Again. This is the same type of flower that was in there originally, just a different color. Next to it is a pretty vinca vine that I intended to use some where else, but ran out of room so I stuck it in there. So far so good on try #3. Hopefully they stick around, I kinda like these ones. Trying not to get too attached though, just in case.

The hanging baskets are still going strong, lookin' good and getting HUGE!

This whiskey barrel pot is in front of our garage and also up on a stump because Chey loves playing in it. I was passing my new fave nursery last weekend and decided to stop in to see if anything inspired me to try out in the whiskey barrel. I have been hesitating to plant anything in it because I didn't want to waste the time and money on it if Chey was just going to dig it up. She seemed to be leaving it alone up on the stump and there were some really pretty flowers that I was totally diggin' at the nursery so I decided to just bite the bullet and give it a try. Again, so far so good on it. Fingers crossed!



It's not the most color coordinated barrel ever, but it's colorful and pretty and I like it. I already had some bright red, white, purple and blue in there, but everything that caught my eye at the nursery was pink, orange and burgundy. It works! I can't wait til it fills in better and really gets going!

This is my favorite flower in there. Again, no clue what it's called, but it's very pretty. It's almost iridescent with oranges, yellows and pinks. I love it! The photo doesn't do it justice, of course. I want a room in my house those colors!

So my gardening skills are slowly improving. I'm not going to consider the curse of the Black Thumb of Death lifted quite yet though.

And of course we have Cheyanne. She was helping me take pictures of everything. I just love this picture! She looks like she's winking at me conspiratorially. Funny stuff! In reality, her eye was bothering her and she wouldn't open it.


Can you see all the sticky balls on her chest? It's ridiculous! They are like little velcro balls that stick every where on her! She's not so happy about me brushing them out all the time either. I hate the sticky balls!

Hope everyone had a wonderful week! I've got more updates to come, just need to find the time to get them all on here!

All Is Forgiven

Well, it didn't take me long to forgive Chey. Less then 24 hours actually. By the time I left work yesterday I couldn't wait to get home and give her some love. On my way home I got some more plants to fill in the gaping holes in the pots and informed the boyfriend of my new plan that he needed to help me with. As soon as I told him what I was thinking he jumped on board and said he had just the thing. He had set it aside, saving it for some higher purpose, which this just happened to be.

This is my new plan...

I had the boyfriend cut off these stumps from a tree we took down last year when we cleared the property. He had saved it aside because it was cedar and most of the rest of the trees were maple and cotton wood which he cut up for firewood. They look kinda cute and woodsy on the porch and will hopefully get the pots up high enough that Chey won't bother them again. I hope!!! If she does decide to bother them again, they will fall and really be toast!

I also tried to piece together plants to recreate the pot that I had before the one got completely demolished. I'm all about being matchy-matchy and balance. I didn't totally nail it, but I think I got it close enough that once it fills in it should look just fine.

Of course I couldn't find the big pretty flower that had originally been in there. I was bummed because I was rather fond of it but I was on a mission to get them filled in and be done with the whole messy business so I could totally get over it and I didn't look terribly long and hard.

I did find this strange leafy plant though...

I don't remember what it's called at the moment (of course! I cannot retain plant names to save my life), but it's got these odd bright purple leaves.

I'm still trying to decide just how exactly I feel about it. I'm not totally in love with it, but I think it will be pretty once it fills in a bit. Luckily (I'm trying to be positive here!) Chey pulled the big plants out of both of the pots so that part is balanced at least.

So here's to hoping this new plan of mine works!

Oh, and the big bonus to all of this...the cedar smells sooooooo good!!!

Dog For Sale!

New owner must not take any pride in their yard or have any attachment to their flowers, especially tulips and potted plants.

I can hardly even talk about this. I certainly can't even look at my dog right now. She is SO on my shit list right now. Being cute isn't even helping her with this one.

Remember these pots that I planted on my deck? The ones that I blogged about just a couple days ago? These big, beautiful pots that I was so proud of myself for not killing?

Well, Cheyanne helped me out with that...

Notice the big, tall, beautiful and thriving flower in the back is missing? Look at the next picture up, then come back to this one. Ya, totally massacred. Pieces of it all over the lawn. Still, the rest of this one fared pretty well.

This one on the other hand...

Not so much. Take a look at how the mini petunias in front were draping over the side so perfectly in the very top picture. Not any more! This pot was toast.

And keep in mind this was after we cleaned up and salvaged what we could, hunting down anything with roots left on the lawn, and put them back together. This was not what they looked like when we found them.

Cute isn't going to help her on this one. I don't think anything short of shitting solid gold bars would help me not be mad at her right now.

It's a darn good thing she's cute!

I just love my dog!

And really that's only slightly sarcastic. I really do love her. I don't know what we would do without her. But man oh man, it's lucky she's cute sometimes!

I decided to take her to the vet today. She was three legged lame yesterday, wouldn't hardly put any weight on her left front paw and would try biting or licking us to death any time we tried to look at it. I had noticed her licking and biting at it like she had something poking her last week, but she was only a little sore on it and I couldn't find anything in there or any puncture wounds. It got progressively worse over the weekend until we were watching her hobble around on three legs yesterday. She wasn't even interested in chasing the cars up and down the fenceline and was hesitating to follow us around while we did lots of yard work so I decided to take her to the vet and make sure it wasn't something serious that needed attention.


When we got to the vet's I was reminded that we really do need to get her out and socialize her more. She was pretty good considering how little she does get out, but she was still beyond excited about everything in there. Then she saw the resident feline basking on the window sill. She about knocked me out trying to get up to sniff it! She was still listening to me, as in sit, lay down, off, etc., but her attention span was like one one-millionth of a second and then she was go-go-going again. Crazy dog!

And of course with all the new excitement that was way more interesting then any pain she may be feeling, her lameness amazingly up and disappeared. Go figure.

The vet couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Not even a twitch or an "ouchy lick".

I swear she was limping when I loaded her up in the truck! I think she just likes to make me look like a fool sometimes.

And have I ever told you that she gets car sick? Ya. She's a barfer. And I'm a sympathy barfer. And she likes to snuggle when she barfs. Luckily I saw it coming and was holding her on the passenger seat. Actually I was trying to push her onto the floor but I can't reach that far. I atleast wanted it on the seat. One thing I like about leather is it cleans up pretty easy! Atleast the older Dodge leather does.

Did she yak on the seat or the floor mat? No, of course not. She yakked right down in the crack between the seats. It's fabric there also. Goodie.

So $45, a couple hours of sick leave from work, a car sick puppy, a roll of paper towels, half a thing of Lysol wipes and a few really good gags later, we have a soft tissue injury that could take up to two months to heal completely. TWO MONTHS! It was worse over the weekend because we were home so she was out running around, being her crazy self the whole weekend. We have to keep her quiet and off of her paw as much as possible for the next three to four weeks (weeks!!!) and see how she's doing then. If it still bothers her when she starts running around on it, then we need to keep her quiet for another four weeks.

I asked the vet if she has seen this dog. She wouldn't even sit still for the exam. Besides the fact that she's going to go totally nuts being cooped up for that long and I feel horrible even attempting to keep her quiet, I'd really love to know just how exactly I'm supposed to keep a one year old Aussie quiet?!?

Sunday Stills Challenge - Black and Whites

Wow. This one was difficult for me! I don't have an eye for black and white pictures at all. I went out on a mission to get some shots that I thought would be cool in black and white and they weren't very good.


Once I started converting the other random pictures that I took while outside to black and white and messing with the contrast a bit though, I really liked the way they were turning out!


So this weeks challenge was to pick two previous challenge topics and shoot them in black and white. I went back to see what some of the topics were before I started and discovered "Pets". Wohoo! Here's some pics of Cheyanne in black and white.










The other topic I chose was Flowers and Plants from last week. They are my very favorite thing to shoot after all. I reeeally like the way some of them turned out!

Here's more of the bastard dandelions...

And some other interesting plants and flowers around my house...







That was fun! Can't wait to see what's next!