The Thing About Zoey is...

that she must have something in her mouth at all times.  Preferably something soft.  She loves fabric.  She has plush toys, which 90% of the time are lost somewhere outside.  Her current favourite thing is actually big; it's Cody's old bed from Mike's truck.  It goes everywhere with her, except when it's lost.  When it's lost, anything else will do.  Socks, gloves, scarves, hats, jeans, pajamas, shoes, undies, tea towels, dishcloths, wash cloths, cushions, towels, you name it, and she's trying to drag it out the front door.  The other day I saw her running around outside with something rigid and grey in her mouth...upon closer inspection, it turned out to be one of my summer tank tops, frozen solid, which mysteriously disappeared last August.  The other day I rescued a bra from the driveway.  I dread to think what I'll find when the snow melts.

One of My Favourite Autumn Activities...

Pyromania!

Jasper

Our lovely Jasper has died.  He became very ill on Thursday morning & Mike rushed him to the vet. When we visited with him Thursday afternoon he was quite stable.  Exploratory surgery was planned for Friday morning, but he passed away at the clinic around 7 a.m. Friday.

Jasper was a loving, happy, goofy, sweet, trusting, lively boy.  Mike and I are shattered.

Jasper
August 13, 2002 - October 21, 2011

A Sunday Drive

Recently Mike and I decided to cast aside an afternoon's chores and take a Sunday drive along the backroads behind Green Lake, finally emerging at Highway 24 near Bridge Lake.

A small lake, name unknown, east of Green Lake

Free range cattle.  Ranchers are now herding their cattle to bring them back to
pasture  for the winter.

A crumbling shed.

A tiny cabin.  I wonder who once lived here?

Old tools hanging from the outer shed walls

Skylights!

Nails placed to hang tools

An ancient barn

Scenes of Autumn

I've been puttering on weekends, splitting some huge old logs that were cut several years ago, and left sitting. They are weathered, but not rotted, and have been feeding the woodstove that is now in use more often than not. Some are too heavy for me to manage, and are awaiting Mike's return at the end of the week.

Our dogs are well colour coordinated for the fall!

Buck and Rupert are spending their days munching on hay.

More wood splitting. There's something very satisfying about getting firewood in for the winter.

Looking from house to road. I love our cariboo gate. It has no hinges.

Jasper also blends in well with the fall foliage.

In case you've been wondering how Zoey is doing...she's fine!  She is a bit of a monkey, and does interesting things like standing on the dining room table when no one is looking, and is about as obedient as she feels like being at any given moment. She is sweet, and well, and very happy.

Looking from gate to house.

A lovely recent sunset.

Hope you're having a fall as lovely as ours. :)

Our Little House

My brother and sister-in-law Dave & Jan and their lovely Roxy came for a visit on the Labour Day weekend!  It was a great weekend, low key and relaxing.  Dave took some photos  of our place, and said I could post them...Thanks, big brother!

South facing front of house.  I want to paint our front door purple!  The
porch overhang keeps the midday sun from blazing in during the summer.

From the southwest...the side entrance door is off the dining room.

Southeast view.  The arctic entrance leads downstairs to a full
basement.  

From the northeast.  Our bedroom is upstairs, facing north.  We look out over
Buck and Rupert's pasture.

The house has a small footprint, but with three levels, it's 2000 sq. ft. and has tons of living space.

After a tasty fish & chip pub dinner on Sunday night, we were treated with
this sunset when we arrived home.

September!

I'm really not quite sure where August went, but with it seems to have gone summer.  Frosty mornings have greeted us for the last few days, and it's getting dark soon after 8 pm now.  Last fall the aspens turned spectacular shades of gold, so far this year they're turning brown...I believe it has to do with the level of infestation of the aspen leaf-miner, the little wormy critter responsible for turning the aspens shades of silvery-gray some years.

All here are well...the chickens are happily laying 10 or 11 eggs each morning.  It's never hard to find takers for the eggs...sometimes I have to remember to keep some for us!  Buck and Rupert are fine...I couldn't find Rupert this morning and had to go looking.  Zoey and Jasper and I found him happily munching beside the root cellar door...I must put up a root cellar post soon!

Zoey had an ear check at the vet on Tuesday...her ears continue to improve, but are not cleared up yet.  Two more weeks of ear drops, oral antibiotics, and a course of prednisone are in order.  She is becoming a little more settled each day and is adorable.

Molly the cat disappeared five days ago; I had pretty much given up on seeing her again and was about to report her demise, but she arrived home about an hour ago in a wind/rain storm, and other than being quite hungry seems unscathed.

Who sez cats shouldn't go on vacation?

Mike and Cody are in Winnipeg tonight, heading for South Carolina!  

Down Home on the Farm...

A few pics from our early morning walkabout on Tuesday morning:

Jasper beginning an excavation to bury his tennis ball.  My poor lawn.

Zoey & Jasper negotiating  possession of the tennis ball.  Sharing is not one of
Jasper's strong points.

Buck has developed an attachment and fascination with Rupert's house, which
he has ignored for 5 years.  It's way too small for him.  

Somewhere in this shot lurks a small gray donkey. Rupert didn't feel like coming
close, and I didn't feel like getting another lens.  Those windfalls are slated to become
firewood before winter.  They've been on the ground for a long time.

Jasper and Zoey.  Zoey is adjusting well to Cariboo life.

Zoey

Things changed around here at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday August 14.  Into our lives came a petit young female whirling dervish in the form of a golden retriever.  Her beginnings are a mystery, but what we do know is that about three weeks ago she was rescued from a miserable life of neglect, with a choke chain collar embedded in her neck, and horrific untreated ear infections.  Turtle Gardens in Topley BC cared for her after the RCMP removed her from a hellish life, and Dave from TG delivered her to us at Tim Horton’s in 100 Mile House en route to the coast and Vancouver Island with a van near bursting with lucky dogs going to their adoptive homes.

Yvette at Turtle Gardens named this girl Zori, a Romanian word meaning “Dawn”, but as we have a close family member named Dori, and Mike couldn’t tell if I was talking about a dog or a person half the time, we settled on Zoey.  And so Zoey she is forever more.

Within minutes of her arrival, she had removed food from the kitchen counter, stood on the dining room table, tried to disembowel three plush dog beds, terrorized the cat, and had Mike and I staring slack jawed at each other wondering what kind of idiot I was in offering this creature a home.  We introduced her to Rudy, Jasper and Cody and wandered around our fully escape proof yard with her.  Eight seconds later she was gone, and we were once again left gawking at each other wondering exactly how we’d manage to tell Yvette that we’d managed to lose her dog within the space of 15 minutes.  We found her again down the road about 10 minutes later (no traffic in our area at 6 a.m. on a Sunday), and she happily submitted to  capture, and was on leash arrest for the next 48 hours.

Next on the agenda was a bath, which left me almost as wet as Zoey.  Fresh and clean, she then tore the face off her new plush mallard duck toy and renewed her assaults on the dog beds. Here she is with Ducky moments before his destruction.  As of yesterday he has no squeaker and not much stuffing.

And then she crawled up onto Mike’s lap, and won his heart.  She’d already grabbed my heart the minute I saw these pictures.

Her neck wound is now fully closed, and her ears look 60% improved.  A visit to the vet yesterday revealed a continuing yeast infection in both ears, so we have new medication for that for the next two weeks.  John proclaimed that otherwise she’s in good shape. She was angelic at the vet’s office…and though she’s mellowing out at home, she has a long way to go to adapt to life here.  She’s sweet and funny and boisterous, but there is a manic edge to her play as she works off pent up anxiety.   She has had minor scraps with both Rudy and Jasper, and I believe that she will end up as the "middle" dog in the family heirarchy.  Mike and Cody have gone back to work...Cody dealt with the new interloper by ignoring her completely and retiring to his bed to sulk. 

We are taking long walks before breakfast to work off extra energy.  She walks well with her harness.  No collars for Zoey for a while yet. Ideally, I’d have brought her home when I was able to take two or three weeks off work, but sadly I’ve used up nearly all of my vacation and have to work full time.  Hellos are overly ecstatic and boisterous, and goodbyes are tragedies in her doggy world.  I am definitely her human already, yesterday she couldn’t let me out of her sight, but today she happily wanders in and out of the house when the door is open.  The half acre dog proof yard is once again dog proof now that she knows where she belongs.

Welcome home, Zoey. 

A Light Topic...

We have lived in our new home for not quite two months, and I have very little idea what most of the light switches control, as most of the light bulbs seem to be burnt out, and most of the fixtures are in oh, so hard to reach places.  Being light 'til all hours in the summer time, it hasn't much mattered, but now that it's getting darker in the evenings, I'm going to have to face up to the lighting issues and figure it all out.

One of the few lights that actually works has a cool old tiffany style shade, and illuminates our dining room  in the most charming way.  I love it to bits!

Thunder at Sundown

 Here was the northwestern sky at sunset last evening.  The rumble of thunder prompted me to look outside.  These are just iPhone shots from our bedroom window, and don't really do justice to the moment.  A few minutes later, everything was gray and the downpour began.

I Loved Lucy

As I've said before, the hardest thing about being a dog lover is that our wonderful four legged friends age so much more quickly than we do, and leave us so much sooner than we'd like.

Lucy came to us as a 13 week old puppy...she was at a Petcetera branch of the SPCA in Richmond...crated and forlorn.  Mike and Jen spotted her, and rather easily convinced me that she needed to belong with us.  She was called Molasses...a truly terrible name.  She was immediately renamed Lucy.  She was quite frail and weak from being caged for several weeks, and on her first several outings had to be carried most of the time.  .  

 She became fast friends with her older "brother" Gillis.  Lucy suffered separation anxiety as a young dog, and vented her anxiety by destroying things...clothing, eyeglasses, carpets, walls, furniture...I had doubts that she would survive past her second birthday at that time.

 She matured into a wonderful companion, a chaser of balls, a fearless swimmer in oceans, lakes and rivers (but remained terrified of children's wading pools and having baths forever!), and a wonderful caring, empathic friend who could detect sadness a mile away and come to comfort whoever was feeling down.

Lucy never had pups of her own, but mothered any baby animals brought into our family...first Jasper, then Molly the cat, and finally Cody Amos.  She spent two years despising Rudy when he arrived as an adult of the same age, but eventually she accepted him too.

 

Lucy had severe hip dysplasia in her later years, and in July we learned that she had a large tumour on her spleen.  On July 21, we said a very sad farewell to our beautiful, beautiful Lucy.

Lucy

April 8, 2000-July 21, 2011