HoundBlog

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Just as I was beginning to think Nikki’s last hurrah was eating the $40 leash, she renews my faith in her naughtiness.
Last night as I was working on something for a friend of mine, I heard this loud crash from the living room. Fearing the worst, I dashed in there to find Reba and Delilah looking at the crate that was in the floor. I have crates stacked against one wall and the top of the tallest stack is about 5′. I was surprised to find the crate in the floor as they don’t usually bother with them once they’re through eating and know bed time is coming.

Suspiciously absent was Ms. Nikki. I called her a couple of times and she didn’t come, but once I picked the crate up off the floor and set it back on the stack, she arrived, so I knew she was OK. I found Ken’s shoes and his shirt, replaced the lamp and picture that had been knocked off the end table (the obvious route of the miscreant who pulled the stack down) and went back to my task.

The next thing I heard was the dogs growling and snarling. They don’t usually do that when it’s bed time. They’re usually laid up on the couch snoozing, but not last night.

Again I went to investigate. Didn’t see anyone tussling, but looked out the back door and there is Nikki and Reba playing tug of war with Ken’s hat. I ran outside to try and rescue it before it got torn up but it was pretty dirty from being dropped in the mud a time or two (or three).

Now, I’ve fussed at Ken a few times about leaving his hat up there. It’s not the first time Nikki has stolen his hat and she ALWAYS chews them up beyond wearing. Instead of taking them away from her and scolding her, he always laughs and lets her keep it to play with. Well, that just encourages her to steal again. She’s done it often enough that that hat is his very last one…..

He went to work bare headed this morning.

I have a couple of people coming this weekend to meet Will and MAYBE we’ll work on moving the refrigerator and/or painting the hall, but truly don’t have any firm plans for the weekend. I have 3 books to read and several blog posts to write for Pay U 2 Blog, so need to work on those. I have pictures I want to take (always!) as well as laundry to do and dogs to groom, so there’s plenty to keep me occupied. I haven’t looked at our weather forecast, but think it’s just supposed to be cold. I don’t LIKE cold, but if it’s at least sunny outside, I can tolerate it. I need to get some books together to send to TN.

I’m also trying to decide if I want to go to Valdosta, GA for 6 days of shows — well, 1 day in Valdosta, then 2 days in Tallahassee, then 1 day in Dothan, AL and the last 2 days in Marianna, Fl. It’s a lot of driving, but I would have a pretty good chance of finishing Tigger and Butterfly as those are small shows. I have the vacation time and the entry fees it’s just a matter of commiting to the effort. Ken thinks I need to hold out for even smaller shows. I don’t know. I will have to decide for sure before Monday as entries close Wednesday.

Yeah, I know.  I’m certifiable!

Love to all,

Margaret

Tags: Nikki, Reba, Tigger

Cover of The Race

It was foggy on the way in to work this morning and now it’s turned off very windy! I’m ever so thankful that we are not experiencing the ice and snow that other parts of the country are! Two of my area offices are closed due to the ice storms — Dallas and Philadelphia.

Sat up til 1 am the other morning reading a book called The Race by Richard North Patterson which was pretty darned good! I just wish we had candidates like the ones in the book to choose from last year! 😛 Rhonda let me borrow it, so I won’t be able to pass it on to either Mom or Judy, but if you come across it, take it from me, it was pretty good.

Ken is gearing up for the Whippet Nationals which will be in Atlanta in April 6th-10th. It turns out that he will have that whole week off, so he’s going to take Tigger and Nikki down there and show them. I hope he does really well. I’ll probably go for a couple of the days anyway as they always have health testing and seminars that I’m interested in attending. Oh and vendors, too…I’ll have to save up my pennies so I can do them justice.

Our next show is Greenville which is Valentine’s weekend. He only entered Nikki as the judges are not good for Tigger. I entered Payne as I will try to find a small show to put Butterfly in. After Greenville, I don’t know where we’ll be going. But rest assured that you will be among the first to know.

Guess I need to get back to work.

Stay warm!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, Ken came home floating like a feather on the breeze. Ms. Naughty Nikki won a 3 point major Saturday in Charleston. She’s the first of her litter to be major pointed and the breeders are over the moon. Evidently she got a lot of attention by many of the exhibitors who were there. She IS cute; just very mischevious! She was Reserve on Sunday, so still did very well for a 9 month old puppy.

Payne was Reserve on Saturday and Tigger won his class. Butterfly was 4th on Saturday and 3rd on Sunday.

I met with some people who were interested in Will, but he’s too exuberant for their older dogs, so I will have to keep looking for the right home for him.

That’s about all there is to report. It was back to work as normal today with depressing gray skies all day long. I think it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and I will make the trek into work although its a Tuesday when I usually work from home. They are having their every 6 weeks blood drive and I always try to make it in for those.

Y’all stay warm and dry!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, Ken is leaving this morning for Charleston, taking with him Tigger, Payne, Butterfly and the evil Whippet, Nikki. He wasn’t very enthusiastic about going by himself and I wish I could go with him, but our sitter isn’t available this weekend and the dogs left behind will want to be fed and cared for, so just running off without seeing to at least that aspect is a no-go.

Besides, I have someone coming to meet Will, the rescue whippet and finding him a home is important. I also have to do some work — a new customer is wanting to do some testing and I need to be available to do part of it. I can do what I need to do remotely, so don’t have to drive into the office.

At least I left him laughing this morning.

He had covered up Taji last night with a sheet as Taji was squawking a lot, so I went over to remove the sheet before I left for work. I had noticed something lying in the floor, but thought it was just a stick or something the dogs had dragged in. No, it was NOT a stick and as soon as I got close enough to actually make out what it was, I immediately reversed course, shuddering and gagging. It was a dead and rather chewed mouse. ICK! I don’t know what it is about wild mice and rats that just send me into paroxysms of revulsion, but they do and I cannot stand to be in the same room with one. Of course Ken is laughing his head off at my reaction and while I retreat to the bathroom, he cleans it up.

His parting words to me were that he put it where I could find it easily — on my car seat. Of course he had done no such thing, but merely wanted to get a rise out of me once more.

Thanks, Honey — good luck at the dog show.

Love to all,

Margaret

Woke up this morning to snow. There’s just the lightest of dusting on the ground and other surfaces — just enough to be pretty and not enough to be dangerous for drivers. Not enough to build a snowman, either, but since I’m pretty well past the age of that, I guess that’s OK.

Of course we weren’t supposed to get much more than a dusting here anyway, so it’s nice that the weatherman predicted pretty accurately for a chance. Greenville was supposed to get more  than us but today is my day to work from home, so I don’t have to contend with Greenville traffic or it’s snow. I’ll listen as the day goes on to see how the weather forms up as I’m supposed to attend a kennel club meeting tonight — if it’s too bad or road conditions aren’t good, I’ll forswear that too.

We went Saturday to Anderson and exchanged the camera Ken bought me the weekend before. The first camera just took terrible pictures — very blurry and full of camera noise. We exchanged it for the same model and thankfully this one takes GREAT quality photos! On the way home we stopped in Anderson where there’s a farm that has some bison or buffalo if you prefer. Asked the owner if she minded me taking photos of them and she graciously consented. The bison themselves appeared to be content with my snapping photos of them and there was a very friendly horse who seemed to want to help. She even trotted up to the top of a hill where she was outlined beautifully and posed just so — well, here — see for yourself!

Friday Ken is taking off to go to Charleston for the dog shows. Although our original plans had me going as well, I have to work again this Saturday, so he’s going by himself. He’s got 4 dogs to show which is going to be an issue, but we think we have it covered. I’ll let you know what happens.

Well, I reckon I really should get my mind focussed on work and writing in this blog sure isn’t getting that done!

Ya’ll take care now — stay warm and dry!

Love to all,

Margaret

Ahhhhhh! The last load of dog laundry is officially DONE! Yeah!

I didn’t keep count, but it was getting close to double digits in number of loads. That’s SCARY!

I will definitely have to be much better about keeping that done than I have been these past couple of months. Of course it hasn’t helped that I’ve had the puppy with a broken leg crated for what seems like forever and then last week got in a Whippet rescue with the runs. Those are pretty much over now, but we had a fair amount of dirty bedding from those accidents.

Now I can get started on OUR laundry — of which there are only a couple of loads.

Of course there is still other chores to be done — sweeping, mopping and dishes, but getting the mountain of dog laundry done was a major check mark on the to-do list.

I’m working from home today which is why I’m able to get the mountain leveled. I have a conference call at 2 and then need to bug out to take the rescue dog to the vet for his checkup and shots. Thankfully I have an application for him that seems like it will be the perfect home and we’ll take him to Charleston with us weekend after next to do the home visit and if that goes well, leave him with his new family.

I have a big maintenance job to do this coming Saturday for work. I really get aggravated that my network guy leaves the service packs and hotfixes pile up like that dog laundry before he decides to get them on the system. It means more down time and time away from home — maybe that’s the draw for him, I don’t know. Anyway, I have to take the system down to install some new software, so he’s going to install those service packs and hot fixes at the same time. I hope it won’t be a long night…

Well, the dryer just went off, so it’s time to put in more laundry.

Love to all,

Margaret

First post of the new year — took me long enough!

Our first show of the year is behind us and nothing of note to report. We did significantly better on Sunday than we did on Saturday (where we completely struck out), but still no points, so everyone is still needing what they needed going into the weekend. We’ll be heading to Charleston the end of this month and then Greenville is Valentine’s day weekend, so we’ll be going there, too.

I’ve been fighting a cold for the past 4 days. Stayed home from work yesterday and today so I wouldn’t contaminate anyone else, but I’ve worked from home, so don’t think I’ve been lazy or anything. Ken went back to work on Monday and that just about killed him after sleeping in for the past two weeks. We did have to get up early over the weekend as we had early ring times, so maybe that eased him into it a little bit.

Ken bought a new car Friday. It’s a Chevy Equinox and he’s in love with it. I sure hope that’s the end of car shopping for a really long while. He traded in the van which had 126,000 miles on it and the payments on the new car are not much more than the ones on the van was. Dealers are wanting to do business, so he got what seems to be a really good deal on this car.

Well, that’s all there is to tell you.

Love to all,

Margaret

Happy New Year’s Eve! Hope you have whatever kind of celebration you want for NYE all organized and lined up. I know Ken and I do — bed and sleep in tomorrow 😆

Guess that makes us fuddy-duddies, but oh well….you gotta have some of us around to make all you party-hearty people look more fun.

I took Friday off so I could spend Ken’s last day of freedom in a productive manner I plan on painting the hallway and putting up the chair rail I’ve been talking about. I need him to move the washer and dryer out of the way so I can get the laundry “room” painted at the same time.

He bought carpet yesterday for the bedroom, so we pulled up the old carpet and put down the new yesterday afternoon after I finished working. It looks GREAT! It’s a light grey sculptured carpet and he got it fairly cheaply at Dalton Carpets in Anderson. We also got the bed set up and night stands back in the room and I think he’s going to move the dressers back in today.

With the old carpet he has and what I cleared out of the bedroom and living room last weekend, he has enough trash to warrant a trip to the dump and he said he was going to clean out the refrigerator and freezer today.

Our first dog show of 2009 is this weekend. It’s just up the road in Clemson, SC. Later this month will be the shows in Charleston and we’ll probably go there as well. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Mom, Judy and my friend Janet all reported to me that the Christmas cards I sent out this year had the envelopes slit open when they received them. Since you are all in various cities, I figured this had to have occurred at the post office we mailed them from, so stopped by yesterday and spoke with the Postmaster. He took all the information about the incident and said he would check into it, but since nothing was missing from them (I had sent the cards that had any gift cards or money in them via UPS), he didn’t act too urgent about the situation. I’m angry and feel violated, so this attitude made me even angrier, but we will see what comes of it.

Well, I think that should catch you up on our plans. Have a great day!

Love to all,

Margaret

Brrrrrrrrr! Don’t know about you, but it’s COLD here! 22 last I looked, but beautiful and clear.

I sure hope your weekend was better than mine!

I had to take Max in to have his cast changed and there was a new vet there.  Or at least new to me. He fussed at me for waiting to bring him in for the change as he had managed to get the thing wet (well, he’d been chewing on it, so guess that contributed to the wet). Anyway he wanted to keep him for a few hours to let him thoroughly dry out before putting on a new cast. I had to go to Columbia to pick up Tiger, so told him it might be late before I could get back and he said that was OK — they are there 24/7.

So I took off for Columbia and managed to stay out of rain all the way there. Tigger was happy to see me and I wandered around talking to people I knew for a few minutes, then left to head home. Ran into rain on the way home and heavier traffic, but still managed to make fair time. Ken had gone by and picked up Max after he got off work, so we ended up getting home about 5 minutes apart.

We got our respective dogs settled, then ran to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for spaghetti and when we got home, we settled down to rest for a few minutes. Heard an awful screaming from Max and when we ran into see what the problem was, he had somehow managed to pull his leg out of the cast! Thankfully he had not re-broken the leg, but we still had to go back to the vet’s office to get it re-casted.

They were working on an emergency so asked if we could leave him and come back, so we elected to go eat dinner then swing by Target to do some of the shopping we had planned to do Sunday.

We went to one of our favorite places where they serve fish and I ordered broiled Salmon while Ken got his usual fried flounder and baby shrimp. My Salmon was old and smelled and tasted fishy, so I didn’t eat all of it. Ken’s plate was piled so high with food he couldn’t eat it all, so took home a plate.

We then headed for Target which was very busy with last-minute shoppers like us. We managed to find what we were looking for and got checked out, but by then it was pouring buckets. Ken brought the car up to the front of the store, so I didn’t get too wet. He’s thoughtful like that.

Max was ready for us to pick up and this time was sporting another e-collar which he hates.

Thankfully the rest of Saturday was normal.

Sunday we left for Greenville around 8:00 am. Ate breakfast at the IHOP, then went to Costco to sign up for a membership — Ken’s boss gave him one for Christmas — wasn’t that nice?? We picked up a few things there, then went to Home Depot across the street where we bought the paint and supplies for me to repaint the bedroom. You can read about my makeover plans for the house HERE.

I know Ken wanted to wait until we could renovate the house, replace the paneling with sheet rock and re-do the subflooring, but that’s years away yet and I’m up to here with the dark paneling. 10 years of it is long enough!

My friend Janet is coming over Saturday to help me do the bedroom. I have everything I’ll need to do the linen faux finish on the walls. I still need to find and purchase the blinds/shades for the windows, but figure I can do that after the walls are done. Ken and I have a plan in mind for getting the furniture out of the room (except for the bed — that will just be pulled away from the wall). We’ll do that Thursday so the room will be ready to paint Saturday. Since Ken’s leaving for Ohio Saturday, he’ll be out of my hair and Janet and I can do our thing. He won’t be back until Monday, so that gives us two days to get it done. That should be plenty of time since it’s not that big of a room.

Once we finish the bedroom, I want to do the hallway. My office will be the last room to be redone as it’s the most complicated to get furniture out of since the huge bird cage is in there along with my l-shaped desk that will have to be dismantled to get it out of the room.

Finished up the day by doing laundry, wrapping presents and getting Christmas cards addressed. Ken even did the dishes for me! Everything is going out today UPS second day, so you should all get your stuff Christmas eve. I’m sorry I left it all so late — we had most of the gifts already purchased, I just have procrastinated getting it out — you all have my apologies for that!

Well, I suppose I should get back to work although it’s a slow day and I expect there to not be much at all this week, I still need to look like I’m accomplishing something 😛

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, it’s just plain been a sucky week.

I had to put Lottie to sleep as you know on Tuesday and then Wednesday Janet called me from the emergency vet saying Whinney had fallen and hurt her elbow.

When they did the tests necessary to see if they could do surgery, they discovered that she was already in kidney failure (which may have caused her to fall in the first place) and that her heart was enlarged. They did discover they would not need to do surgery as the elbow wasn’t broken but the treatment for the elbow was steriods and for the kidney issue was fluids. The steriods would have placed a bigger burden on her already struggling kidneys and the fluids would have placed a burden on her heart, so Janet elected to not let her suffer and let her join Skinny, Bridget, Sebastian and Lottie at the bridge. I feel so badly for her as she is so concerned that she caused Whinney’s problems in some manner, but I know she had nothing to do with it at all.

I take Max back to the vets Saturday for a cast change and then have to drive to Camden to pick up Tigger who has spent the last 4 weeks in Raleigh with his breeder. They showed him in Winston-Salem where he won a 3 point major on Friday and have tried to introduce him to the excitement of lurecoursing, but he’s not convinced that chasing that bag around the field is more fun than just running around and rolling in horse manure.

Aurora is here through Christmas while her family travels to visit their family in various places. She and Nikki are having great fun playing and all are getting along well.

Sunday I HAVE to finish Christmas shopping.

I think our weather is going to turn cold, but the last couple of days have been so nice. Yesterday especially was beautiful and nearly 70 for a high. Sunny with just some of those high wispy clouds in a very blue sky. Too nice to be indoors, but that’s where I spent my day. So far today it’s foggy, but still warm.

I hope you all have a great weekend. Stay warm, dry and safe.

Love to all,

Margaret