Holiday dogs

While I meandered around Michael's aisles of holiday craftiness, I found cute doggie holiday hats. Naturally we gave them a try while we were decorating our tree this past weekend.

Shadow has very little tolerance for anything new or strange and decided that with such a scary hat on, the safest place to be was as far under the tree as possible. 

Gracie's response was a tad better and she patiently allowed a few photos, even of her good side!

She's so mine

Gracie is so my dog.

Why you ask? Picture this:

Last night she was comfortably laying on her bed. I noticed she was moving a little so I looked over to see what was going on. She was sniffing somewhat frantically around one corner of her bed.

Me: "I think there's a bug by Gracie's bed."

The husband: "Nooo, I don't think so."

But as a truly great husband and bug-killer, he got up to investigate (without me even having to ask).

Low and behold there was a bug and as soon as it was confirmed to Gracie she ran right over to me and sat next to me until the husband caught said bug.

In fact though, he did not catch the bug. He immobilized the bug (or so he thought) but was under-prepared and had to retrieve some tissue. While he was retrieving the tissue from the other room, here is what he heard:

"BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE, BUG ON THE LOOSE!!!" and then a large slamming-of-a-shoe sound.

I was not about to let that bug go under the furniture or disappear right before we went to sleep. And since the husband did not respond quickly enough to the yelling, I bolted up, grabbed my shoe and smooshed it!

All the while, Gracie sat as far away as possible. She so got the bug-hating from me! :)

 
Sidenote: I guess when you get to be an adult you stop talking about cool things like concerts and drinking and whatever else we talked about before (but of course I can't remember now that I'm an adult). But you do talk about bugs and (furry) kids and other such nonsense. 

Furry family update

Shadow was up for her visit to the new vet this past Friday. The purpose of the visit was to hear the new vet's opinion on her previously diagnosed heart murmur. Lets just say the appointment didn't go as anticipated. Her heart murmur diagnosis went from a 1 out of 6 (mildest form) to a 3 out of 6. The vet said she thought it could be an issue with her aorta which would most likely result in her living only a few more years. Yep, that news pretty much sucked. This was also the point in time during the visit where I cried. Did I mention I have a strong attachment to this dog? Anyways, I had to leave her at the vet for some testing and when I got back, the vet recommended I take her to Texas A&M's vet school. There she could receive a diagnosis and we could determine if there were any applicable treatments.

On Tuesday I loaded Shadow in the car and headed to A&M, about an hour drive. The small animal clinic was amazing. I cannot express to you how awesome the staff were - every single one of them. After the tests, I was prepared to ask lots of questions but the cardiologist said that based on the tests, Shadow was in almost perfect health. What? Although he diagnosed her heart murmur as a level 4, it was the result of two slight abnormalities that do not and will not affect her ever. YAY!  Of course, I was not at all expecting that but we are so relieved that our sweet Shadow is healthy. Now, hopefully we're working our way back to the regularly scheduled program around here! :)

The swing of things

It feels like we're finally getting back into the swing of things. Of course some adjustment is expected when coming back from a two week vacation only to go out of town the following weekend but things were a little out of whack well before our vacation. We've both been very busy with work but we're finally getting to a point where working late only occurs once (or twice) a week. Hopefully things will continue to slow down on that front.

Although still cute, the dogs have also been somewhat out of sorts as well. Shadow's heart murmur continues to be a source of concern for us. Usually we can count on Gracie to be her moody but loveable self, however, she has also had some issues recently. As a result, we switched vets last week and Gracie was the first up for a visit. She had crystals in her urine and we're hoping after some prescription food for the next four weeks, these will disappear. Worst case scenario is that she has kidney stones and needs surgery. So we're keeping our fingers crossed on that one. Shadow is up for a visit Friday and I'm hoping we get some helpful information about her heart murmur. 

Other than that, for the first time in a long while we had time to do some cooking this past weekend. The husband broke out the smoker and smoked ribs and a pork butt. I tried my hand at a homemade ice cream recipe that was an epic fail. The base of the ice cream was mascarpone which was a little weird so that could have been the reason we didn't like it, but who knows!. The chocolate sauce that went with it was quite tasty though so we got something out of the try!

 

 

And of course we've been enjoying lots of tomatoes from the garden!  We've had pest issues with some of our other plants and found a newcomer among the parsley plants - big ole vicious caterpillars. But aside from those, the garden stuff is going well. The season is about to end here for tomatoes and we'll be sad to see that happen but we'll start working on the fall/winter seeds soon!

Furry children

The ladies wanted some blog time.

Walks

There are large gulleys running through many areas of Houston and soon after moving into our neighborhood, we discovered one just at the back of it. The path beside our gulley connects to a paved trail, making for a really nice and convenient walking and running space.

With our drought last year (we were down some 20+ inches), none of the plant life flourished. Thus far this year we are above our rain totals and the difference in plant growth has been tremendous. We took the camera with us on one of our (almost) daily walks and got some nice pictures of the area.

 

Welcome to our wildlife preserve

Our short spring began a few weeks ago and it brought with it some much needed rain. As a result, the grasses are growing, the trees are blooming, and everything is GREEN. Apparently all this wonderful weather and natural growth has also prompted the members of our wildlife preserve to show themselves. I'll introduce a few here.

The largest population in our wildlife preserve are our lizards.

Known to scare the crud out of me by shooting by my hand or head at a most inopportune time, they prefer to hang out on our screen door (especially the handle), our screen porch in general, along the gate to get outside, and all along the side of the house and garage surrounding said gate. So, basically, they scurry about wherever we are!

We spent a great deal of time outside this weekend and became quite acquainted with our lizards, which at this time, we believe include at least eight little guys (and ladies I presume). Thankfully they move too quickly for the dogs. Well, except for the time Shadow decided to pick one up in her mouth. Poor thing had its tail and one leg dangling out of Shadow's mouth! No worries though, Shadow was only holding the little guy and it scurried away when I told her to drop it!

But the lizards are not our only wildlife preserve inhabitants. We also have a frog (or toad)! He was a little camera shy but I managed to catch him just before he blended into the rocks.

 Although our wildlife neighbors make enjoying the outside rather entertaining at times (especially when they scare the crud out of me), we are grateful for them because we assume they are eating bugs. And bugs are the devil!

Its been awhile

The husband and I have slowly been updating various things around the house, but you wouldn't know that because I haven't gotten around to posting about the projects!

To tell you the truth, its almost absurd how much time we devoted to housing related projects over the last few months of last year. So, we're on a hiatus from home improving for awhile (maybe). But I suppose you might want to see what's changed or been updated.

Remember this list we came up with? Well we managed to get a number of things accomplished. I'm planning to update the blog every few days with pictures of our home adventures!

One of our first major projects was the office.

Before

Previous owner's take on the room.

In progress

Prior to doors

After doors

Now

What we have remaining:

1. A few things for the walls (DIY potential here)
2. A larger DIY project to add a furniture element
3. A rug! (which will also likely be another DIY adventure)

I'll keep you updated on the progress. Oh and just for funsies, a picture of Gracie around Christmas time.

The dogs

We recently discovered a cool and very unexpected benefit of taking Gracie & Shadow to doggie daycare at Demi's Dog House. One of the staff is a photographer on the side and takes pictures each day she works. The result is a ton of dog pics and some fun ones of our little doggies. You can check them out here. The site is a fun way to waste some time if you happen to like looking at dogs.

Here are a few of our dogs from the site!

All pictures by Megan at I Take Pictures of Dogs.

A little color

One of the little projects on our to-do list (from here) was updating the front door with a new coat of paint. The original door color was red (we love red) but with a slightly recessed entry way and the surrounding red brick, our front door blended into the house in a not-so-good way.

See?

We considered painting the door a brighter red but eventually decided we wanted more contrast. We picked up a few paint samples and eventually decided on a Behr color that is a mix of blue, green, and gray. It's a big change but we both love it!

BTW - painting a door is not that easy - 3 coats and a lot of attention to detail later resulted in this new color.

Oh, and Gracie was a big help when the husband needed someone to hold his shirt!

She's a mutt

Even our vet was unsure what breeds combined to make our lovable, yet incredibly idiocentric Shadow.

And then our neighbor got a new dog.

A Belgian Malinois.

Images from here, here, and here.

You might notice some similarities between the Belgian Malinois and Shadow. She's definitely still a mutt - those ears surely don't belong to a Belgian Malinois. But its nice to know a little bit about her (maybe).

From the AKC site:


"One of the four types of Belgian sheepherding dogs, the Belgian Malinois is an alert, high-energy breed, popular as both a police and military working dog. Although sometimes mistaken for the German Shepherd Dog, the Malinois is more elegant in build and lighter-boned, but does not lack for strength, agility or herding ability.

Right Breed for You?
Intelligent and trainable, the Belgian Malinois possesses a strong desire to work and is happiest with regular activity and a job to do. A relatively easy keeper due to their medium size and short coat, this confident breed loves their families, but may be somewhat reserved with strangers. They are naturally protective of their owners without being overly aggressive."

All of that is so true for our little Shadow except for the confidence - she seems to have lost that before we adopted her.

Summer entertainment

We turned off the sprinklers when we had the one day of rain this month and when the husband turned them back on, he decided to readjust the coverage. In the midst of this, he came inside and got the camera to take some photos of Gracie as she attacked sprinklers and water. (We took some not-great photos but they're still pretty funny)

I came out to watch (and make sure the camera stayed nice and dry). It is pretty hilarious - Gracie will even attack sprinklers in people's yards while we're walking.

And yes, as I stated on facebook, watching Gracie wasn't my only entertainment for the evening. The husband turned to me mid-laughing and said "Their switching zones - you better move!"  Two seconds later I was right smack dab in the middle of a zone - literally everywhere I looked to run was being sprayed!  It was pretty funny and reminiscent of childhood, except those little suckers will get you way more than the little oscillating sprinkler my parents had back in the day.

Commercial break

I will be taking a sort-of break from blogging for the next few weeks. Why, you wonder?

I will be in NC for 3 whole weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it's amazing isn't it? Unfortunately it will not be all play but I know I will love every aspect of being back. I'll fill you in when I get back on what takes me to NC.

Although I won't be blogging as often, I will be blogging some. Mainly because I promised small children play time in Jello-filled pools and nonsense like that - the perfect stuff for blog posts! :)

I will miss these three quite a bit but I'm sure they'll have there share of fun while I'm away!