Monday, November 27, 2017

The Best Day Of The Year

Hi Everybody,
We have a new favorite day. It's called "Black Friday" and it's probably the very best day ever invented. I don't know why it's called "Black Friday" except that it's probably named after black dogs, who we all know are very special animals. In our pack all the dogs except me are at least partly black and Bailey is all black. I'm a chocolate dog and well, everyone knows how special chocolate is. It's so special that peeps won't even share with us.
Anyway, last Friday was "Black Friday" and I suspected something was going to happen because Mom was sitting on the couch drinking her first cup of coffee and reading her emails. Then she said "hmmmmmm". It was one of those good hums like something good was in her mail.

Then this afternoon while we were eating our dinner the big truck man came to the door. Look what he brought.
We all wondered what was in the boxes but Mom and Dad seemed to know. After we ate, they opened the boxes. Look at this!!!!
Each of those boxes has ten pounds of biscuits and there's a jar of little biscuits for training and two bottles of dipping sauce, I mean salmon oil.
Who wants to come party with us? See why we love "Black Friday"?
Your pal, Fudge

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Our Special Holiday Dinner # Chewy Influencer

Hi Everybody,
Thursday is one of the human holidays that we dogs just love, full of great smells and tastes. This year Mom cooked the turkey on Wednesday so that she could just concentrate on the other good things on Thursday. Then on Thursday she made an apple pie along with all the other stuff. So you can imagine how good the house smelled for two whole days.

She told us that we'd have a special dinner on Wednesday and boy, she was right about that. Here's what she did. First she took some of the pumpkin cubes out of the freezer and boiled them till they were soft. 
Then she mashed them.
She cooked some rice and some spinach and stirred them all together.
Next she opened this box that Chewy sent us. It's Dr Tim's Natural Turkey Chips
 Mom was a little worried about ordering these this month because a 4 ounce container doesn't go far when there are nine of us eating, but this time she was pleasantly surprised. Look how many chips are in this box! There's plenty for all of us. 
 These chips are made of 100% USDA inspected turkey hearts. They're rich in all the B vitamins and they taste good too.
 Mom chopped up a bunch of the chips into littler pieces and added them to the pumpkin, spinach and rice mixture. She was happy because this stuff is full of vitamins and minerals that are good for us like beta carotene, iron, and all the vitamin letters.
She put a big spoonful of this mix on our kibbles and stirred them up and boy, did we ever love this dinner. The best part is that she made enough for two days and says she'll make more next week.

All of our tummies were very happy that night and we knew what we were thankful for the next day. Tell your peeps about these turkey heart chips. Maybe you can try them next time you order from Chewy. It's really nice when something so good for you also tastes so good.
Chewy sent us this box of Dr Tim's Turkey Chips at no cost to us in exchange for our honest review.
Your pal, Fudge

Friday, November 24, 2017

The Big Number 5

Hi Everybody,
This has been such a busy week. We had vet visits and allergy attacks and a really good holiday and now you'll never guess what today is. Today is Sydney and Mackey's fifth birthday. It's hard to believe, isn't it? It seems like last week that those two noisy monsters got carried into the house for the first time.
This is our new birthday toy that Chewy sent us last month when my puppies had their birthday. Mom didn't want Mackey to tear it apart so now she keeps it especially for birthdays. When we hear it playing the birthday song, we know something good is about to happen.
Mom has been doing a lot of cooking this week and I'll tell you all about our holiday dinner in my next post, but this morning she made these. Cupcakes!!
After they sat around getting cool, she frosted them and then look what she did. She put sprinkles on them so we could have a real birthday party. She says now she remembers why she doesn't make cupcakes and next time she'll buy them all made. But I told her that these smell soooooo good. I sat in the kitchen all day just watching them and smelling that wonderful smell.
After our dinner today we each had a cupcake and Syd and Mack shared a second one. It's been a pretty good week.
 Your pal, Fudge


Sunday, November 19, 2017

Some Holiday Stress Relief # Chewy Influencer

Can you believe that it's holiday time again? Boy, the year goes by a whole lot faster than it did when I was a kid waiting for Santa to arrive. I swear the year was twice as long back then. But I know that Christmas is just around the corner because the Christmas cactus is in full  bloom again and it's never wrong.
Our holidays are pretty quiet because we're far away from family so it's just us and the dogs. I do know from past experience that the holidays can be stressful for the family pets. I remember one year when my sister's parrot perched on a branch of the tree and bit anyone who tried to retrieve him. He spent several days in the tree, flirting with the shiny ornaments. I had to leave before he was finally pulled out of the tree, so I don't know how he was extracted.

Then there was the year that my hermit crab got stressed by the holiday noise and decided to leave home. He crawled out of his shell and found that he could squeeze between thee bars of his cage in his naked state. He made a run for the front door and fortunately I spotted him before he got outside or got stepped on. The experience taught him that he could make a getaway if he left his shell behind and a whole new cage had to be constructed to keep him contained. Did you ever see a naked hermit crab?
There was the year that my dog Libby got up earlier than the rest of us and found the full stockings propped on the couch by Santa. She didn't know, or care, which one was hers and ate all the oranges, lifesavers and Hershey bars from all the stockings. The room was littered with soggy torn candy wrappers and she had an upset tummy for a couple days.
Another year my sister tied candy canes into the ribbons on all her packages. During the night Libby came downstairs and licked all the candy canes. All the packages were really sticky when we tried opening them.

Anyway, you get the idea. Holidays can be stressful. It sounds like my sister was the most stressed but pets can be, too. We have a super idea if your dog stresses over the holidays. Chewy sent us a wonderful product called Nutramax Cosequin Calm Chewable Tablets.
We originally tried these during the summer because Norma Jean has become noise phobic and reacts badly to thunder. The very first time we tried them we were amazed at her reaction. Instead of trembling and clawing at me during the storm, she fell asleep on her pillow and was calm.
We've used Calm a number of times since then on several of the dogs. We've used them for storms and for the sounds of gunfire during hunting season. We've used them when a couple dogs had injuries and were stressed. We  even used them when Norma Jean had an allergic response to something and was scratching and couldn't stop. The Calm pills allowed her to relax and sleep without scratching and chewing on herself. We have a friend who tried them on  her dog who is a nervous rider and they helped. These things are great!
I would suggest keeping a supply on hand if you're entertaining over the holidays. They might help Fido cope with extra people in the house. The main ingredients in Calm are extracts of magnolia and phillodendron, and l-theanine. Norma Jean and the others all like the taste and chew them up with no coaxing. I like the fact that they work. Dealing with an overly stressed dog tends to stress me, so this is a win-win.
One last thing. On my last post I introduced our new family members. It only took them part of the day to adjust to their new surroundings and introduce themselves to Norris. They're already chirping and tossing seeds all around. They also have names. I looked at them together and it seemed obvious, Summer and Winter. You can guess which is which.
Chewy sent us a bottle of Cosequin Calm at no cost to us in exchange for our honest opinion.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Making New Friends

Calder and Norris were very close. We think they may have been brothers who lived together their whole lives. Since the death of Stanley, they became even closer. On Monday afternoon Calder died. He hadn't been sick so we were all surprised, especially Norris. Since then I've become increasingly worried about him. He hasn't eaten, just sits on the top perch calling for his friend and looking all around. This morning when we uncovered him, he started calling for Calder again and we made a decision.

We were one of the first customers at the pet store this morning and took some time to pick out Calder's new friend. I chose a mostly white bird who seemed pretty active. I had only planned to get one bird, but the white one had a little yellow friend that stayed close to him at all times. So, of course, we got them both.
They squawked all the way home, but they're now sitting quiet as statues on the floor of the cage while Norris quietly observes them from above. If this goes as usual, they'll sit there for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow before they all decide to check each other out and start getting used to their new home and family.

Stay tuned for names. I have a few ideas.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Over The Rainbow


                                                   Today Calder flew over the rainbow.

                                                                              Calder
                                                            June 2012 - November 13, 2017

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Sharing With The Night Visitors

We have night visitors to our yard. Before we built our fence we often had deer and turkeys. Now we still see them outside the fence, but there are others who come right in. We've seen a raccoon and opossum and of course rabbits.

We know that the owl visits regularly because we hear him. When Samba and I used to make our late night star gazing trips outside, we once saw the owl standing in the street. He was much bigger than I expected. We also saw coyotes in the driveway a couple times. And we'll never forget the skunk. I first saw him waddling down the street toward the house. Later that year  four of the dogs met him in the back yard and it was weeks before the stink was finally gone. I'm sure there are other night visitors that we haven't met. We see evidence of their visits on occasion.
There's a black walnut tree in the farm field beside our house and one branch hangs into our yard. Each year it drops a few nuts into our yard, but this year it went crazy and dropped tons of them. Rob has been picking up a few and putting them in the open feeder on the deck. Each day our resident squirrel pest comes by and sits on the deck enjoying one or two of the nuts, then he carries one off to his nest for a late night snack. I get annoyed with the little pest because he leaves a mess of nut shells on the deck and each day they need to be cleaned off, but it is cute to watch him open the nut and enjoy his treat.

Remember this guy? This is this year's Mr Punkman. Rob bought a very large pumpkin this year and we didn't cut it because I wanted some fresh pumpkin for the dogs.
 Yesterday we brought Mr Punkman inside and Rob cut him in half. He removed the seeds and I toasted them.
 Then he sliced up half the pumpkin and I cut the slices into bite sized chunks. I bagged them for the freezer. Half the pumpkin gave us ten bags of chunks for the dogs to enjoy for the next couple months.
 We still had half a pumpkin and I didn't want anymore chunks, so we asked a friend if he could use the other half, but he wasn't interested. Then Rob got an idea. He cut the remainder of the meat into chunks and put them in a large grocery bag. He put some of the chunks in the open feeder along with a big pile of walnuts. This would be for our bird and squirrel friends and bugs, of course.
Rob also collected enough walnuts to refill the feeder for a while.
Then he took the rest of the pumpkin chunks into the woods behind our house and  tossed them around for the night visitors. I'm sure the raccoons, possums and skunks will enjoy them. Maybe the deer and coyotes will try them too. It was a good feeling to share the bounty with the wild animals and not waste the pumpkin.

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Peace

November 4 is Blog 4 Peace day.
We all agree that the world is desperately in need of peace.
We feel the need for peace in our own lives.
Our little blog is sending out thoughts of peace to each of you.
Pass it on.