Play Day

I've been trying to take the dogs out to my house on my days off, but it always seems to be bad weather. Today it was very cloudy and a bit drizzly, but I went out anyway. I got a good start on cleaning up the mess we made with the guts of the house. Everything just takes way more time than we have, but it is slooowwwlly getting there. The subfloor is almost all in now, the electric and plumbing is all done and most of the framing. Now we need to finish getting the new windows and doors before we start drywalling.

The bathroom is huge! But it is also going to be my laundry room and Carl is making a closet for the water heater. Instead of buying one of the preformed one piece bath/shower units, we just bought a tub and Carl is going to tile it in. He does good tile work and I think it will look better anyway. Its still a lot of work before its finished, but I can begin to vision it being done.

Meg likes her picture taken and followed me around all day posing nicely, then running off once I snapped the picture. Behind her will be the kitchen. The hole directly behind her where we haven't finished the subfloor is the hole that Crue fell in when he came in the house. I guess he never looked where he was going and he just dropped into the hole. He must have liked what he saw too because he stayed down there for a while before I called him back up.

The dogs had a great time running around exploring. They start going crazy about a mile from the house in anticipation. Today they had lots of time to unwind while Jenna and I worked. All the pictures I thought would come out so good didn't. Like this one of Mike. I really don't see that well without my glasses anyway and my camera is hard for me to really see what I'm snapping, so I thought I was getting a nice picture of Mike's very intense and noble face. When I uploaded them this is what I found.

Ditto with this pic of Seth. It's always been hard for me to get really good pictures of Seth and I really thought I'd got one with this picture. Not so.

I did manage to accidently get a few good shots of the dogs. Crue always seems to take good pictures and I got a few of him that aren't bad.

Reign is notorious for looking abused if you try to make him pose for a picture. He was already laying down and Crue walked over by him and I actually got a decent pic of the both of them.

I've been wanting to take a picture of these Daffodils since they started blooming a few weeks ago. It rained, it got cold, it snowed even but finally today I got a picture of them. They don't look as nice as they did a few weeks ago in the sun, but they are still in bloom!

The dogs had a great time chasing sticks and each other. I can hardly wait till I have sheep in this field though.

The dogs were sad to go, but hopefully soon we'll be able to move in and they can be here all the time.

Seth working stock err um baby chicks err um in my groom shop!

Yeah, you read it right Seth was working baby chicks in the groom shop. He has shown a keen interest in them since I bought them 3 weeks or so ago. So I took a few out and let him "practice" working. Seth was a great chicken dog when he was younger and I had chickens years ago. He knows what chickens are by name and he would round them up for me every evening and put them away in the chicken house. Then he'd scope out our yard and make sure none were hiding in the weeds or bushes as chickens like to do. Seth could even work guinea hens, which aren't easy because too much pressure will send them flying. It's funny too that Seth likes working chickens, because he hated working ducks. Once we were asked to work the ducks a bit at the ranch where I used to train, to get them used to a dog before a trial (yeah, a duck trial, I know) I sent Seth and he did a nice tiny outrun in the pen where the ducks were and stood over them looking over the fence into the field where the sheep were. I called him back and tried it several times until he finally resigned himself to look at the feathered things and work them around a bit. You could see in his face that he felt humiliated by the whole thing. Although a few days later during the trial which was in the big field, a group of ducks got away from the handler's dog and went hightailing it up the field. I had to send Seth and he did a beautiful job of gathering up those ducks and bringing them all the way back to me where I was waiting with the crate door opened and he popped them right in very smoothly. See of course, that was "real" work and he knew there was a purpose for it, just like gathering up my chickens and putting them away so the coyotes didn't get them. Sheep are still his favorite to work, as the poor dog hasn't got to work anything in a few years even he perked up at the chance to work itty bitty baby chicks. He took my flanks beautifully and took my walk up on his belly because I'm sure he wanted to be eye level with the tiny things.

So have I totally disgraced and humiliated my good working dog?

Life at the groom shop

Business is going very well. Not much time left over to blog. I have a few minutes between grooms today so I thought I would make a grooming post.

First is Chewie. I really like Chewie. His owner calls him a Chiapoo. Makes me think of those statues you grow moss on. He's very tiny and has poodley hair. He just has such a cute face I had to post a picture of it.

This is a bad picture, Kitty was not being cooperative, but you can see just how tiny Chewie is.

And last, I just wondered how many dogs could fit in my bathtub. I'm trying to be a power groomer.

Here chick chick chick

Planning ahead for fresh eggs. I may not be able to move into my house yet, but I am getting a head start on being able to have fresh eggs again. I bought some baby chicks today from the coop, that is the Co Op..LOL Since they won't lay for 5 to 6 mos I thought I'd best start now. One thing I have missed these past few years is fresh eggs. I used to raise all kinds of chickens.

Here are the new arrivals

Kitty likes them lots. He thought we brought him dinner in a box. Here he sat till we got the box set up for them.