They got groomed yesterday

Now they're cold, lol. 

Whole lotta shaking

At the carwash 

My dogs love veggies

Tonight's dinner 

My January resolution, if I had one, was to eat more fresh fruits and veggies.  My dogs have quickly learned that I'm a messy chopper. When I grab the veggies, or fruit, and knife they hover close by. Tonight their favorite was the cauliflower. 

Big and little

We shut done the little tank. Sold the baby convict cichlids and moved the little pleco to the big tank. He has lots of room to grow now. :)

Just stuff

Fibi had been watching the fishes swim until I made a noise grabbing the camera.



Brodi is sticking his tongue out at you!



We came upon this field last fall and it seemed kinda silly. All was harvested and finished for the winter, except the few stalks left lonely.

new additions

Our daughter and her family got a new, larger aquarium so they're letting us use their 29 gallon tank.  It's been a while since we had a tank. The last one we had was full of cichlids - like the one I shared yesterday, Mac. And they bred like crazy.  When we lived in Missouri we custom built 150 gallon tank that we had to leave with the house, would love to do that again some day.

We like using live plants and we took the shells and such that we gathered from our trips to Maine and Florida to build their habitat.

We're having a lot of fun building our little world, and I look forward to introducing you to all the new pets. We have 5 black mollies and 2 white ones. I can't remember what they're called, I just call them bubble guts, lol.

But the first fish we bought for the tank was this adorable Green Pufferfish. I call him Puff Daddy and he's a character.

The mice, Brodi and the Lightbox

I have another friend looking to make a lightbox, so thought I would repost this
posted Sunday, 27 January 2008

The mice have went home now, but it doesn't stop Brodi from looking for them.

We babysat my daughter's mice while they were out of town - the mice are no longer in this world

We were contemplating making a lightbox similar to the one Sallad made but we weren't sure where we would put it when we weren't using it. So we opted to use foamboard to line a cubby in an old dresser. We were going to use velcro to hold it all to the sides but found we didn't need to. We put the bottom in, then the sides and back, leaving the top for last and sides and back hold the top up. We also used this real flexible write-on-wipe-off posterboard for the bottom and curved up the back wall so you don't have the line. We just taped some of the scraps together to kind of keep the mice in the box. As a side note, we're using fluorescent bulbs, not only because they use less electricity, but also because they run cooler.

If you can believe it, two years later and Brodi still runs to the box every time I use it, looking for the mice I assume, who said dogs have 7 second memories?!

Buddy and Boongie

I’m sure I am spelling his name wrong but this is Boongie, I have been wanting to photograph him for quite some time and finally had the opportunity.

I think he is such a beautiful cat - and I’m not a cat person.

I love his little pink tongue! He’s very mellow and puts up with pretty much anything you do to him.

This is Buddy, he is my future-daughter-in-law’s kitty and shares a house with Boongie.

Buddy, looking serious. He contentedly posed in a windowsill.

Trying to be nonchalant.

Bye from Boongie!

Bye from Buddy!

I just have to add a PS - I've been blogging for four years and these are my first cats.  Weird, huh?

Pet Cemeteries

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Way in the back of a couple of human cemeteries in central Wisconsin I found pet sections, or Pet Land.

I wonder if that's Brandy's paw print.

All of the stones in this pet cemetery are flat. But I think it's so neat that these pets were so important to someone that they have their own space and stone.

So detailed! They seem unlikely friends, but I bet they were.

Muffin looks a little scary but I bet she wasn't.

Puddy Cat

I even found Pee Pee

And Pooper.

The second cemetery doesn't have a sign, but has flat and tall stones; you could almost not notice it was a pet section, if you didn't read the stones.

Shadow, Brownsville PD K-9, is amongst friends here.

Arkon, Fond Du Lac Police dog.

Several Healing Paws & therapy dogs.

Ty and Spud, dog and cat, together forever.

The biggest stone belongs to a rescue dog.

Joplin is the town where I grew up, the place my kids were born.

Snuggles was the sheltie that liked to dress up.

While the areas are mostly filled with dogs and cats, I did find some bunnies.

Gone to the dogs

I think I might have mentioned before that my parents have four dogs. You heard me right, four. When I was a kid I was allowed one dog but you see they must have gotten awful lonely without me and. . . Oops, wait, they got four dogs after I moved away, maybe, they help fill the gap of the four grandchildren I took with me when I moved.

Anywho, while visiting, Dennis and I snapped a few shots and I thought I would take the opportunity to formally introduce you.

Hobo is the oldest and wisest. He’s a Yorkshire Terrier and his is ornery. He will eat anything Haden presents to him and as you can see he’s extremely photogenic.

Hobo cooperated so well that even when our cameras were pointed at a different dog he was still posing.

Mr Personality Plus!

Bo we love you but let someone else have their moment of fame.

Tessie is a little younger than Hobo, maybe a year younger, but they’re both getting up there. Tessie had surgery on her knees just like my mom. Her little head wobbles a lot like Kathryn Hepburn’s. She does not like to look at a camera, so she presents a huge challenge.

I think Tessie is a Yorkie too, but she might be a Silky.

Naked Bimbo, er uh, Tinker was my mom’s first Chinese Crested. She had always longed for a hairless dog, why I do not know. Tinker was a royal pain in the butt for several months after she came to live with them but she’s settled in now and for the first time this visit she would come to me and want to be held. She has some hair along her spine there, as you can see but she’s still considered a hairless. I used to think she was pretty ugly but I’ve grown used to her. She’ll be four this year.

Willow Tree was the most difficult of them all. He is so very shy it was difficult to get any shots of him. In fact I used my huge honking lens on him. We could not touch him and he ran, literally, everywhere while we tried.

At one point I said, “Willow”, he looked, I snapped, the flash went off, and off he ran.

Maybe in a couple more years he’ll allow me to touch him too.

And here’s number five. . . What? . . .Oh, yeah, you’re right, I said they had four dogs, not five. Let me introduce, Sophie, she’s a tiny little cotton ball poodle. She belongs to my Aunt Vickie, who was also visiting from Texas. She loves to wear bling and loves having her teeth brushed. They almost lost her to a snakebite a while back so she’s really cherished.

Photos were a collaborative effort by Dennis and me, I really am not sure who took which photo, but if you’re really curious flickr has the photos marked with the camera that took them and I was using the Canon 40D and Dennis was using the Canon 5D. I do know he took those of Hobo and Dennis did all “tweaking”.