Petcetera

Last Saturday my niece and her family came by to visit. 10-month-old Micah got some one-on-one time with Brody. Can you tell he has his own dog at home?



Brody would have loved to get closer!



But even though he thinks he's a lap dog doesn't mean he's little!



In other news, our old kitty George is sick, and I don't think he's going to be with us much longer. A couple of days ago he felt well enough to be interested in the open window in the living room, though, so I took his picture.



The vet believes Georgie has abdominal tumors. He stopped eating over a month ago and barely drinks anything, even the tuna broth he's always loved. I keep putting it out for him, though, along with fresh water--George has always mistrusted water more than thirty seconds old.

Winter Walk

It's been a couple years probably since I've posted a photo tour of where I walk daily. This morning it was -15 Celcius (about +5F) and the hoar frost was intensively beautiful. I waited till the sun came up (after 9) to walk Brody and grabbed the camera. We've had only a couple of small snowfalls since the first week of January. Since then, most days have been about the same temperature (cold!) and foggy and/or cloudy. It's nice to see the sun. Here it is peeking through a frost-covered tree at the end of our driveway:


Not far west on our one-mile-long road is what I call The Sentinel. Remind you of anyone you know?



A bit farther west there are trees on both sides of the road:



Our road ends on private property just beyond the irrigation channel, so it's Brody's and my turnaround spot. Here we've just turned back. The neighbors have been enjoying the speedway of the channel!



Here are the neighbor's corrals:



Somebody I know loves the snow and isn't near as tired of the cold as I am!



That same somebody loves to eat rose hips; I'm surprised there are any left on the bushes.



Just about back to our farm.



And when I look south-east again, towards the sun, I see there are still wisps of fog in that direction.



I hope you enjoyed this virtual walk. I'm sure it was warmer for you than it was for me!

Geocaching with Jim :)

Today we went for a hike and to find a couple of geocaches. Since Jim got his GPS unit last spring, we've been doing a bit more *tourist in the hometown* stuff. We didn't know these rocks were worth climbing before!



We also didn't know there were petroglyphs in the area. The pile of rock known as Twin Peak One had this one on it:



Here Brody and I are in the *cave* under the glyph:



Then we climbed Twin Peak Two and found this:



If you know me in RL, you know I really DON'T do heights. However, I did climb this rock face to get close enough to see the glyphs. Jim had to haul both Brody and I up! This is the perspective shot: see him standing at the bottom left of the photo? PLEASE be impressed I climbed that rock! You can see the rock drawings on the top right.



We found a safe place on the ledge to wait while Jim got some close-up photos.



Somebody loves it when we get out and explore the countryside around our valley!

Brody Goes Camping!

A little puppy I know had a great time camping. We spent three days at Frozen Lake, a little lake site with a primitive camping site (outhouse and a couple picnic tables) in the Flathead region of BC, just on the Montana border. Two and a half hour of non-pavement driving, and roads that went from good gravel to washboard gravel to pot-holes to rocks to dirt to dirt with grass growing up the middle. Very dusty and bumpy, but good fishing at the other end. Apparently that's what it is all about!

For Brody, he just wanted to romp and play with the kazillion other dogs that met at Frozen Lake for the weekend.



I did get him to stop a couple times, long enough for a photo or two. You'll find more photos at Facebook (and my hubby's Facebook).

Puppy Time

The last time we had a puppy living in our house was 1991. Kyleigh was a golden retriever and lived to the ripe old age of almost 14 before dying 4 years ago. Jim's been wanting a puppy for a couple years now, but with him working at the mines, the timing wasn't right. Well, he's had a local job for six months now, and he began looking for a puppy a couple of months ago.

Meet Brody:


There are a few more photos of him up at Facebook if you're curious.

His mommy is an unregistered black lab, and his dad...well...you know how these things go. He's part border collie and part shepherd and part who-knows-what! Brody carries a lot of the lab as you can see. He's 7 weeks old and is a fat little porker.

And he spent ALLLLLLLL last night crying. Six hours. Yes. ALLLLL night.

I'm tired.