Lydia - 7 months old

Lydia just turned 7 months old and unfortunately has spent two of her months in a cast.  Looks like it will come off this Wednesday, which is just in time because her an I are starting to lose our minds over it.   

Raspberry Cream Cheese Cake

 

• 1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 18 ounce package yellow butter cake mix
• 1 3 ounce package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups fresh raspberries
• 1/2 cup raspberry preserves

• Preheat oven to 325°F. Lightly spray a 9-inch bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
• In a medium bowl, with the mixer on medium-high speed, beat the cream cheese and vegetable oil until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until blended, about 2 more minutes. Fold in fresh raspberries.
• Pour half of the batter into the prepared baking pan. Spoon the raspberries preserves over the batter evenly and pour the other half of the batter on top.
• Bake for 50 to 55  minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan for 25 minutes then carefully transfer to a rack to cool completely.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

D, O and K

Kaylene got grad pics taken and Oakley B and Drew jumped into one of them to get this super cute shot.  The only thing I have to say about it is..."look at how happy Oak looks!"

Bees 2022

We got our new bees last weekend (April 9)!  As per the usual, we had drama!  One of the queens was already out of the cage that they come in, which means she could have been killed because the worker bees didn't have enough time to get used to her phermones.

So we held our breath and waited a few days to check the hive to see if she was alive.  Jim checked today and great news - she is alive!  WOOT!

So now we wait and let them do their work and hope for the best!

Also - these queens are named after my CCI pups:  Queen Lydia and Queen Astrid.

Long Day

Lydia went back to work with me last week.  We had a 2 hour Town Hall meeting which was quite boring to her.   This was her under the table.   She also kept moving towards our CLO's executive admin so that she was always touching her.  I would drag her away and she would ooze back so she was touching her feet or her leg.

Homecoming

I am thrilled to announce that Astrid was released from professional training and is home now!   It's a little bittersweet to know she is not going to be a service dog but we knew this was coming.  She has never been interested in working and has shown signs of being hard to motivate and disinterested during professional training.

She was in a team training session from Monday to Wednesday and she was just too hard to get to do the tasks asked of her, which is not what you need in a service dog.  She knows "how" to do them - she just doesn't want to.   I know that in the back of her mind, she was always wrestling with wanting to go back to fetching, swimming, boating and camping.   And now she gets to have that life!

She is spending a few days with us to de-compress and then she will be spending a few weeks with her breeder caretaker while we get the puppy's toe healed.   

Dehydrating

I have been experimenting with dehydrating for my upcoming backpacking trip.  This is a mushroom stroganoff.  It is in a ziploc baggie in the fridge, ready to go!  My friend Susan, who is a dehydrating expert, will help me re-hydrate it on the trail.  And I will serve over mashed potatoes. 

 

Lydia Injury!

We have had some drama the last week - Lydia broke a toe!   It happened in the backyard when I was within 10 feet from her, but I did not see it happen, so we are not sure exactly what went down.    At first we thought it was just a sprain and put her to bed to rest it over night.  But in the morning it was still obviously painful and she would not put any weight on it.   So off she went to the emergency vet.

Turns out she has a toe that is broken in two places and broke into the joint.  Originally the vet did not think they would do anything to treat it but decided to splint it and send us off to a surgeon for a consult.

So she came home and we kept her quiet for 5 days while we waited to see the surgeon.  Luckily she was on pain meds that made her sleepy...she even had a nap in her toy box.

The surgeon did not recommend surgery but advised that we will splint it for 4 weeks and then do an x-ray to check the healing status.  After that we will either remove the splint, splint for longer or potentially consider surgery if it did not heal well.   The good news is she is a puppy and one of her key jobs right now is to make bone for growth so that should position her well for healing.

For the next month we need to super duper limit her movement.  So she is either tied to the coffee table, in a crate or on a leash in the yard for 5 or 10 minutes a few times a day.

I have been working on training that she can do laying down:  touch, ignore food, roll, hip flips, etc.   She is also going to have the cleanest teeth in town because that is something we can do that requires no walking and which she loves!

Lambchop

Hops LOVES her Lambchop.  In fact, she has many of them.  When she tears them open we usually just take the fluff out and then she has a flat Lambchop.  But this time, I have been repairing it as soon as it gets a hole in it.  This is Hops waiting for me to finish he repair.

If I fit, I sit!

 40 gallon pup in a 10 gallon dog house

Beignets

Mari had a wild idea to make beignets the nite before Mardi Gras.  The recipe was pretty easy - only 2 hours of rising time.  And then you have to deep fry them.

They were delicious but a bit of a belly bomb.  We had them with honey and strawberry jam!  What a fun Monday night event!

 

Mesa Verde Boondoggle

We took a trip to Mesa Verde National Park and enjoyed a day of snowshoeing and sightseeing.  We started off the day getting breakfast burritos at a local Mexican Market.

We stopped at the Visitor Center and checked it all out.  Lydia got to do some training while the kids got to look around.

Then we went on snow shoe hike around the campground.   We followed up the hike with lunch in the parking lot.

After lunch, we drove up on the top of the mesa and checked out the cliff houses.  That was so cool to see.  

The early people lived in houses on the top of the mesa at first but then moved to the cliffs.  The pic above is of the house at the top of the mesa.

 

Colorado Boondoggle

We got snow for the first 3 days of our trip in Colorado which we loved!   The dogs played like crazy while Jim and Kyle did snow mitigation.

The dogs would sleep by me while I worked and sometimes look out the window or just stay curled up in front of the fire.

Had to make sure I got a pic of the orange formica counter tops!   While here, Jim is helping them get ready for the cabinets which will come the week we leave.

I also had to get a pic of the ugliest arches in the world!   Mari can't wait for them to come down so she has a better view.

Avery is the biggest Labrador fan.  And it was so good for Lydia to get some time with kids.

A quick hike the morning before the snow arrived.  Brr....

The pups posing by the world famous wolf jacket!

This is where my I worked in Colorado.  It was a beautiful spot right next to the fireplace!

This is Kyle knocking the snow off of the roof.  Unfortunately he also knocked off the icicles that I liked to look at while working.