critter updates
The dogs have been out almost nonstop the last two days. They're not stuck out there--well except for the once when the door blew shut. Since then I've had it propped open with a chair. The furry ones come and go at will, and mostly they prefer go.
I'd enjoy it more if, 1.) the cooler air hadn't given us all sinus hell (which would be totally worth it, except that) 2.) it's supposed to get hot again.
ENOUGH with the heat already.
Lately, and uncharacteristically, Cobie has become a cuddle bug. As soon as Mr Moth gets up in the morning to stay up, Cobie is in the bed. Kelly usually does this, but for Cobie it's new.
Yeah, I love it.
Mr Moth says Cobie knows whether he's coming back to bed based on whether he closes the bathroom door or not. If he's just up to pee, he leaves it open. If he's going to work he closes it so his electric razor doesn't wake me up. I believe Cobie is bright enough to figure this out, because when he was a little puppy he knew that if I had a bag of trash in my hand I wasn't going anywhere fun.
(Now that he likes to go outside with Kelly, or even by himself, he no longer cares about the trash bag. He just cares that the door is open.)
Hannah knew if I put my shoes on I was leaving, lol. But I wear shoes more now. It's easier to leave them on than to worry if the puppy is chewing them up. Hannah chewed several pairs of shoes during a crime spree related to her displeasure in a change in dog food. She would only eat Ol' Roy. Evil or not, it's what she had to have, or watch out! No shoe or underwear was safe!
Oliver's food is finally off the kitchen table. I set him up a feeding station in the basement laundry room. His litter box is in there too; I think they are far enough apart, and the furnace is between them. The secret to getting him to eat there was to buy more delicious food for that dish (it's a dispenser one, because I'm not in the laundry room every day) than for the dish on the table. Gradually I just stopped refilling the dish on the table. Then one day I washed it, dried it, and moved it next to the dispenser dish downstairs.
Now his little pound-kitty food-anxious self has tons of food in a gated community, ha...that is to say, there's a baby gate in the doorway to keep the mutts from feasting on the contents of the litter box, but Oliver can jump it.
In fairness I should say Cobie jumped a gate the third day we had him, and Kelly climbs them like a little monkey if I try to gate her in somewhere. But they leave most boundaries alone, knock wood. I'm not sure what the mental rules are for which gates they mind and which they jump.
I'm glad not to have the cat dish on the table. Now if I can keep the cat off it! I have very little hope for this. I put a magazine on there, and it immediately became Oliver's favorite bed.
Dmitri is still the epicenter of cuteness. Sadly, he seems also to be slowing down. He still runs on his wheel, but he almost never gets it going fast enough you can hear it in the next room over the fans and the tv. He still comes out to say hello of a morning, and to beg for sunflower seeds and a raisin, or a tip of baby carrot.
Our yard bunnies are keeping a low profile, and who can blame them? I believe they've abandoned the nest under the deck, but maybe not since Cobie is still determinedly trying to mine them out of there. I think they're still fairyly safe under the shed though, near-ish the gate. There's only been one fatality that I know of, a very young bunny and I don't know which dog got to it first, but it was very limp by the time Zor noticed they were *not* playing with the toy Skinnez raccoon my daughter sent them for Mother's Day. ~~>
There used to be a big bunny (I thought of him as Hazel in my mind) that would sit outside the big front window for a long while every pre-dusk and torture the dogs, who would leap and bark and basically challenge all my leadership skillz. He'd sit there still as a statue, unless the dogs got quiet, and then he'd very slowly take one...hop. And get them started. At some point, perhaps bored, he'd hop away and we'd have peace again til the next night.
Rearranging the furniture has cut down on Dogs Going Apeshit in the Window Syndrome (halley lou ya) and I haven't seen that bunny since then. I think he was doing it on purpose! Yes, I do.
Out of three clutches of eggs, we also lost a couple of young robins that didn't make that first flight successfully. No matter how careful I try to be about watching for them, the dogs always find them first. The nests are in the crooks of the downspouts, just too high for a leaping cat to reach nowhere near, but tantalizingly close enough you can see him wanting to try. Momma and Poppa Robin use the shed roof to scout the are before flying in with supplies. But when it comes time to leave the nest, there's no safety net, and the stakes are very high.
This is metaphorically unnerving considering that our young are nearing nest-leaving age. Well...hopefully. Kinda.
I used to laugh at Cobie and Kelly, chasing healthy adult birds. Haha, you stoops! You can't catch a bird! But...they both have. It's no longer funny. I have the only lawn in the neighborhood that isn't chemlawned into a toxic wasteland as far as bugs is concerned, but it's full of vicious predators.
Bat Squirrel and Batgirl Squirrel haven't been around much this year, but I did see him just a few days ago, peeking around a tree trunk at the mutts. Cobie was scared of squirrels last year, but this year the dynamic has changed. He's like, "Come over here and say that. Uh huh. I thought so. PUSSY SQUEERIL!"
Sorry for the word choice, but Cobie wouldn't say wussy. For one thing he's a redneck dog. For another...he's a DOG.
But this year I saw something new. An all white squirrel.
The little spazzmorodent was just zooooooming all over the place. I immediately named her Lightning, although I haven't seen her since.
I have seen Cooper the Hawk though mostly at a distance. I suspect this change also owes a lot to Cobie's change in size and attitude, and while I don't think Cooper is quite large enough nor Kelly quite small enough for it to be an issue, but...I'm kind of okay with him hunting at a distance, even though there was very little cooler than having that big ass bird perching on my deck rail!
The only time he's come close this year that I've seen, is when that front came through the other day. He kept trying to perch in a tree in the neighbor's yard, but it was whipping around so hard it looked like the tree was deliberately flinging him out of its branches. He kept swooping around the fence top, but I think the dogs being out gave him pause. I don't think they could reach him, but a bad gust of wind could have turned that into an ugly scene for everybody. Finally it started to spit rain and Cooper picked another tree, and we came inside.
Well I better go check on the nogs. I haven't heard any sounds of destruction, and that's not always a good thing.
I'd enjoy it more if, 1.) the cooler air hadn't given us all sinus hell (which would be totally worth it, except that) 2.) it's supposed to get hot again.
ENOUGH with the heat already.
Lately, and uncharacteristically, Cobie has become a cuddle bug. As soon as Mr Moth gets up in the morning to stay up, Cobie is in the bed. Kelly usually does this, but for Cobie it's new.
Yeah, I love it.
Mr Moth says Cobie knows whether he's coming back to bed based on whether he closes the bathroom door or not. If he's just up to pee, he leaves it open. If he's going to work he closes it so his electric razor doesn't wake me up. I believe Cobie is bright enough to figure this out, because when he was a little puppy he knew that if I had a bag of trash in my hand I wasn't going anywhere fun.
(Now that he likes to go outside with Kelly, or even by himself, he no longer cares about the trash bag. He just cares that the door is open.)
Hannah knew if I put my shoes on I was leaving, lol. But I wear shoes more now. It's easier to leave them on than to worry if the puppy is chewing them up. Hannah chewed several pairs of shoes during a crime spree related to her displeasure in a change in dog food. She would only eat Ol' Roy. Evil or not, it's what she had to have, or watch out! No shoe or underwear was safe!
Oliver's food is finally off the kitchen table. I set him up a feeding station in the basement laundry room. His litter box is in there too; I think they are far enough apart, and the furnace is between them. The secret to getting him to eat there was to buy more delicious food for that dish (it's a dispenser one, because I'm not in the laundry room every day) than for the dish on the table. Gradually I just stopped refilling the dish on the table. Then one day I washed it, dried it, and moved it next to the dispenser dish downstairs.
Now his little pound-kitty food-anxious self has tons of food in a gated community, ha...that is to say, there's a baby gate in the doorway to keep the mutts from feasting on the contents of the litter box, but Oliver can jump it.
In fairness I should say Cobie jumped a gate the third day we had him, and Kelly climbs them like a little monkey if I try to gate her in somewhere. But they leave most boundaries alone, knock wood. I'm not sure what the mental rules are for which gates they mind and which they jump.
I'm glad not to have the cat dish on the table. Now if I can keep the cat off it! I have very little hope for this. I put a magazine on there, and it immediately became Oliver's favorite bed.
Dmitri is still the epicenter of cuteness. Sadly, he seems also to be slowing down. He still runs on his wheel, but he almost never gets it going fast enough you can hear it in the next room over the fans and the tv. He still comes out to say hello of a morning, and to beg for sunflower seeds and a raisin, or a tip of baby carrot.
Our yard bunnies are keeping a low profile, and who can blame them? I believe they've abandoned the nest under the deck, but maybe not since Cobie is still determinedly trying to mine them out of there. I think they're still fairyly safe under the shed though, near-ish the gate. There's only been one fatality that I know of, a very young bunny and I don't know which dog got to it first, but it was very limp by the time Zor noticed they were *not* playing with the toy Skinnez raccoon my daughter sent them for Mother's Day. ~~>
There used to be a big bunny (I thought of him as Hazel in my mind) that would sit outside the big front window for a long while every pre-dusk and torture the dogs, who would leap and bark and basically challenge all my leadership skillz. He'd sit there still as a statue, unless the dogs got quiet, and then he'd very slowly take one...hop. And get them started. At some point, perhaps bored, he'd hop away and we'd have peace again til the next night.
Rearranging the furniture has cut down on Dogs Going Apeshit in the Window Syndrome (halley lou ya) and I haven't seen that bunny since then. I think he was doing it on purpose! Yes, I do.
Out of three clutches of eggs, we also lost a couple of young robins that didn't make that first flight successfully. No matter how careful I try to be about watching for them, the dogs always find them first. The nests are in the crooks of the downspouts, just too high for a leaping cat to reach nowhere near, but tantalizingly close enough you can see him wanting to try. Momma and Poppa Robin use the shed roof to scout the are before flying in with supplies. But when it comes time to leave the nest, there's no safety net, and the stakes are very high.
This is metaphorically unnerving considering that our young are nearing nest-leaving age. Well...hopefully. Kinda.
I used to laugh at Cobie and Kelly, chasing healthy adult birds. Haha, you stoops! You can't catch a bird! But...they both have. It's no longer funny. I have the only lawn in the neighborhood that isn't chemlawned into a toxic wasteland as far as bugs is concerned, but it's full of vicious predators.
Bat Squirrel and Batgirl Squirrel haven't been around much this year, but I did see him just a few days ago, peeking around a tree trunk at the mutts. Cobie was scared of squirrels last year, but this year the dynamic has changed. He's like, "Come over here and say that. Uh huh. I thought so. PUSSY SQUEERIL!"
Sorry for the word choice, but Cobie wouldn't say wussy. For one thing he's a redneck dog. For another...he's a DOG.
But this year I saw something new. An all white squirrel.
The little spazzmorodent was just zooooooming all over the place. I immediately named her Lightning, although I haven't seen her since.
I have seen Cooper the Hawk though mostly at a distance. I suspect this change also owes a lot to Cobie's change in size and attitude, and while I don't think Cooper is quite large enough nor Kelly quite small enough for it to be an issue, but...I'm kind of okay with him hunting at a distance, even though there was very little cooler than having that big ass bird perching on my deck rail!
The only time he's come close this year that I've seen, is when that front came through the other day. He kept trying to perch in a tree in the neighbor's yard, but it was whipping around so hard it looked like the tree was deliberately flinging him out of its branches. He kept swooping around the fence top, but I think the dogs being out gave him pause. I don't think they could reach him, but a bad gust of wind could have turned that into an ugly scene for everybody. Finally it started to spit rain and Cooper picked another tree, and we came inside.
Well I better go check on the nogs. I haven't heard any sounds of destruction, and that's not always a good thing.