30/30 Update...New Boots

How's this for some irony: as I begin to transition Solana out of her therapeutic boots, I get one of my own!?

Okay, I'm totally letting my guard down here and not even trying to be fashionable...just getting real, folks :D I took this once I was in for the night last night...so I was wearing pj pants with black socks and sneakers that didn't go with the pants! The sneaker is necessary so I'm not so uneven with the boot.

 Anyway, I can't remember if I posted this (I don't think I did) but I sprained my ankle a couple of months ago...maybe six weeks, I dunno. Here's how I explained it to LoML right after it happened, "I had to flag Gwyn for unnecessary roughness; illegal chop-block." Whenever we have folks out in the yard with Gwyn for the first time, I explain to them how important it is to stay still when a greyhound is running around you. They tend to like to play "buzz the tower"... you do the math, a 70 pound dog zooming past you at around 30 mph...a wrong move can be bad...This particular day, though, I took Gwyn with me when I went to the barn. She likes to play in the fenced-in yard there with Prince. He's a rescue shepherd-mix and a real sweetie who adores Gwyn. They have a good time playing. Maybe too good of a time. I made the mistake of focusing on Prince at the wrong time and Gwyn was still trying to instigate things and clipped me in the back of the leg. Fast forward: turns out it wasn't just a sprained ankle. Turns out I broke a piece of my navicular bone off. (Another nice touch of irony...while that is NOT what's wrong with Solana, navicular problems are another of the major serious hoof/leg problems you hear about with horses.) So, now I have a nice pneumatic boot to wear. It may not heal properly, but we're going to go with the extra support for now and see what happens.

Believe it or not, I'm still walking Gwyn some and Solana also. I'm not as fast as I usually am. That's taking some adjusting to. But as I've told some who have made sympathy noises about the boot, I've been walking around on it broken for a couple of months...this actually feels better. With everything going on I haven't tried to keep up with exactly how long I've been walking every day. But I have spent a lot of time this month walking. With Buster (my parents' dog), with Gwyn, with Solana...I reckon I'll keep hobbling along.

Queen of the Hilton

As promised, a  bit more about Gwyn's stay at the hotel last weekend. It was *cold* and even snowed a wee bit Thursday night:

As last year, the set-up started out about the same....Gwyn travels in her crate in the car...it sets up nicely in the room and we brought her other bed too.

But this year something changed! LoML did not really approve...he thought she'd be ruined for good....but here's where she ended up:

Aw, Dad! I'll be good...it'll be like I'm not even here!

Our room had two double beds...Thursday night Gwyn slept in her crate. The first number of times we left the room, Gwyn went in her crate. But then...we went out one time and forgot...and Gwyn discovered how nice the beds are in the Hilton!

Friday and Saturday nights we confirmed why Gwyn will never sleep with us in the bed at home...she takes up a lot of room!!! LoML had one bed and Gwyn & I shared the other. Well, at least Gwyn let me have a little of the bed :D But she mostly wanted to stretch out side to side...

I wouldn't be able to do it regularly, but I confess it was really nice to snuggle with her a couple of nights! Plus it was pretty cold on the floor.

Oh yeah. The fox went with us too. Best baby!!

Chair Monster

I know I promised that I would share Gwyn's hotel adventure on the blog yesterday, but more random wackiness has ensued so will have to be this weekend....share these with you to help pass the time...this is just the norm' around here....hangin' out in the dining room chairs...no peace for Wil'!

Random shots

Soft eye

What a stretch!

evening sky

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

***stay tuned tomorrow for a recap of Gwyn's mad adventures at the hotel!

Birds and Fog

We're heading into another cold spell, but not so long ago it was very warm and very foggy. Gwyn and I took an extra-long walk (it was the same day I took the latest Sammy pictures). These are some of the sights we saw:

Nicknames

Xander has several. The first was given to him by his 'auntie' who rescued him and led him to us: The Orange Menace...OM for short. This nickname is most appropriate when he's in one of his wild kitten phases, tearing around the house and generally terrorizing everybody. When he's wild....he's WILD!!! Oh, but then when he's sweet....well then, he's still a sweet little baby kitteh and that's when he becomes: 'My Little Smoochie'. Don't ask me where that came from...I just started calling him that one day. When I took the following pictures, LoML declared he was being 'SubSmoochie'. (That's the subwoofer he's sitting on.)

While he's still growing rapidly, he's in a round phase...I swear he's not as fat as this picture makes him look! (He's so fluffy!!!!) (Sorry. Inside joke. Despicable Me reference.)

There's not yet another nickname regarding his tail. But it is truly an impressive appendage, bordering on being its own separate entity (a fact that Xander's still trying to work out in his little kitteh mind). But I will say that sometimes when I see it:

All that cream-colored fluff in front of his face is the afore-mentioned appendage!

I think of this:

Listen to your Hound!

They'll tell you things. If only you listen. So, I've told you before about Sammy, the sweet, older, gentleman golden retriever who lives down the road. The one that Gwyn adores. Well, we hadn't seen him in a little bit. We don't always walk by his house and then some days when we do he's either inside or he's already gone to work with his dad.  So the other day Gwyn and I walked by the house with no sign of Sammy. This particular day we had walked much farther than we usually do and we were both getting a bit tired. By the time we passed by Sammy's Gwyn kept getting slower and slower. I jokingly asked her if we needed to call LoML to come get us in the car. When she stopped walking completely, I knelt down to talk to her and see if she really needed a rest. As I stood back up, thinking we could make it the roughly two blocks back home as long as we went slowly. I glanced back only to realize that Sammy was lying behind the steps that lead up to his house :D Gwyn knew. She was stalling to either give Sammy a chance to come out and chat, or for me to realize he was there :D Needless to say, we went back and had a lovely chat.

Moral of the story: always listen to your hound!

Would you like to play with my ball?

I love Sammy!


Milk - It Does a Kitten Good

While Xander has certainly had his share of kitten formula, I want to talk about the milk we buy... it's not just for drinking. Well, the milk is, but each plastic container comes with a free kitten toy! Those little plastic rings can provide hours of entertainment! (We have a friend that saves these for us.) You need a pretty good supply of them, as they do tend to get lost under the stove, 'frig, etc. Here are some shots of how we play with them. Took these using the "sport continuous" setting on my Nikon. They're not quite as high res, but they do capture even speedy little kitteh action!



He does love to carry his toys around!



Bows still remain one of his favorite toys :D

Remember This?

Remember this picture:

It was taken shortly after we brought itty bitty rescue kitty Xander to his forever home with us. Shortly after Gwyn took it upon herself to raise him up as her baby kitteh and took it upon herself to be his doggy momma....Well, if you keep feeding the boy, lavishing love on him (including in the form of replacement milk courtesy of his 'Auntie"!), then this is what he turns into in a few short months:

Just like in the first photo, he's sitting on the chessboard. Yes, it's the same chessboard. The same one where he was just barely taller than the king! Now look at him!!!

I took the last two pix this past weekend while we were watching football games. In case you're wondering, Xander is staring up at the pull-chains on the ceiling fan and wondering why he can't jump up and grab them. This is one of the things he wonders about a lot. In our "bamboo room" (so named because we put in bamboo flooring) that houses our washer/dryer and also our exercise equipment he does the same thing. Sometimes he climbs up on the elliptical machine to get a better view of the ceiling fan. He now weighs enough that sometimes he moves the pedals on the elliptical enough to make the control panel light up! :D  I fully expect to come in some day and find him swinging from one or the other of them!