Free at Last

As you probably surmised from my post the other day, Hubby and I made it back to the WV place. We hadn’t been there since the weekend after Thanksgiving. One of the reasons for the long absence was the holiday madness (so much to do, so little time in which to do it). Another reason was that we needed to work on training K to come when we call her. The girl is a hunter, so we knew if we didn’t teach her to come when we tell her to that, should she pick up a scent at the WV place, we may never see her again.

Belle and K Relaxing After a Long Walk

Well, we have actually been working with K. And she’s doing much better than originally anticipated. We do have a training aid, however, thanks to K’s foster family. It’s a citronella collar. If the dog doesn’t come when you call it, they get three levels of warning:

  1. A beep
  2. A short spritz of citronella, which dogs apparently find pretty offensive
  3. A LONG squirt of citronella

The idea is just to get their attention. Dogs that listen under normal circumstances may not do as commanded when distracted by such stuff as bunnies, squirrels, deer, turkeys, etc.

Because K was previously trained on an invisible fence, which uses similar tiered warnings (beep, light zap, strong zap), she took to the citronella collar pretty well. She HATED the invisible fence. And even though it’s been a couple of months, she remembers the collar.

She did very well when it came to critter smells, but when she and Belle saw a deer late on Sunday afternoon, they both took off. K was out of collar range in a flash. Belle came back immediately, of course, because Belle never likes to get too far from Mama. K, on the other hand, was gone for about an hour. I was worried, of course, but not as worried as I would have been around the MD place, where it sometimes feels like we are surrounded by superhighways.

So we’ve still got some work to do. I did manage to get some good pics before that little incident, which I have shared below.

Here I imagine K is thinking, "This collar and jacket are so undoglike. I feel like a dork."

Back in December, I explained how K hates getting dressed, i.e., wearing stupid stuff like this Don’t-Shoot-Me jacket and seasonal bandannas. Well, Sunday was cold and rainy, so I decided to get the dogs all suited up before our walk. Not only was she not thrilled about wearing the training collar, she was a bit peeved at the jacket thing. But she got over it pretty quickly.

This girl LOVES to run.

As you can see, Belle doesn’t mind getting dressed. Either does Meg.

Meg moseying along.

This picture of Meg slogging through six inches of slush on Turkey Hollow Road, in the rain and fog, pretty much sums up Sunday’s weather.

Free at last.

It didn’t take K long at all to forget about wearing the jacket. She was thrilled to be able to run.

I’ve said this here before. Seeing my dogs run free like this, with the look of sheer bliss and delight on their faces, is what I picture whenever I see/read about dogs forced to live in a kennel, tied to a tree, etc.

Yay, we can play!

Belle was quite happy to see K off-leash, too.

Look at them fly.

It’s just not possible to play like this when there is a lead attached.

Audience of one.

Meg was quite happy to just watch.

What? We're playing!
What? We're playing.

The two young’uns would stop to catch their breath every now and then.

Back at it.

Those breaks never last very long.

My ears fly, too.

Meg does her share of running, too. She just prefers running without a rambunctious young Britt running alongside of her nipping at her rear-end, or her ears, or her neck…

K looking dapper in her jacket.

I doubt K will ever admit it, but she looks quite handsome in her little jacket, which, by the way, helps immensely when trying to spot a dog in the woods.

Look what Belle found. This is actually bone #2. Bone #1 was much smaller and she polished that one off early in the day.

Belle is pretty good at finding treasure in the woods. Meg is, too, but Meg usually consumes her treasures before letting us see what she has discovered.

All in all, it was a good weekend. I look forward to returning soon. There’s nothing quite as relaxing (yes, exercise can be relaxing) as tromping through the woods with your dogs.

Our Ski Adventure

As mentioned here on Tuesday, Eric and I went skiing yesterday. The trip was a success, even if things did not go exactly as planned.

Here’s what was planned… drive to the WV place on Tuesday night. It’s about an hour from Wisp. We would leave there early on Wednesday to ski, spend the night at the WV place on Wednesday, then drive home this morning (Thursday).

Eric got off work late on Tuesday, so we didn’t leave my house until 11:00 PM. It’s a three-hour drive to the WV place. So we should have arrived at about 2:00 AM. I say should have because we hit a bit of trouble. Nothing horrible, but we were definitely delayed.

Before I tell you what happened, you need a bit of background. The WV place is not far east of Wisp. It’s more in the foothills than the mountains, so it’s not subject to the extreme mountain weather that hits the mountains not far west of the cabin. We haven’t been to the WV place since Thanksgiving. They were hit with the same blizzard as us in December. But that was like three weeks ago, so we figured the snow would be gone.

We were wrong.

Hubby wisely convinced me to take our big, bad four-wheel-drive truck instead of my car (wimpy little sedan).

Unfortunately, not even the big, bad 4wd truck was a match for the foot of compacted icy snow on Turkey Hollow Road.

We got stuck. A mere 100 yards down Turkey Hollow Road. We were only about 1/4 mile from the house at that point, but…

It was 2:00 AM. It was dark. It was COLD.

It didn’t take long for us to realize the truck was not moving an inch in either direction, so we grabbed our essentials and walked the rest of the way. Lucky for us there were flashlights in the truck!

I did mention that it was cold, right? About 20 degrees. The heat at the cabin stays set at 50 degrees when we are not there. It felt absolutely balmy at first. Because it would have taken hours for the radiant heat system to kick in, we just slept in the back bedrooms, which each have their own baseboard heating systems. It was 40 degrees back there. By the time we went to bed at about 3:30, it had warmed up to 45 degrees. Eric had an electric blanket and I had lots of layers, so we were okay.

I seriously had no idea there would be that much snow left at the WV place. Here are some pictures I shot on Wednesday morning…

Our (undrivable) driveway.

The house surrounded by snow.

Another shot of the driveway from just outside of the garage.

The big hill on Turkey Hollow Road, heading back toward where the truck was stuck. Notice all the critter tracks? It’s a mix of deer, turkey and people tracks (Eric and me).

Looking down Turkey Hollow Road toward our driveway.

Eric with shovel and rake in hand. Those were all the tools we had to work with to free the truck.

More people tracks, me and Eric, going and coming, taken from right in front of the truck looking down Turkey Hollow Road.

That’s Romney in the distance.

Just after we crossed the Potomac River back into Maryland, south of La Vale. Notice the pretty blue skies? It did not last long.

Not far west of La Vale on I-68.

The highway exit ramp from I-68 onto US-219 at Keyser’s Ridge.

Eric (dude in center) adjusting his boot.

Here I am. I felt like a mummy. I was warm, but being so bundled up made it hard to take pictures, which is why there aren’t many action shots. Plus, it snowed all day. They’d gotten 5 to 8 inches of snow the previous day and were predicting another 4 to 8 inches yesterday. The snow was awesome. The wind was bitter.

Skiing in powder was quite a treat, once we got used to it. It’s a bit different than skiing on packed snow.

The ride home was quite scenic with all of the snow stuck to the trees. (The farther east we traveled, the less snowy it was.)

All in all, we had a good time. Aside from the 30-40 minutes required to free the truck, that is.

We will definitely try to do it again. Wisp has a special on Wednesdays where you can ski for $21 all day, 9 am to 9 pm. The same lift ticket costs $39 per person any other non-holiday weekday and $59 per person on weekends and holidays. It was quite a deal. And there were NO lift lines. None.

Hopefully it will be a little bit warmer next time.

The Day-After Doldrums

Can I just say that I hate the term, “Black Friday”? I do. In all honesty, I hate what Black Friday has become. It’s just one more example of the over-commercialization of Christmas.

Not that I am super (or even remotely) religious. But Christmas should be about families and friends sharing and treasuring the time together. Giving gifts if you want to and not because you feel like you have to. Gifts that you choose, that have some meaning or are special in some way.

Anyway… I won’t go on and on.

Thinking about Christmas just puts me in a bad mood. So I’ll talk about Thanksgiving instead, even if it is history.

This is the first time Hubby and I have spent Thanksgiving at the WV place. It was quiet. Very, very quiet. It also happened to be K’s first time here. (Yep, I’m back to talking about dogs again.)

Poor K. She’s only been with us for two weeks. Before that, it was three weeks in a foster home (don’t worry, it was a great one). Prior to that, about two weeks with an older woman who adopted her and then realized K has way too much energy. Before that, a couple of weeks in the same foster home. And before that, she was in a shelter, but I don’t know for how long.

To make a long story short, the girl has been around.

So, I wonder what she was thinking when she was loaded into a vehicle, AGAIN, and taken to a strange house? At least she was with us. But dogs don’t get the concept of a vacation home. And it’s tiny. Way smaller than the MD place. All of the floors are slippery, too. So not only is there no room to run, it’s very hard for the dogs to run.

All in all, K seems to have adjusted to this house well, too. In the picture above, she’s in her new bed. The one that I made too skinny. But all the dogs seems to like it.

Yesterday afternoon, I gave them all some treats. K is on one of the bigger beds in this image.

Anyway, K does seem to like it here, except for the fact that we can’t let her off leash to run. She is one of those dogs that has a super-sensitive nose, and when she gets onto a scent, that’s all she is focused on. So, until we teach her to come when called every single time, no matter what she is doing, she’s going to be on a leash.

I feel bad, because Meg and Belle get to run ahead of us, fast, through the woods. But I’d feel worse if K disappeared, never to be seen by us again.

Speaking of running through the woods… it’s hunting season. That time of year when we make the dogs wear their “don’t shoot me” vests. So no idiot mistakes one of the dogs for a deer. I made Meg and C’s vests, but I haven’t gotten around to making vests for Belle and K. So, Belle had to borrow C’s vest…

… which still says CeCe, by the way. I think C would understand.

Hopefully, before we come back, Belle and K will have their own vests to wear. They won’t be blaze orange, though. I could tell you what color they will be, but what fun is that? Then you wouldn’t have anything to look forward to!

It Finally Happened…

What? What finally happened? A moment of peace that I can use to do a real Blog update.

Yes, I’ve had Blog posts recently, but they were pretty much filler-type stuff. At least that’s what it feels like. Ever since October 30, when I went to the Bombay Hook NWR, it’s been go, go and more go. Or so it seems to me.

But I shouldn’t waste the time whining, right? I should just do the dang Blog post already!

One of the reasons last week felt so hectic is that I was working on a pretty large proposal (for my employer). I’d hoped to join Hubby mid-week at the WV place, but this was a pretty demanding project that required extreme focus. Since I don’t have an office in WV, I was afraid Hubby and the girls would be too much of a distraction for me. So I stayed put at the MD abode until Friday night.

When the girls and I arrived at the WV place, I was quite surprised and delighted to discover that Amy had brought the kids up to visit for the weekend.

The kids were in bed when I arrived, but they were all happy to see me bright and early on Saturday morning (they got up at 5:30 AM, much to their Mom’s chagrin). Amy tried to keep them quiet and in bed. After taking the dogs, including Klondike (our granddog) for a quick walk, I went and stole Joey from Amy. Then I told the older kids they could get up, but had to be quiet so Mommy could sleep.

Brianna and I spent quite a bit of time doing word search puzzles, and playing squares and tic-tac-toe on her little activity pad.

Notice the dog on my lap? No? Well, take note.

There’s something that’s very cool about three little kids being happy to see you. Not just like, “Oh, look. It’s G.” They were all excited, like, “Hi, G!”

It’s neat. When you have kids of your own, you get that when they are little. Then they grow up to become teenagers and mostly you feel like you are just being a pain in the ass. Of course, you probably are, but they are teenagers, after all. Teens bring the evil, or at least all sorts of exasperation, out in a person.

So it’s cool to have little ones smile when they say your name.

They were each even trying hard to get some lap-time. As you can see, I had a pretty full lap already. They just got as close as they possibly could to watch the YouTube videos I was screening on my notebook computer.

Perhaps the most entertaining one for me was You Spin Me ‘Round (by Dead or Alive), which the kids know from The Wedding Singer movie. Seeing Gaige emulate the dude’s 80s dance moves was priceless. I can still see his little face looking all puzzled when he asked, “Is that a boy or a girl, G?” I would have gotten up for the camera, but I was sort of pinned down. And that would have ruined the moment. Know what I’m sayin’?

You did notice Belle still on my lap, right?

Joey eventually got tired of the videos, but somehow Brianna and Gaige managed to get on my lap, with Belle, to continue the video screening. Even Belle couldn’t resist YouTube; we were watching some of my favorite Brittany (the dog breed, not Spears) videos at that point.

It wasn’t the videos keeping Belle on my lap, by the way. It was Klondike. It takes Belle a while to warm up to new dogs. Especially big ones. And Klondike is B-I-G. How big?

Really big. Much bigger than my little Tinkerbelle.

After lunch, a trip to the store for me and a nap for the kids, we got to go outside. Mike did fun stuff like air up Amy’s tire.

The kids and I spent a good bit of time gathering kindling, and logs and prepping the campfire, which we planned to ignite after dark.

We did a good job with the prep work, as you can see. And once it burned down, we got to roast marshmallows!

Joey was a giant, sticky mess. Note the glob hanging off his face.

Brianna had reason to look unhappy here. Meg had just stolen one of her marshmallows!

Gaige wasn’t quite as messy as Joey. And he’s old enough to wash his own face.

Hubby, being the good Pop that he is, took Joey up to the house to get him cleaned up.

On the way, he stopped so that Meg could help get some of the excess marshmallow off of Joey’s hand. Hubby was watching Meg so closely, he didn’t notice Belle sneak in to help clean the excess off of Joey’s face!

After Joey left the fire, Amy got to play with his fire stick.

The next day was gorgeous, so I got to take pictures of everyone outside.




These are just a few of the many pictures I took. To see the rest, you’ll have to go to my Picasa site.

Surprise Visit

Hubby had off work last week, so he left for the WV place the day after Halloween. I had hoped to join him midweek, but was pretty busy at work. Now, we do have Internet access and I can work from there. But I knew with Hubby and the girls there, I’d be a bit distracted. And with a big proposal due today, I couldn’t afford that. So I went up Friday night.

I arrived a bit after 9:00 PM to a happy surprise…

Amy and the grandkids had conspired with Hubby to surprise me with a visit. Which in itself was cool, because I don’t get surprised very often.

We’ve tried for a long time to get Amy to bring the kids for a visit, but they are very busy with sports and stuff pretty much year-round. So I was delighted to have them there. They brought Klondike, our granddog, too, which made things extra interesting, in a good way. (TJ, Amy’s Hubby, is away on a brief Army-duty trip.)

I’ll tell you more about the visit later. Of course, I have lots more pictures to share.

Sunday morning, I was supposed to leave to go get K, our new dog. But Saturday night, her foster Mom noticed something not-quite-right with her poo. Sunday morning, she confirmed what she’d feared… K has worms.

To keep Meg and Belle from also getting worms, we decided it would be best to wait until after they clear up before moving K in. We are really, really anxious for her to join the family, but want to be smart. Foster Mom Jenn hopes to get her to the vet today for a treatment. Hopefully they’ll be able to tell her when K can safely move in.

It was a very happy (and busy!) but disappointing weekend. We really did have a fun visit. I promise to fill you in as soon as I can. But that dang proposal is still due today. So I need to get to work.

Sharing Our Cabin with Friends

Foliage in our little corner of WV is pretty much at peak this weekend. Unfortunately, it’s cold, wet and overcast. But still beautiful. And we had company to share it with, which was really quite nice.

Mike and Kathy Weissner, Hubby’s sister- and brother-in-law joined us for a day in the mountains. We’d hoped to drive around doing some leaf peeping, but the weather didn’t cooperate. So we just sat around visiting, drove to Capon Bridge for a meal at our favorite restaurant in West Virginia (El Puente Mexican Restaurant) and walked around our place enjoying the scenery.

I did take a few pics, like the nice one of them above, but not many. The sun’s coming out so I may take more later. However, I was looking at my Flickr and stumbled across this image from last year, which I really like.

It’s one of the group featured in this Flickr slideshow.

Here we all are, just prior to their departure. Pictured l-r above: Me, Hubby, Mike and Kathy.

I’m not sure how we’ll entertain ourselves the rest of the day. It’s certainly a good day for a nap. Hmmm…