Dixie and Dusty say Goodbye

One fine day with a woof and a purr….. haha what a great name for my blog! i had a lot of fun with it and my pets enjoyed being photographed along the way. I might have to continue my blog for my Mom…she really enjoyed reading all my posts.!

Well, we are anxious for vacationing in Duluth and it is approaching FAST! i have a lot of homework to do before we leave though….Ill have to work hard the next couple days. Dixie is going to stay with my parents and hang out with my Dad on the farm. She will probably find lots of things to eat…hopefully nothing that can hurt her or maybe even kill her. I told my dad to make sure his seeds were put away and that the fly poison and rat poison was put away. Even though we have 3 other dogs on the farm, Dixie would be the one to eat what she is not supposed to. I mean, my garbage gut dog will eat anything!

Dusty Kitty will stay home and get daily visits from my mom. Im so glad to have my parents within 20 miles from us and that they are so nice to help us out. They are great “Grandparents” to our pets!

I hope everyone has a great Summer-(whats left of it) and enjoyed this class as much as i did.:) Toodles!

Hodge Podge

Only two more blogs before our semester is done! Its gone so fast its crazy!

Well today was the first time I have struggled to decide what to write about. I think I just have so much on my mind with work being so crazy right now with our annual rose sale coming up and us trying to get ready for vacation and packing, and cleaning the house spotless before we go. So maybe I could call this blog HodgePodge!

Dixie loves to come running with me lately. I can finally run again! I don’t go very far, and I cant run very fast, but I AM running again after my surgery 6 weeks ago.

It is my hometown celebration this weekend-called Cottonwood Coming Home Days! I can’t wait!

Dixie and I are entering in our first 5K together this weekend! I have run a lot of 5K’s but it will be the first for Dixie! I am really excited! She is pretty good at running beside me but I still use her choke chain and leash. Sometimes noises, animals and birds distract her but I yank on her collar and she does pretty good and stays attentive to my commands. Today there was a man cutting a tree with a chain saw and oh my she wanted to go see what the noise was all about! She is still a puppy so that is the god news because she can only get better with more training. She is the best running partner I have ever had!:)

Packing For Vacation

Oh its hard to leave our pets behind. We are going to Duluth for 5 days and we are taking Matts Harley! We are so excited to go, but we will really miss our pets! Ha I was thinking today that it will be kinda nice for the first two days without them, then I will begin to miss them.

We have been trying to decide where Dixie should go while we are gone. There is a neighbor girl in town that could watch her, our friends from Granite would take her to their place, we could bring her to a kennel, or we could bring her out to my parents farm where she could run and play all day with the other farm dogs. Well, I think number 4 is the best choice.

Dixie loves going to the farm and getting dirty! Ha! My dad has pigs and cows out there so the smell is like heaven for dogs who love to sniff out poop and basically they love to eat it too….:( YUCK!

My only worry is my dad is not very careful when he drives the machinery around that yard and Dixie is not used to a lot of traffic of big tractors moving around. And we hope that she doesn’t run away when shes on the farm……Oh all the things we could worry about. I will just have to trust that my dad will be careful and keep an eye on her!

 

 

The king and Queen

 

Oh my! check out the King and Queen of the house! They are so spoiled and adorable! I just love how they bond together! They act like the rulers of the house. I was watching TV the other night and i was sitting in the recliner, Well, i got up to do something and came back to find my spot had been taken over by my pets! I couldn’t help but take a few pictures of them and laugh at their need for attention.

Since then, Dusty has decided that the chair is his and i find him on it daily. Dixie is NOT allowed on the furniture so its kinda funny when the cat gets the chair and watches dixie lay on the floor.

Oh our pets are our lives. They are so entertaining! It fun as a couple to have “kids” that are pets to start us off before having children in the future. Its a good learning experience together because they sure are a lot of work.

 

Another favorite spot of Dusty’s is the sink. When we take showers he likes to be in the bathroom with us and he lays in the sink until you boot him out!

Not only do these kids of ours take up a lot of time and require a lot of attention, but they also are hard on our bank accounts! CRIPES! they are spendy to have. It seem like every time we go to the vet to buy food and treats and whatever medicine they need it’s crazy expensive. I am very thrifty and try to buy what i can at wal-mart and do some shopping around. But, with my mom working at the vet clinic it is nice to give them our business and visit there with Dixie to socialize. At least we know one thing for sure-They are cheaper than children!:)

Where, oH where, did my cookies go>?

 

I had the day off today! my schedule is so weird sometimes and i never work the same days each week. I guess thats the joy of working in a small flower shop with only 9 people! I actually recently got promoted to regular time with insurance and benefits!:) Im very excited! So hopefully i will have set days from now on…>?

Anyways!, i spent my day doing laundry, writing a paper that i procrastinated about for days…..Its for another summer class and i am still wondering why the heck i took that class because i really hate summer classes! But, i want to graduate ASAP so here i am…I also decided to vacuum, do dishes and bake cookies today! I love baking cookies when i have a day off. I love the smell of fresh baked cookies out of the oven and of course i eat half the batter before i get them baked:)

So in-between writing a paper, then taking a break to clean and bake cookies, i stayed inside with my dog and cat pretty much all day. It was a cold and dreary day unfortunately….. I had the cookies out on a cooling rack on the counter and i was on the last batch. I cleaned up the kitchen a little and then sat down at my computer to keep writing while the cookies cooled. I heat putting them in containers too soon because they create condensation in the tupperware and its makes them moist. So there they sat.

Well i think we all see where this is going…..Dixie ate the cookies. The ENTIRE rack of fresh baked cookies. YUP! all gone!

It almost brought tears to my eyes….all i could say was, “I’m glad i ate some of the dough at least”

Our Children:)

Its safe to say I’m pretty attached and perhaps obsessed with my pets! This blog is making me realize that. but i must say, my boyfriend is just as obsessed as i am with them! They are our kids….and boy do they test our patience:)

Dusty is always the easy one. Cats in general are so simple and enjoyable without much attention or work, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need us! Dusty LOVES to go outside, he loves treats and he loves to lay in our clean laundry baskets..:) The other night he snuck out in the middle of the night when Matt let Dixie out to potty. Well that was at about midnight and when we woke up around 6:30 he was patiently waiting outside the door! Whoops!

Dusty also needed us the other night when Dixie decided to beat him up.:( Dusty ended up with a puffy eye and a bloody spot by his ear. Its hard to know sometimes when they are playing if Dixie is being to rough or not. That cat is TOUGH!

They sure are photogenic! Dixie has her Shock collar on in this picture. We don’t use it much on her because she is pretty good, but having a large dog in town can be a challenge and we need to be careful when we are outside with kids across the street and vehicles going by.

So much to learn!

   

Oh sweet Dixie has so much to learn! The pictures above show her dragging her leash around because she wants to go for a run/walk. She LOVES to go on walks with me and it has gotten to the point that i have to spell it out when i tell Matt we are going for a W-A-L-K. If i say the word she gets all excited and starts to jump up and down and greeks out until i put her leash on. She is so smart!

I had a couple videos of her obeying commands but i couldn’t get them to upload…..

She is really good at sit, stay. lay down, and fetch. She is getting to the point that she can understand just the hand signals without sound and she obeys. Its pretty cool to watch. I am having a really fun time training her. Its seriously like having a kid though, but easier! It sure is a lot of work. Everyday she gets yelled at for something, but she also gets a lot of praising for things she does good. We are trying to train her how to hunt too. We have started having her retrieve a dummy with pheasant scent on it. We hide it and tell her to find it…and she does! Im so excited for this fall to get her out hunting!

Rain, Rain, Rain

A story of  an unfortunate event……

Last wednesday we had a bad storm! We got 10 inches of rain…not joke! 10 INCHES! very quickly. Matt and i got home around 12;30 that night from a birthday party and checked our basement. at that time there was just a little seepage through the walls so we went to bed and didnt worry about it.

At 3:00 AM Dixie was barking like crazy and would not stop…and we kept yelling at her. thats when we got a call from our neighbor telling us our back yard was flooded up to the house! YIKES! we hopped out of bed to find our basement with about 12 inches of water floating in it…….:(

we saved what belonging we could, but it continued to pour rain and it just kept coming in…by 5 AM we had over 25 inches of water in our basement! Thats 2 feet deep of water….I was freeking out about all our stuff down there.  Not only was it coming in through the walls, but it had started to come up from the toilet and drain in the basement…the whole town of Hanley was flooded! many of the streets and yards were under water. I though my car was going to float away…it was awful.

The water has gone down now. but what a disaster we have in our basement-we cleared it all out and dumped a lot of our things into dumpsters…:( Such a sad, sad feeling.

 

Thats our freezer floating across the basement..and our washer and dryer-Full of sewer water and full of our clothes…:(

Oh, Just Another day…

             

Kristin, your number two response is making me change my mind about my feelings on this case. Before I was set in my mind that it was only Joe’s problem that he had with Kim’s nature as a person and he needed to find a way to deal with it. When you stated in your response about Joe being a manager and his concern is about his employees being treated with respect and being valued something clicked in my mind. Yes, you are so right. Joe is the manager and he should be concerned with the treatment of his employees and ensure they are comfortable in their work environment. Therefore, confronting each employee as well as Kim for a short discussion with each one individually would be appropriate.

 

I found a short write up online called, “How to have effective staff meetings”. One thing that stuck out to me from this reading is that including the employees in the staff meeting agenda is very important. Have the employees contribute to the agenda by writing up what they have been involved in at work and how it is going so far. Involving the employees in the staff meeting will allow for closer relationships between them by addressing all issues openly at the staff meeting so there is no behind the back chatting about issues.

Its crazy that this is my 10th blog post already and i still have so much to write about dealing with my pets. I guess you could say as a “parent” i could talk about my kids forever!:) haha

We went camping this past weekend and Dixie got to come along, but Dusty had to stay behind and protect the house! so i filled up his bowl of food when we left on friday afternoon. I felt bad leaving him for the first time overnight, but it had to be done! Cats are so much easier than dogs because they can stay at home a couple days alone and be just fine.

Dixie Loved camping! We went to Camden State Park outside of Marshall with my extended family. We do it every year for Fathers Day weekend. And boy did it pour! Rain, Rain, Rain…..UGH! friday night the rain passed and we were able to have a nice supper and campfire, and Dixie, Matt and I took a nice long bike ride to Lynd and back. She loves bike rides. And she did really well around all my little cousins.

Saturday morning us three took another long bike ride before the rain started…..We tried to grill for dinner, and we did manage but the  rain started around noon and never stopped! We ended up leaving around 5 pm that night after an afternoon of laying around and chatting with family. We went to my dads to grill all our thawed meat in the garage and eat our camping food.

Dusty was starving when we got home around 10 pm that night! The poor kitty was hungry and lonely…so we snuggled!

 

Adventurous Kitten

     

 

 

Dusty is a very brave kitty! The picture above next to the pumpkin was taken this past Fall and was his first time outside. We try to keep him inside because we live in town in Hanley Falls and I’m so afraid of something happening to him so close to the street. But he LOVES going outside and, well lets just say i love to spoil my pets! After all, they are my children right now and i can’t get enough of them! Im not joking when i say i get excited to come home after work to see them and give them some love and attention.

Dusty has been going outside about 30 minutes a day. I usually let him out to play in the grass when i get home from work. He waits at the door and runs out when i open it! and i mean BOLTS out! He jumps around and rolls in the grass. he likes to watch the birds and catch as many flies as possible…..when he is ready to come inside he meows by the door….i won’t lie, i do forget he is out there sometimes! The other night we were going to bed and Matt said, “Wheres Dusty? I haven’t seen him all night.” thats when i gasped and ran to the door! Dusty was patiently waiting under the steps:)