The Eagle has Landed

Not everyone knows that we have a new family member. Last fall I went to the annual bird show in Grand Rapids and came home with two new canaries. Curly is the male. He is a green crested canary. Laura is the girl and she is a red factor with some "blue" which looks gray.
In late December Laura decided it was time to start nesting. I found an egg in her food dish. So I set her up with a nest and she laid four eggs. It turns out Laura is not going to get the "Mother of the Year" award. Her first hatchling died because she didn't feed it and her second one almost died. Fortunately I took over and supplemented his food and was able to get him through the first critical two weeks. However on Wednesday we noticed that he was missing some feathers on his head. We watched closely and discovered that his mom was plucking the feathers out. Poor guy, every time he would beg for food she would reward him by pecking at his head. We decided it was time for our little bald eagle to be on his own. So now "Eagle" is alone in his cage but not quite ready for it. Several times a day I have to catch him and hand feed him nestling formula. We put a little "plate" of bread on the floor and sprinkled soaked seed and egg food on it, with the hopes that he will learn to feed himself. He is a bit hard to see here....but check him out. Hopefully we will have updated pictures in a few days. Meantime momma Laura has been banished to another cage and is now harassing poor Curly!.

Wrang Hangs

Wrangler hangs around a lot...just waiting. I know it looks like he is sleeping, but the truth is he is waiting for a small dog to walk by so he can begin a game of cat and dog which is his version of the traditional cat and mouse. This works best when the chair is up against the table so that the table cloth is covering him, but even out in the open if he hangs there long enough an unsuspecting Pom will eventually walk underneath his paw. Then he scoops down and gently cuffs the dog with his huge paw. Of course that sets off a flury of barking which begins with one and soon includes all 16!

Five puppies

I am going through my pictures transfering some of them to my new computer and the trip down memory lane is a lot of fun. Here I am in my element....a never before seen photo of me and my five puppies circa November 2004. We had a devil of a time getting them all on the sofa at once. Well it wasn't hard to get them there, just to keep them there. It took three of us. My huge and sincere thank you to my good friend Sandra who insisted on coming over that night to take photos. We were selling a puppy the next day and she knew it was the only time we would have to get this picture. She was right, by the next evening Purple Girl had gone to her new home. The time we have with puppies is never long enough and it is my greatest joy!

DreamWeaver's Teddy Bear

We got to see our little puppy Teddy Bear who is all grown up. Jillian brought him by for us to see him. Teddy and his sister Dawn played in our living room as if they had never been apart. The only one who wasn't impressed was Wrangler the cat. For some reason he wasn't too happy that Teddy was here to visit. He growled and hissed which is something he never does. Teddy didn't seem to mind though!

Spartan Match

Mike and I are headed out for the Spartan match tomorrow morning, so I scraped the mud off of Korbel. I can't believe this is my girl! She sure cleaned up well. Now if she will just behave. LOL She can be so sweet but such an oaf too. We call her rubber girl because she can move and fold her body into all sorts of contortions! It is as if she has legs made of rubber.

Boston and Korbel

I took this picture a few weeks ago. Korbel is beginning to look a bit like her mom! I am very happy about that because she looked like an oaf puppy up until now. Today we took Boston in to Dr. Cindy Wheeler's place at Wyoming Animal Hospital for her annual CERF exam. A CERF is a special eye exam that can only be done by a certified opthomologist. We are fortunate to have Cindy near by. It was only a 25 minute drive over there. Boston was a good girl even if she was a bit nervous. She passed with flying colors and so is good for another year. Our SCA Code of Ethics requires us to do an annual CERF and to breed only dogs that have passed a CERF in the past year. I had planned to breed Boston to John Studebaker's Chunk this winter, but Chunk lives too far from a CERF vet to be able to get his exam at this time. We hope we can do this breeding some time in the next year because Boston x Chunk puppies would be beautiful!

Dishwashing Holly

Our dogs all love the dishwasher, but some are a little more obsessive about it! I remember Sammy Jo would just about climb in the basket to try to get every last morsel of food. Now Holly is our resident chief dishwasher with Alaska batting clean up. Here they are on a typical day getting close up and personal with the dishwasher. There is only one dish in there Holly! Take it easy!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all! We had a quiet evening with Ed and Randy coming over to eat dinner and watch movies. Mike fixed us some excellent steaks! We watched The Graduate and then Annie Hall. Two great classics. None of the guys had ever seen either of them so it was time to sit them down and make it happen. The Graduate seemed to be the favorite even though it won only one acadamy award whereas Annie Hall won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Script. Maybe a guys movie vs a chick flick. :)