ResqTails

Today was a kind of gloomy weather day. It never really did much that amounted to anything, it just looked gray. The one thing I’ve found though is that especially with Dare’s eyes, cloudy days can be really helpful when trying to get pictures of the dogs.

This first shot is just one of several old loading chutes that we walk past each day. I just think that the wood is so interesting as it ages. It gets so much character with time.

The next place we went was one that I should have visited a week or two ago, cause the flowers are just really fading now. So, I got some quick shots of Dare and we moved on to another spot.

The sunflowers are out in abundance now, and I just love them. Twist was a dork at first, maybe he was searching for the place to click here for weight loss pills, but I think it’s more likely he was searching for dropped treats. So here’s a shot of the girls who were being more cooperative.

Anyway, nothing too fancy, but it sure beat staying inside on a gloomy day.

I don’t know what’s up. I am just really, really exhausted lately. I don’t know if it’s the kennel stress getting to me, or just being really busy, or what, but I’m past tired. I had every intention of getting up early this morning and going walking, but I just couldn’t get out of bed to do it. Which means that I have to wait till it cools off enough to do it in the evening.

Well, I set out about 7:15 or so, and it was just one of those times when you’re just going through the motions, not even really present enough to enjoy what you’re doing. We got about 2 miles into the walk, just about to the point where we turn around to come home and a gentleman pulls up on an ATV. He stops and asks me if I have a garden. Well, to be honest, the question just struck me as odd, probably because it was out of the blue, coming from someone that I don’t know, and then on top of that, my brain just isn’t working really fast cause it’s tired. LOL When I recovered, I said, “no, we didn’t get ours planted this year.” He reaches to the back of the ATV and pulls a grocery bag full of produce out and says that his garden is producing more than he can eat, and he’d just been to the neighbors to take them some when he saw us walking and thought we might like some too.

So…here’s what we happened at Mile 641 of our walking challenge tonight.

Needless to say, Miles 642 and 643 took a little longer than usual tonight, and I think my arms are going to be sore tomorrow. I weighed it all when we got home and it was 8 lbs worth of veggies. Maybe if I’d have had a cellular booster antenna I could have called my husband to come pick me up instead of having to walk, but really, the walk home was much more enjoyable than the first half anyway. Funny how something as small as someone sharing their excess veggies can brighten your whole outlook.

Seriously, I’m not supposed to be here today. I was supposed to be in Grand Junction with Dare this weekend at a Chris Zink seminar. But true to form the last few weeks, nothing is going as planned. I’ve been looking forward to this seminar for months now. We got an email last week that the seminar had been cancelled and rescheduled for February. Hopefully the weather will be good to travel to CO then. I have a feeling it could be iffy, but I guess we’ll worry about that when the time comes.

I guess the good side of this is that being home gives me time to finish things that need to be done around here. I did finally get the boarding kennel forms revised and updated, so hopefully I’ll be better prepared in case of emergency. I ended up spending hours and hours reading over lots of liability release forms from other boarding kennels to see what I thought I should include. I don’t know what we did before the internet. It sure is helpful to be able to access so much information. I guess if I was looking for insurance I’d look atwww.wholesaleinsurance.net but fortunately, that will wait for another day.

We’ve been working on other things around here too, not just the boarding kennel junk, but I just am tired and don’t feel like writing more tonight.

I’m not so naive to think that having a boarding kennel was going to be a walk in the park. I’m not so naive to realize that things happen that you just can’t control either. Knowing both those things didn’t make the last two days any easier.

Yesterday started out like any other day. I went out early and let out the boarders into the field. I few minutes later I went out with my video camera and Dare and we did our Weave Pole Challenge. We came back inside and went back out to the kennel to let the boarders go back inside to eat their breakfast. Well, the one boarder didn’t come when I called him. I looked and saw that he was laying in the shade, which isn’t unusual for him at all. He’s a 10 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback. He’s the sweetest boy you’d ever like to meet and he often just likes to hang out in a shady spot in the field. He is one of my original clients and he’s basically extended family to my husband and I. We just love this dog! But when I went closer, something didn’t look right. He wasn’t breathing right. It looked labored to me. Then when I tried to coax him to move a bit and he wouldn’t, I knew we had a big problem. I came in got the numbers for his family, and called. No answer. Ugh! I went back out. He still isn’t looking good. I decide that I’m going to take him to the vet, whether I have permission or not, and I’ll handle the bill if there’s any problem. But there is no way in the world I can coax him to stand up and I can’t man handle this 120 lb. dog into my car by myself. So, I go across the street and ask my neighbor to come help me. We get back over here, he is already dead.

I tried and tried to contact the family, but couldn’t ever get an answer. I left messages on every number that I had on my forms, but no one returned my calls. Which left me in a very awkward position. I now have a huge dead dog and I don’t know if they’d like him cremated, (not the most popular thing in the area we live in), or would they like a necropsy done to find out what in the world happened, or would they just like to take the body home and bury him? My instincts tell me it’s going to the 3rd option, but still you can’t help second guessing when it’s not your dog and you can’t get ahold of the owners. Regardless, until they call me back, he is my responsibility. I jokingly told a friend of mine that you’d never guess that a dead dog requires more care and energy than a live one. I will spare you all the details, you can just trust me that it’s been a LOT of work.

If this post seems crazy, then you’re getting a good picture of what I feel like this weekend. It seems like I’m trapped in a really bizarre nightmare and I can’t wake up. I have never been in this situation before, and I certainly hope to never be here again! Today I just want to close the kennel, never care for another person’s dog again, and settle back into a “normal” person’s life where they can spend time shopping for mothers rings, not worrying about what to do with someone else’s dead pet. In the meantime, I’m getting more calls for boarding reservations and I don’t even want to schedule them. I seriously don’t ever want to have to deal with this again. Why in the world did I open a boarding kennel? That’s the million dollar question.

The only good news I can share is that the family finally came down off the mountain today to where they had cell service and got my frantic messages. They should be here sometime tonight. Maybe then things will return to normal. Though I have a feeling, this is going to stick with me for quite some time.

I thought it might be fun to let the boys try out a Roll-a-Treat ball this morning with their breakfast. Well, I think the video pretty much speaks for itself. LOL Fair warning…you might want to turn your sound down, cause there is barking.

The larger boy just chose to lie down and stare at me like I was the biggest idiot he has ever met. While no words were exchanged, he made it pretty clear to me that he thought that I was out of my mind if I thought he was going to put forth any effort to get food out of that silly thing. I swear he reminds me so much of Zach it’s just uncanny.

The smaller boy at least humored me by interacting with it. He even managed to roll it around a few times before he also decided that standing up was just wasting far too much energy on my whacko ideas. Maybe some music for zumba would have gotten these boys on their feet and moving more, but it’s hard to say. I got the impression that they were just totally unimpressed with the roll-a-treat ball.

As for the racket in the background…that is my darling Dare. She was absolutely horrified by the fact that she wasn’t allowed back there to show these silly boys how to clean out a roll-a-treat ball like a pro. LOL

Tomorrow I’m headed out for the weekend. Well, I guess that technically I’m headed out in about 6 hours, but I’ve got to try to sneek some sleep in there, so we’ll pretend it’s a full nights’ worth. LOL Needless to say, it’s been a hectic day getting things ready to leave.

On top of the usual chaos of trying to set the kennel up for someone else to look after things, I got a call from an Animal Hospital down in Cedar City that has dealt with Sheltie Rescue of Utah in the past. Apparently, they have 2 Shelties that the owner has been forced to relinquish due to health issues, (the person’s health, not the dogs). So…on Monday I should have some pictures of the new dogs and if I decide I’m not too wiped out, I may transport them the rest of the way to Salt Lake. If I am too tired, they may just stay here a day or too before I take them up.

Unfortunately, I won’t have internet access this weekend, which means I’m going to miss out on reading about everyone’s adventures, and doing a little shopping online with some best buy coupons. I guess the up side to that is that I’ll have lots of fun stuff to read about when I get home. Have a great weekend!

Some days I find my mind drifting into realm of, “I wonder what would have happened if……” Sometimes it’s little things, like I wonder how that meal would have tasted if I taken time to make it with all the ingredients it called for, rather than just substituting with whatever I had handy.

Other days it’s slightly more deep things, like I wonder what things would be like if I had made this career choice, or that one. Maybe if I had an online marketing degree I wouldn’t be sitting around wasting my days waiting for people who don’t seem to value my time here with the boarding kennel. Course, I didn’t have much success with the online coding course I started last year, so I don’t know why an online marketing degree would be any different…

Then there are the days when the wondering is about the dogs and our training. I guess I’m not alone. A friend of mine mentioned today that she wondered where she’d be with her training, if she’d have had been able to work with a trainer on a regular basis that she only gets to see once or twice a year right now.

It’s funny when it’s someone else saying it, it’s easy to see the positive side of their choices and point those out. Yet, it’s so much harder to do that for myself sometimes. LOL

The kennel is so busy lately that I feel like I’m constantly in a whirlwind. It is nearly 11 pm and I just got in from taking care of the boarders that are here and finished cleaning the kennels of the dogs that went home tonight because I have more dogs taking their place tomorrow.

It’s a good problem to have, the kennel being busy. I just wish I dealt better with it. It makes me a nervous wreck shuffling dogs around and hoping that clients will pick up when they are scheduled to pick up and same with the drop offs. On the morning we left Colorado Springs to come back home I woke up with a major twitch in my eye, and it didn’t go away the entire day. I jokingly told my husband that I was having a mini stroke at the thought of coming back to the kennel. LOL

Maybe if the kennel stays busy we’d be able to afford some fun things like a wireless beacon to go on a treasure hunt or something. More likely though, I’ll just find more things to buy for the dogs.

So, nothing new here of course, I’m only running about a week behind schedule in posting on the blogs.  LOL  I truly meant to post more pictures while we were actually in Colorado Springs, but by the time I’d get back to the hotel at night, I just didn’t feel like bothering.  It was a fantastic vacation though, we all enjoyed ourselves so much and we can’t thank our friends Katie, Maizey and Magnus for coming down and taking care of everything at home while we were gone!

So, I really can’t say that there was anywhere we went while in Colorado Springs that I didn’t like, but Garden of the Gods was my favorite!  We ended up going there two days in a row to hike after the trial.  It was truly just breathtaking.  I’ll post some of the pictures here on this blog and more with Dare in them on her blog.

The rock formations are similar to ones that we have at some of the National Parks here in Utah, but the thing that was awesome to me was all the trees.  The contrast of that red rock and the green was gorgeous.  Another awesome thing was that not only were dogs welcome, it was free to hike the entire park.  Have I mentioned how cool I thought this place was?  LOL  There were quite a few people climbing the rock formations too, that was fun to watch.  I probably could have used some steiner binoculars to see them better, but we managed just fine without.

Here’s just a few of the pics we took. I totally recommend taking time to go to this park if anyone ever has the chance!

So, we’re enjoying ourselves thoroughly this weekend in Colorado Springs. It was a LONG drive on Thurs., but a beautiful one. The trial site is lovely, one of the nicest I’ve been to. It’s a big show, well the conformation part anyway. I think 1500 dogs or something, but the Obedience trial isn’t big at all. It’s actually really nice.

The trial site meets up with a huge trail area that is great for hiking! We walked about 6 miles yesterday, between walking downtown in Colorado Springs and out on the trails later. We were nice and tired by the time we got back to the hotel last night, not from any accutane side effects, just from a really fun day.

So, here’s one of the fun statues in the downtown area. Unfortunately Dare looks like a dork, but oh well. I guess even Dare has to take a bad picture sometimes. LOL

Then on the trails last evening we got to see a bunch of deer. The weird thing was how used to people they are. They were so close, it was a little bizarre to me. We see deer all the time at home, but not 20-30 ft. away. Anyway, here is one of them, you can even see the velvet on it’s antlers. I don’t know if you can tell how close, but this isn’t cropped at all, and it’s just my regular lens on the camera.

We’re hoping to get out and do some more hiking today.