HoundBlog

Working from home today and trying to get some housework done in between the programs running, etc.

It’s too cold to put the dogs out (or I’m just a sucker one), so I let them out in pairs to potty, then come back in to snuggle into their blankies in their crates for the day. They each have a bucket of water, so are quite comfy.

As always, there is one spoiler in the bunch.

Oscar decided to take a walk in the woods during his potty outing, so 45 minutes was spent trying to hunt him down. He ended up coming back on his own, but my day is disrupted now although since I started work at 4:30 am, the company is not out any of my time.

I’ve brewed myself a half pot of coffee and am settling down after chasing around the woods in my pajamas (yeah, I know — lazy!) for the dratted dog. If I didn’t love him so much I would have…..no  you KNOW better than that!

Well, now that you know how MY day is going, I sure hope yours is going more smoothly!

Gotta run — time to run the next script.

Love to all,

Margaret

What a week! It started off with taking Sebastain in on Monday to be put to sleep. He had collapsed on the sitter Sunday and wasn’t coming out of it. We think he was between 15 and 17 years old and it was just time.

Then Tuesday, Ken smelled something from the Max’s cast that was not very nice and so he and Tigger had to go to the vet. Poor Max! His cast rubbed a huge raw place under his arm and so they put him in a short cast and now he has to have antibiotics several times a day along with that raw place washed with Betadine solution 3 times a day. He’s handling it pretty well but we did have to put a radar dome on him to keep him from licking the sore place.

Tigger had some kind of allergic reaction to we think the cedar shavings last weekend. He wasn’t getting any better on just Benadryl, so the vet gave him a shot of steriods and put him on antibiotics, too. Between all that and the oatmeal baths, he’s looking much better.

Ken left today for shows in Concord, NC (just north east of Charlotte). I’m going to go up Saturday and hopefully be there in time to see him show. He twisted my arm into entering Savannah which is the last weekend of this month, so I’ll be going there by myself and trying to finish Butterfly.

That’s all there is for now.

Love to all,

Margaret

Hi all — hope you had a great weekend! We enjoyed our trip to Greensboro even though we didn’t win anything. The puppies didn’t totally embarrass us, so we pretty much counted that a win

I did have to come home to Sebastian collapsing and took him in this morning for a final good bye. He was a dog we rescued from Asheville about 8 years ago and he was probably between 15 and 17 years of age. He lived the “good life” with us especially compared to his early years where he was tied to a porch and left there in all kinds of weather. His owner finally gave him up to rescue when a neighbor’s dog attacked and nearly killed him — Sebastian had nowhere to get away from the attacking dog and being tied, couldn’t run away. He was a pretty good little guy who just sort of hung out with the crowd around here. He hated having his picture taken and would leave the room whenever the camera was brought out, so I don’t have very many photos of him and none that are what I would call “good”.

The puppy with the broken leg graduated to a small x-pen today, so I got to come to work after taking care of Sebastian. There were some aspects of working from home last week that I enjoyed and others that I didn’t, so getting back into the groove feels pretty good. I’ll have to take puppy in sometime this week for a cast change, but think I can do that after work one day later in the week (they said 10 days - 2 weeks and it will be 10 days on Wednesday).

We’re having a luncheon here tomorrow, so I’ll be coming in although I usually work from home on Tuesdays.

I think that pretty much catches you up on us.

Take care!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well the elections are over and now it’s just the gloating.  I can’t say I’m surprised at the outcome, but I sure have my doubts about the future of our country now. Eddie better be planning on what he’s going to do in six months if Mr. Obama cuts the military like he says he’s going to do. That will rook him out of retirement as he’s still short a couple of years of having 20 in.

Ken and I are headed to Greensboro this weekend for a show. We were supposed to show the TFT’s on Saturday, but with Max having done his swan dive, we’ll only be showing Minnie. Of course the Whippets are entered. Butterfly, Tigger and Nikki. I sure hope Butterfly can pull Winners off one of the two days. Then she can be a stay-at-home lady of leisure and someday have some babies.

Then next weekend, Ken heads to Concord, NC for a 3 day show. We only have Nikki and Tigger entered there, so he’ll go by himself and I’ll stay behind to take care of the dogs. He does want me to come up Saturday and go to dinner with him and the Boyds, so I may do that. Feed early and take off.

My boss decided he wanted me to work from home this week instead of taking vacation  due to Max’s leg. I’ll work from home until the first cast change when I think he’ll be able to graduate to an X-Pen instead of having to stay crated and leash walked. I have plenty of vacation time and I’ll have to take it before the end of the year anyway or else I’ll lose it, but he’s the boss and truly there has been plenty for me to do with two new customers coming on board this week alone.

Our weather was just beautiful today with highs in the mid-70’s. The dogs spent most of the day outside lying in the sun. I just watched out the window as I worked.

Well, you’re pretty much caught up now with what’s going on here. Take care.

Love to all,

Margaret

It was a gorgeous weekend weather-wise. Highs in the low 70’s and sunny. Saturday we had errands to run. Ken needed to pick up his truck in Easley and I needed to go to Sam’s Club for dog food.

We headed off to Sandy’s for breakfast first. Got there around 9:30, then headed to Easley to get Ken’s truck. We had decided to leave in in the Home Depot parking lot while we went on to Sam’s Club. I also wanted to go by Verizon and look at phones because the screen on my phone is gradually going away. I qualified for an upgrade in January, but hadn’t cared anything about getting a new phone as I like my pink Razar.

After we finished at Sam’s Club, we were headed to Verizon when Ken noticed the Costco and mentioned that he’d never been in one. I suggested we stop as I was pretty sure you could get a guest pass and so we took a look around and did some comparison shopping. We left and headed once more to Verizon. At a red light, a  man pulled up beside us, honked his horn and told us our left rear tire was almost flat.

Ken pulled over and we fixed the flat, then headed on. Verizon looked busy, but we got someone to wait on us pretty quickly. He showed me phones and I made a decision, then when he tried to ring it up, the system wouldn’t let him because that phone wouldn’t work on our price plan. The plan they wanted us to upgrade to was about $10 more per month, but we really didn’t need any more minutes, so it was back to the drawing board. I found another phone that we could keep our price plan and then just had to wait for them to activate it and move my contacts over from the one phone to the other. That took what seemed like FOREVER.

When that was finally done, we headed back to Home Depot to pick up the truck and drop off the tire that needed fixing. While we were waiting on the tire, we walked up to the Jack-In-The-Box that shares the parking lot with the tire place and Home Depot to grab a bite to eat. It’s nearly 3:00 pm and we haven’t had anything since we ate breakfast at 9:30. When we finished with our cardboard burgers, we walked up to Home Depot. By the time we go the light bulbs we needed there and got back to the tire place, the tire was fixed and we were ready to head for the house.

Sunday was pretty and we got up around 7:30 (standard time — we remember to move the clocks back!) and went to Sandy’s for breakfast again. Back home, Ken washed all 3 cars while I swept, mopped and did laundry. Around 2:30, we headed to Greenwood for my long awaited Chinese dinner.

The first place we stopped didn’t open for dinner until 5:00 pm, so we went across the street to the other one. It was closed on Sunday. So Ken mentioned a place that one of his friends talks about (not Chinese) and we head there. On the way, we spot another Chinese restaurant and this one is open! So in we go and I FINALLY get my long-awaited Chinese dinner.

Back home, we’re sitting watching tv and the two Toy Fox Terriers are running around and playing. Max jumps into Ken’s lap, stays long enough for kisses, then jumps down. Only he lands wrong and we’re off to the Vets where we find he has a broken leg.  They sedate him and set the leg and cast it. He’s got to stay crated for a couple of weeks, then they’ll recast the leg checking to make sure it’s healing properly. All-in-all, he’ll be in the cast about 6 weeks. He’s entered in the show this coming weekend, but obviously will be scratched. Thankfully my boss is letting me work from home all week, so I’m home working all week while making sure Max gets out to potty and gets his meds on time. He’s being fairly good about everything, but it’s obvious that his leg hurts.

I sure hope your weekend was a nice one!

Love to all,

Margaret

Gosh! Another month is down the tubes! This year has just flown by! And what a ride it’s taken us on.

Eddie got good news the other day. He’s staying in the DC area (well, that’s relative good news - he’s NOT going to Afghanistan or Iraq).

Ken actually had a full weekend off and we had nothing planned to do. Of course that’s not how it ended up, but we tried. He might have this weekend off as well. Of course it’s no secret that car sales are down and even BMW has been affected. We just have to look at the silver lining and appreciate the rest he’s getting while they are slow.

He’s worked 6 and 7 day weeks and 10-12 hour days for the past 3 years, so he’s sure entitled to a rest!

That’s all the news from South Carolina!

Love to all,

Margaret

Today was a VERY good day!

I managed (with help) to fix the Reporting Services website that I totally screwed up Sunday — that will teach me to try to do something as intricate as install Sharepoint Services when I’m so totally distracted by something as serious as Butterfly missing.

But, as they say, all’s well that ends well.

I also fixed Ken’s computer tonight.

He had all of a sudden not been able to view videos on YouTube. Since I have several there and since two or three of those are his favorites, this was a major big deal for him! It kept saying he needed the latest Flash player which he and I both attempted to download and install several times to no avail.

Tonight, I was doing his SP3 installation for Windows XP and when that finished I decided to try it one more time. I don’t know if it was an update gone bad or what, but SP3 seems to have fixed it and now he can see flash videos on his computer again.

That should make him pretty happy when he gets up in the morning and sees that he can access them again.

Ought to make me look like a heroine in his eyes for a day at any rate…

Hmmmmmm…….maybe I’ll finally get that Chinese dinner I’ve been wanting for over a month now…..??

Ya think?

Love to all,

Margaret

Image by eyespi20 via Flickr

Good morning everyone! I sure hope you had a great weekend (and to judge by Becky’s email, they certainly did!). Our weather, once we got past Friday was fairly nice. Cool, crisp nights followed by warm, sunny days. It should have been perfect.

It was anything but.

When I got home from work Friday, I discovered that Butterfly was missing and the fence next to the gate in the back yard was almost completely down. I’m just surprised that more dogs weren’t missing than Butterfly and truly surprised that out of all the Whippets that could have been gone that it was her that was missing!

So, Ken and I spent the next two days scouring the area, he tramping through the woods and me driving up and down gravel roads calling and calling. We put up signs everywhere with her photo on them. No phone calls came — which was not a good sign at all.

In the past, whenever a dog has gone missing, we usually get a phone call within hours of putting up a sign, but not this time. Not one single phone call. No sightings by us. We had no idea which direction she left in and no idea where she might have gone.

This morning, I kept hearing dogs barking in the area. I hoped and prayed it was because there was a white whippet running loose, but still didn’t come across her despite driving around some more and calling and calling and calling.

Then, I came home and got ready for work. Ken left for work and I was paying some bills that needed to be paid before leaving for work myself and then there were lights in the driveway and my dogs barking. I got up from the desk to see why Ken had to return and there he was, with Butterfly in his arms…..oh my! How the tears of joy flowed from us both! He was late for work, but that didn’t matter. Butterfly was home!

She’s a bit scratched up and seems to have come into season, but I don’t think it’s time for her to be bred just yet, so maybe she’s not PG. If she is, well, we’ll deal with that as it may need to be dealt with. She was hungry and ate and when I left for work was sound asleep in the softest bed in the house.

So, here I am — stuck at work, exhausted from 3 nights of virtually no sleep, but life must go on for us as we’re the providers for our little four-legged family. A four-legged family whose lost sheep has come back to the fold…

Thank you, Lord.

Love to all,

Margaret

Tags: Dog, Whippet

Good morning everyone! I hope your week is going well.

My class is going fine and I’m learning lots of new things. Hope to get something up for the company as soon as I can. I think they will be very pleased with it.

I have a match to judge on Saturday, but that shouldn’t take long as I’m only judging a couple of classes.

Delilah is better but still not her usual self. I hope she gets back to normal soon.

That’s about all there is to tell you.

Love to all,

Margaret

Image by eyespi20 via Flickr

Hi everyone. Looks like a beautiful day is on tap for us although the temps are supposed to get up to mid 80’s. Still, not terribly bad.

I talked the vet into letting me  bring Delilah home last night. I stayed in the exam room with her for nearly an hour and she would not eat. I told him I didn’t think she WOULD eat if I left her either and assured him that I was capable of handling things if her condition worsened. As soon as I got her home and offered her something to eat, she gobbled it up, so I was right (again). Now I just have to keep her quiet for a few days while her stitches heal. She’s in an ex-pen in the dining room right now, and for some reason Tigger is barking at her. Guess he can’t understand why she can’t come out and play. If he won’t quit, I may have to move her to the back room so she can get some peace.

I did a dumb thing this morning. I love cappuccino, but don’t have an esspresso machine. Thought I would just make some really strong coffee and add some dark hot chocolate mix to it to “fake it”. Well, I tried putting the hot chocolate mix in with the grounds but the coffee maker didn’t exactly like that, so stopped up on me. Everything is in the sink soaking now and I’ll run some white vinegar through it to get all the gunk cleaned out. I did get coffee out of it, but it wasn’t very good.

I finally sent off Nikki’s registration papers Saturday. After much hem-hawing around, we ended up naming her Ableaim Nikki’s Not Naughty (Much) . It so totally fits her!

Well, work is once again beckoning.

Love to all,

Margaret