House Guest...

Do you know this dog? (FYI: the white things he is laying on are body pillows. 2 of these fit perfectly in the bottom of a crate, and at a cost of $8 a piece, can't beat them!)

I have signed up to foster and this young man is my first go at it. I must say, he has been perfect for more than one reason. The first and most important one for me, I cannot fail because he is already adopted! Failing is something that I feel that is bound to happen should I continue to foster... only time will tell. Anywho, he and Blue have a great relationship and he seems to know that this is Blue's home. If he gets a bit too rambunctious, Blue sets him straight with a few barks and growls and they are good to go.

He is quite the card... I have read about it, but this is the first hound I have witnessed that 'smiles' when he is excited. He wrinkles up his nose, shows all of his teeth, it is as if he is getting read to growl. Roommate saw this and thought he was about to get bitten, I found this hilarious!

He is going to be great for his family! He crates well, he listens, he is receptive to correction, he is just a really good boy! Oh, he is also a great alarm clock at about 6 am each morning (as if I needed another one!)

I wish I would have had the camera ready yesterday, he had his first go round with a stuffy. It is always fun to watch or hear about a hound finding out how fun the stuffed animals are. I say goodbye to him this coming weekend, we will get our fill of him until he is gone.

This is 'Anything I Cando' by the way...

Holes...

I made it home at about 6:30 tonight, I wasn't able to make it home for lunch so Blue is doing his best pee dance. I change rather quickly and get him out the door. I walk down the stairs and hear water streaming down the side of my building. I think to myself, 'that sucks, seems like a huge waste of water, I wonder what happened?' Blue and I zoom through our walk, due in part to the near freezing temperature. We walk for about our usual 30 minutes and we make it back to the apartment, still there is a fountain of water coming off the side of the building, again i wonder why they haven't fixed this yet. There is a RootoRooter van parked outside now however... (yes this ENTIRE time the thought of it being under 20 degrees this morning never came into my mind). Blue and I round the corner and there is a big trash bag by the door with a door hanger stating the maintenance is in the apartment (still, no thought of busted pipes). Blue immediately knows someone is in the apartment and runs into my room. I come in, take my layers off. While I strip the layers, I hear banging coming from the roommates room. I finally make my way in there and there is a gentleman banging on the wall of the shower, exposing the copper pipes. With a very thick Russian accent, he informs me that there is a pipe busted in my wall and that he just fixed my neighbors pipe which also busted (this being the neighbor above me, same outside wall). He walks me outside to show me that there is an obvious problem, all the aforementioned water that was streaming down the side of the apartment as if I did not hear or see this.
We come back inside, he was not able to find the busted pipe, but he fixed the leaky bath tub faucet, Hooray! From this point, he was finally able to see where the water was spewing from and it was about 1 foot right of the hole left of the toilet, thus we move into the vanity area and start the demolition under the sink.
This was the start of the demolition, currently, there is nothing at the back wall under the sink except expose pipe. It seems as though, when they remodeled our circa 1970's apartment complex they decided not to fully insulate the outside wall. Maybe this decision was made due to the fact that this wall also houses the complexes entire electrical system maybe someone thought that this may be a fire hazard... Or maybe someone was lazy and decided that we lived and Georgia and there is no way that we can go from 70 degrees one day to below 20 the next!
Blue spent the entire night in the kitchen, safely under the kitchen table, either standing or laying down. God forbid someone ever break in to this apartment, he would probably jump through a window to get away from the stranger in his house. Tuesday someone is supposed to come over and fix the walls, so this means a day off of work so my dog does not have a heart attack or make multiple messes throughout the apartment by being stressed. I am expecting a package anyways, I need to be here to sign for it. I too will now have a navigation bitch! (term coined by Patti P.)

Basic Math

I remembered something I wanted to put on here as I was walking the dog this morning. In the back of my mind, I have always kind of wanted to become a math teacher. I majored in Mathematics with an insurance minor. I think that I would be pretty effective, but not something I have made myself pursue yet. Yesterday morning, I was at Starbucks. This is my indulgence for the day, even though all I get is black coffee, I still enjoy starting my day with a cup. Well, yesterday morning, I had nothing at all to eat at my place, so I also purchased a fruit cup at Starbucks for more than it should have been, but hey, I was hungry! Total came to $5.67. As the total was coming up, I had a $20 bill out. I realized I had a $1 in my wallet as well, so, I hand her both bills. She took one in each hand and looks at me as if I just came out of a space ship. "So, what did you want back" she asks. At this point, I could have been an ass and said "my change", but decided an explanation of "$15, so I do not have so many $1's". I truly do not think she got it until she entered the amount in her trustee machine that she truly understood what I was attempting to do. Why does this situation make me want to pursue teaching? I would be that math teacher that would not allow you to use your calculator on the tests until the last 10 minutes of class and I would also require work to be shown for full credit.

Randomness...

As I sit here, listening to my dog pass gas on the couch, I decided that I want to share more pictures of my visit to the 'big easy'. Not sure how it got that name, I have heard it referred to as the big sleezy and this seems more fitting... tee hee
Who knew that my dog operated a club on Bourbon St!? I was so surprised...

This is me, 'big pimping' in my robe, collar popped, before we headed to the pool. (I am a huge dork by the way!) The pool at our hotel was on the roof, which, when I looked around the city from the roof top, is not that uncommon in New Orleans. Makes since though, it there is a flood, flood waters would not get into the pool.
I think this is kind of a neat picture, this is on the square in the french quarter, down by the river. In this picture, there is the statue of Andrew Jackson. In the background, St. Ann's catholic church. Now, I am catholic, I am no longer the good catholic altar boy I once was, but still, a practicing catholic. I am a sucker for catholic churches, they are all beautiful and seem to take you to another place while inside of them. The stained glass windows, extravagant altars... you truly cannot match their beauty.

And finally... 2 baby gators on the back of a turtle...

Thanksgiving down da bayou...

Tuesday, I headed south to New Orleans to meet my best friend Brian and his wife Jessica. We were staying at the Le Pavillion on Poydras, it is about 1/4 mile off of Canal St. First night, we headed over to Bourbon St and found a place to eat, on our way we came across a half nekked woman (if you could believe that!) Anywho, wound up at a place that served delicious fried clams. We got some barbeque shrimp as a appetizer, they were delicious seasoning was not too spicy, great taste! Brian, he is not the most adventurous person when it comes to eating, but he will try different foods. Jess and I were shelling the shrimp we had on our plates, once that was done we dipped them in the sauce and enjoyed the shrimp. I looked to Brian to see I this was something that he liked and all he had on his plate was the tail of the shrimp. I looked at him and said, "please tell me that you did not eat the shell and the legs..." To which he responded, "nobody tols me I had to peel it!" As if the legs dangling from the body wasn't clue enough and if you are not too sure about how to eat something new, look at the people you are with and see how they are eating them. Needless to say, he did not enjoy the shrimp. Made Jess and I laugh though. As the night wore on, I found that I was related to our waiter, very far removed, but yeah, we were both from the Guidry family. We left the restaurant and ventured further down Bourbon St. I would say that this was the best time to visit because there were not too many weirdo's out and I really did not fear for my life at any point. We ended the night at about 11. I did have to finish my 'HUGE ASS BEER' first though (the cup says this). That is Brian in the picture with me.

Next day, we didn't do too much. We went on a swamp tour, saw some alligators. The guy who brought us up and down a canal had about 3 teeth in his head and was quite a character. Toward the end of the tour, he brought out a 4 year old alligator, put a shirt on him and let everyone on the boat pass him around and take pictures of him. His mouth was taped as you can see in the picture, but still, I did not hold this little guy. I kind of felt bad for him and knew that this is not something that this guy should be doing, but everyone got a good pic with the gator. That is Jess...

Thanksgiving day, we stayed in the room most of the day and enjoyed pizza that night. As you can tell, this trip was not all about going out and getting crazy on Bourbon St, we really just enjoyed ourselves, ate a lot of good food and relaxed. I took a lot of pictures, but I can not obviously put all of them on this post...

After the trip to New Orleans, I went down to Houma to hang with the family out there. Friday, I was fed some real Thanksgiving food, had turkey, dressing, veggies and the works, it was delicious, but the true delicious meal was to follow the next night. When I was smaller, every time I would go down the bayou, we would get crawfish or get a bushel of blue crab and would would have a boil. They bought a bushel of crab, threw in some corn cobs, red potatoes and hot dogs. About 30 - 45 minutes later, you have some good eatin'! I have no idea how many of you out there think this looks appitizing, but my goodness, this is a beautiful thing here! Now, I am not great at peeling crab, but my mamaw can have the top of one of these crabs full of meat for me in no time. I felt like I was a kid again. The only difference this time is that I was enjoying a beer while eating the crab this time!

I headed home on Sunday at about 8 am CST. I was 20 miles past Mobile AL at about 12:00 when I drove by a coon hound in the median. I drove about another mile or so before I turned around to see if this guy was still in the median or if he tried to cross. Luckily, he hadn't crossed yet and was still there in the median. I pulled off and he came right on over to me. Threw him in the Jeep and headed back to Mobile. All the humane societies were closed for the weekend, the emergency vet I called said that they would not take him and suggested that I keep him... right! So, I headed back towards the way I should be travelling and I got back to the exit where I found the pooch. I drove him into the town there, which was about 1 mile in from the highway and found a place were he would pass by some local folks who might take him in. I just wanted him off the highway. Drove a ways up the road, stopped and cleaned out the back of the jeep, disinfected and what not. I was then back on track to make it home by a reasonable time, yeah right.

Due to traffic, I was in my car a little more than 12 hours before I made it to Kates house to pick up my crazy Blue dog. He was so very happy to see his dad. Come to find out, they had some arts and crafts time while he was at camp and he made me a paw print in clay. I also got a picture of him enjoying his turkey dinner on T-day. Kate is so amazing with the dogs, he gets so spoiled while he is there, I always joke with my mom that one of these days he is not going to want to come home with me. He is too funny when I get him home from camp as well, each time he gets back to the apartment, he runs around like a crazy dog then crashes for the night.

I am done for now... good night!

Dog Washing

We got 9 new dogs at the kennel today. I was on stand-by as a hauler just in case there were more dogs or someone had something come up last minute. I still wanted to be a part of this day in some capacity, so I decided to go and help wash to hounds. As many times as I have helped haul the dogs, I never participated in the washing. I have observed and heard the stories about the tick pulling and the de-fleaing, but never actually had my hands in doing this.

Heather Simon and I partnered up and we grabbed out first victim, errr... uh... spa goer... White and black boy, his name escapes me at the moment. Anyways, we lifted him up into the tub got him situated and ready for the scrub down. This big boy was so easy to wash, we did 2 sessions with the flea and tick shampoo and then did a wash with the shampoo for white coats. I cleaned his ears out, he was in good shape... until... I found the family of ticks living in between his toes. Through the whole wash, we picked them off as we came to them, nothing too crazy... his toes were another story... I think I pulled about 20 ticks of this guy and gave up. We had him in that tub for about 20 -30 minutes and there was no way I could get all of them with him standing. Lifted him out of the tub and passed him over to Ginny. To get him in a position to where we could get all of his hitch hikers off of him, I lifted him off of the ground and placed him in Ginny's lap. He wasn't too sure about this until he had 4 of us all around him, some of us searched while other put ointment on his hot spots. He decided that this was the treatment for him and started to close his eyes while Ginny continued to hold him in her lap, he loved every monute of it. Probably the sweetest thing I have ever seen, I think Eda got some good pitures of this, so keep a look out... Oh, and this boy id definitely not small dog tolerant, there was a Jack Russel mix that he was way to interested in...

We then washed a sweet little brindle girl who slipped in the tub, she wound up on her side and decided that this was the position she would stay in for the remainder of her treatment. She seemed to be very tolerant of everything, not too many ticks and fleas on this girl.

In all, it was an interesting experience for me, very different from the Birmingham thing we did this summer. I did come home and look at all Blue's feet to see if there were any ticks hiding anywhere, not that I expected to find any, but honestly, I think we pulled over 100 ticks off these 9 dogs. They are happy and rested and ready to be loved on by anyone and everyone!

Tummy ache...

I was up all night because Blue had a bit of a tummy ache, this has followed him into this morning. I wonder if his stomach is disagreeing with the tripe he ate yesterday morning or if he has the doggy stomach flu. I now have about 8 new spots to clean throughout the apartment, either in my bedroom on in the living room. This morning, his rear end was a faucet. While the whole thing was going on last night, I was in that state of being awake and being conscious. Well, my conscious knew he was sick and that I needed to get up and do something about it, but the sleepy side of me decided to use the sounds effects and turn the whole situation into a House episode. So, while Blue was getting sick all over the apartment, I was snug in my bed, diagnosing him with each and every hack and splat. I finally came to a realized that my pup needed some attention and evidently one of those times he was not able to make it out of bed in time, sheets are in the washer!

Blue hates being sick, I hate seeing him sick. It was about this time last year he fancied cat toys and started downing those. I am always reminded of this anytime he becomes sick, but now know when to be worried about something that may be a blockage (the smell). My short day at work today will probably now be shorter than planned. No food for him for at least a day (this is really both of our decision as I offered him a treat and he looked at me as if I was crazy). I figure he will be fine, I just hope the water works are done from both ends...

How did your Friday start?