Ok Some Excitement...

So, we have a new puppy. We got him a little early for a couple of reasons. One, we were there, and the gal who had the pups knows I'll care for him properly from here out, and two, his mom is not dealing well with nursing. She's in pretty rough shape so we took one pup worth of stress off of her.

He's eating soft food mixed with milk replacer like it's going out of style, so he'll do just fine.

Anyway, welcome the newest, (and as yet nameless) member of our little family....




He's an English Bulldog Miniature Schnauzer pup, actually half brother to Fuzzy Pup. He's still figuring out this whole coordination thing, and is just starting to teethe good.

We'll figure out what his name is as we get to know him, although so far the only words he's given a crap about are "hungry" and "good boy."

All The Excitement

Things have been quiet on the western front around here, and nothing much interesting has happened, which is why I haven't been blogging much.

I doubt ya'll would find a blow-by-blow of combing pork gravy out of FuzzyPup's beard interesting, and that's about the level of excitement we've been getting.

Except for one thing... where we're living now, there's quite a bit of open space and grass about, and we're right near some hills and valleys, so we see a lot of wildlife toward the less populated side of the house.

Including a band of (currently, though it will start changing shortly, they're already starting to break off into singles rather than sticking together) bachelor deer that are rather fond of our back yard and our neighbors'. Mostly because of the crab apple tree. We also have a plum bush in the yard, but between the deer, the first-summer-on-it's-own cinnamon stage black bear, and the birds, they've got it picked pretty well clean.

The dogs are... less fond of the deer being in the yard than the deer are of being in the yard. They lose their minds every time, and though it's usually an early night foray, today one came to visit during the daylight.



This gentleman is a perfectly respectable buck, but he's not the biggest we've seen. There's one that's got at least another six inches spread on this guy that only ever comes at night, damn him, and likes to tease FuzzyPup through the dog run fencing that you see there on the left. He just stands there and stares while FuzzyPup goes nuts (as he was in a pause of doing in this picture, because he knew that deer was there, even though he couldn't see him, and I was not in the pen with him where he could protect me, worse I was outside the big back yard fence) until either DM or I go out and shoo FuzzyPup back inside. I swear the deer gives me a disappointed look when I come out to break up the party.

Anyway, when the dogs started freaking out and I looked out the kitchen window and saw the above pictured gentleman in the yard, I got entirely more excited than the situation warranted, ran for the camera, and snapped a few quick pictures. This one was just as I had come into his sight line... he spent a few minutes picking up the fallen fruit from the ground under the tree, utterly ignoring me, until I shifted for a better shot and didn't pay enough attention to how I moved my feet.

My shoe scuffed, and he looked at me for a moment before deciding that he was going to take himself off somewhere else.

And that's the level of excitement I get these days.

Lonely, I'm So Lonely

DM has been out of town for a few days and it's been awful lonesome around the house. I've tried not to mope about it because that only makes it worse.

But he's coming home tonight, so I'll probably be spending the evening finding a way to glue myself to him, my cuddle meter is running really low.

Damn clock, go faster!

Funky Knees

My knees have been aching lately, thanks to the barometer doing a reasonable impression of a roller coaster, plus the rib on my left side that responded to me trying to ease the pain in the cracked rib on the right side floating out of place and throwing everything out of whack. ("does your rib hurt tonight?" DM asked me the other night, "A little, why?" I responded. "Because it looks like it's trying to jump out of your back." )

Anyway, I recently had a couple of friends to visit, one of whom is an anthropologist. We spent a couple hours in the car, followed by several hiking up and down a mountain, followed by a couple more hours in the car. Home again for pizza and alcohol until late in the evening, at which point I mentioned that my knees were feeling a little sore.

And demonstrated that the swelling (minor, for what it has been in the past) would bulge out the other side of the knee cap when you pressed on one side. Absentmindedly I started rubbing at my knee and the anthro gal suddenly cringed. I realized then that I'd rubbed my kneecap off to one side... yeah apparently that's far more disturbing than the swelling thing.

We then spent some time with me demonstrating the things my knees will do that they apparently aren't supposed to and still let me stand up, and I've been told that if I ever make it to Albuquerque anthro gal knows a couple people who would love to x-ray me. Or maybe cat scan. Cause apparently my knees shouldn't let me stand up.

The orthopedic surgeon's daughter just cocked her head to one side and commented that she'd be interested in seeing how the muscles surrounding differed from "normal" in order to compensate for the instability.

I do think making the anthro gal cringe and get all squicked out means I win forever, though. I am a little worried that if they ever manage to get me in front of an ortho to demonstrate that I'll wind up in surgery before you can say "knee replacement."

They don't hurt that bad....

New House

Well, since we reached the halfway point and that was enough for the tank and the filter for the turtle, I decided to go ahead and pick that up today while I was off work. Since I promised you lovely people who donated a chance to see the new digs once I got them, I made sure and took pictures.

Here's the previous turtle house:


And here's the shiny new one:


Bit of a difference there, I think. Well after much wiping (the new tank is used, and I wanted to clean it thoroughly before putting the turtle in, so there was much bleaching followed by much dechlorinating) and much hauling, because at five gallons a trip it takes a bit to fill that big sucker even part way up, we get this:


I think she's going to like it once she gets the whole "I can swim" thing figured out. We plan on getting some bigger rocks to build up a good land area on the right side, at which point the floating basking platform will go away since it's only mostly useful at best. She's too heavy for it to be really useful, it doesn't have quite enough float to it and all the things I can think of to make it float better involve things that she might eat or that can harm her.


No substrate yet, she'll get along ok without it for a bit, though I would like to get her some, traction when she's trying to walk across the bottom is nonexistant, of course, and it does help with the biological filtration to help keep things clean and happy.

We're getting there, though. Slowly, but surely. I am far more pleased with this set up than the old one, though the turtle isn't entirely sure about that yet, I think she's gonna wind up much happier and healthier in her new home.

Turtle House Update

Halfway to "just go buy everything at once" on the turtle house, and cruising for deals on the bits I expect I might be able to find a bargain on.

I know I say this a lot but my readers are totally awesome!

Pleeeeassseeee? Gimme!

So, since I asked for donations for the turtle I thought I ought to post something of her being cute. Since she's not really made for cute, I got the next best thing. Her begging.

See, she loves earthworms, and at three bucks and change for thirty of them it's pretty easy to keep her supplied as treats. She also begs for the freeze dried pre-gut-loaded crickets since I'm not fucking about with keeping crickets and gut loading them before feeding them to her.

(You have to feed the crickets stuff so that their stomachs are full of goodies like calcium and junk for them to be nutritionally worth it. Someone else can do that. I have a whole jar of them and they don't chirp at me all the time, and I'm good with that.)

This isn't the best job she's done of it and you may see some floaties in the water, the skin on her neck is peeling (in the normal shedding kind of way) and the white floaties are bits of skin that have sloughed off that the filter hasn't quite eliminated yet (but give it ten minutes.) The dark floaties are worm dirt that washes off when she drags them to their doom. But still. Turtle begging. Didn't know that was possible.



ETA: I put the wrong video on here. The previous one was also the turtle begging but this one is better.