Contrariwise ramblings

Although he's still not teething, we thought Mooshu might enjoy a chew toy.
Rawhide is not supposed to be good for toy breeds; it can get stuck in their tiny digestive track and swell up. This little bone is totally digestible and Mooshu has been chewing on it for several days. He's probably nubbed off a couple of millimeters! (Let's just say that Indy, our black lab mix, would have chewed it up like a piece of popcorn!)

It's important to make sure that tiny puppies eat throughout the day. They have so little muscle mass that they can get hypoglycemic. So we've been coaxing him to eat, sometimes to the point of feeding him with a spoon. (Now can you understand why these little dogs as sometimes so spoiled!)

He's been eating well and we thought he grew a bit. That is, until we weighed him. After a few weeks with us, guess what!? He put on 2 ounces! Up to a chunky one and a half pounds!

Here's one more shot of Mooshu. See, he's standing my the computer mouse and helping me write this Mooshu Monday post!

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (Mooshu and I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Yesterday, as I was walking by my window in my kitchen, I look out and stop dead in my tracks. What the heck is on my deck railing!?
I can hardly believe it! There's a hawk placidly sitting there!

I run and grab my camera to take pictures. When I aim the camera the bird turns his head in my direction. He sees me through the kitchen window and calmly looks me in the eye, allowing me to snap a few photos.

I've seen hawks overhead before, but never this close. I'm not sure what kind of hawk this is. (Red-tailed? Any guesses?) But what is it doing in my suburban yard?!

We live in Indianapolis but in a heavily wooded area near water. There's all sorts of wildlife co-existing with us. Groundhogs, foxes, and deer are regular visitors and neighbors claim to have seen a coyote. I can hear owls in the early morning and know that there is a nest of horned owls across the street. (They haven't been so polite as to pose for me though. They seem to take off every time I run for my camera.)

I never worried about them before. There is no way my 55+ lb black lab mix will ever be mistaken for a snack. But now that I have a 1 1/2 lb furball of a puppy, this puts a whole new perspective on things.

I've heard that a large hawk can lift up to 8 lbs. and sometimes more, so it could be dangerous to small pets. Hawks have fantastic eye sight and small animals are just prey to them. Mooshu could appear to be a rabbit, squirrel, etc., to them and they'll swoop. Even if a hawk can't successfully lift a small dog or cat it can leave some nasty punctures and tears in the skin which could require stitches.

We have never Mooshu unattended, not even once. Not even to answer the phone.

Seeing the hawk on our deck and having the photos to show to my kids, has really reinforced this.

I remember that when my children were babies, they were absolutely fascinating to watch. We could spend hours just being mesmerized by them - watching them discover their fingers and toes, the cute faces they made. They were just so darn sweet!

Having a brand new puppy has the same effect on me. I can just watch him for hours discovering new things - the wind in his face, the cracks in the sidewalk, a leaf blowing across the driveway...

Simply watching him play with his ball can bring on the giggles from me.Look at how intense he is. His entire focus is on getting that little ball. You can see how hard he's concentrating by his face. (Check out the little tongue!)

Yet at the same timel, he's keeping an eye on me. What's that black thing at my face that I keep pointing at him? And why is it clicking?

Maybe the ball doesn't have his whole attention, after all.

via

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Bathing a dog is like simple addition. You just have to get the equation right. For example

First you start with this. (Yes, you're right. He's sitting in the kitchen sink.)

Then you need this.

Finally, add them both together with some water, and it equals this:


Of course, sometimes the equation doesn't work quite right. For example, you might have too much of one thing or too little of another - which is exactly what happened. In this particular case, all we had to do was subtract a little water from an eye:

And then everything added up just fine!

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (Mooshu and I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Definitely not.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (Mooshu and I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

I think that I need a new feature in my blog: Mooshu Monday! Mooshu is our brand new yorkie / maltese mix puppy - and we've had him for about a week.

Isn't he a cutie!

He has his own toys and loves to play with them. Our other dog, Indy, who is a 55 lb black lab mix, has her own toys too, and it's funny how neither dog will play with the other's toys.

We tried to give Mooshu a tennis ball to play with but it was so huge that he couldn't do anything with it. (Plus Indy seemed to think it belonged to her, so off she went with it.)

But while I was shopping, I found these cute miniature versions of tennis balls that are about an inch and a half wide. Just his size! He can pick them up and carry them in his mouth. He loves chasing them and playing fetch.

He had his first vet visit yesterday, and weighed in at a whopping 1.4 pounds! And from the photo below, it's all in his bottom!
(Look at those cute little puppy 'tocks! All fluff!)

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (Mooshu and I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

...unabashedly show photos of your new puppy.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (And not miss any future posts about this new addition to our family!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Continued from
The man from animal control came over our house with a trap and a plan to capture the groundhog living in our pool cover mechanism. Once he got him, he was going to take him far far away to a field with plenty of tasty dandelions for him to munch on.

So he went and unscrewed the metal plate from over our pool cover and found.....
....absolutely nothing. No trace of the groundhog. No nest. No nothing.

He thought the groundhog had probably just be resting and trying to stay warm

So the above picture above is NOT my groundhog. It's just a picture I found on the internet. My groundhog is somewhere in the woods behind my house, frolicking amongst the ferns.

The man from animal control left empty handed (or empty crated). But not before charging us $130 for about 20 minutes of work.

It was a very expensive groundhog.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

Just a quick post to show you one of the things I was working on this weekend.

I bought the stone at a recent Bead and Gemshow. It was in a box marked "tourmalated quartz", but it didn't look like any of the other stones. (That's probably why it caught my eye.)

I really wanted to make sure I had the stone correctly identified so I took it to a local lapidary shop and the owner identified it as dendritic quartz. The dendrites are crystals formed in cracks and can sometimes even be mistaken for fossils. In the stone above, the crystal "dendrites" run up the middle of the quartz and form what look like ferns within the stone.

I oxidized the silver to bring out come contrast. Since the stone is mostly black and white, I think it complements it.

Luckily I made it in a size too large for my fingers, otherwise I might have been tempted to keep it myself! I just listed it in my Etsy shop.

Also, look at this moss agate ring:

I had tons of fun making it. The final design was quite different than I had intended. While the first ring just seemed to come together easily, this one took a long time to get right.

I think the patterns on the agate resemble continents. And it's encircled by a saturn-like ring with solid silver "satellites" that seem to orbit it.

(OK, maybe I'm letting my imagination get the better of me.)





Tomorrow, more about the woodchuck living in my swimming pool.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (And not chance to miss the rest of the woodchuck story!) All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

The weather has been gorgeous. It's the type of weather that inspires you to go outside and start working on the garden.

And as I was looking over my backyard, I realized it's certainly time to start cleaning up. The old dried vegetation from last fall needs to be pulled or trimmed. New bushes and flowers need to be planted. Perennials needs to be split.

And the ducks taking over our swimming pool are telling me that it's time to think about draining that pool cover.

The water is deep enough for them to go deep sea diving for god-knows-what that's been growing in the pool cover since last October. (And I'm sure that the ducks have been contributing to the flora and fauna by....well... you know what they do.)

Yes, the ducks look happy and they're probably investigating potential nesting areas near this wonderful new habitat they've discovered.

As I'm watching them, all of a sudden I see a face looking up at me from under the pool cover!

WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!

I've never seen anything like that before! It looks like it might be the size of a rottweiler! And how long has it been there??!!! And why is it looking at the ducks with possible evil intensions??!!

As quickly as I spied it, it quickly hid out of sight. And over the next several hours I kept a lookout, trying to see it again.

Finally it peered out a bit more and I got a better shot of it:

What the.....???

Then, it ventured all the way out:

This has got to be a....groundhog???!!! And it's FREAKIN' ENORMOUS!!! Probably about the size of a baby hippopotamus.

I'm guessing the groundhog's been hibernating here all winter! After it got scared by it's shadow on February 2nd, it went back under my pool cover and didn't come out till the weather turned warmer. Which is now.

Grrrrr. I'm taking this as personally as the grounds' keeper in Caddy Shack. It's definitely going to be me against the groundhog.

I go and get a screwdriver to unscrew the metal covering around the pool and see what foul things have been happening underneath over the winter.

Just as I go to open the cover, it suddenly dawns on me that the groundhog might have a nest and THERE MAY BE BABY GROUNDHOGS!

I might be brave enough to try to chase an animal the size of a Hummer H2 out of my pool, but I'm certainly not brave enough to face a mom and her babies.

It's time to call in the pros.

Animal control is coming tomorrow to trap the little varmint and take him or her far, far away.

I'll give you an update on what happens.

Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.

Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? All you have to do is click on the link in the upper right on my side bar.

(And then you won't worry about missing the rest of this story!)