JIMMY CHEW FOOLED SANTA!

Wake up Jimmy!

It's CHRISTMAS!!! 

I think there are a couple of presents with your name on them!

Well Jimmy, you did it!

You fooled Santa!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Jimmy Chew and Santa

We went to see Santa today.

Jimmy had some lying to do.

Afterwards I let him pick out a toy.

We had to go down three aisles before he found what he wanted.

He stood patiently in the checkout lane and waited.

Other customers laughed and told me I had to get him that toy!

He just ignored them all and waited until it was his turn

to be rung up.

When we got back into the car I asked him if he thought he had fooled Santa?

"Do you think you're still on his "Naughty" list?"

When we got home I told him I'm sure everything would be ok.

But he seemed to still be thinking about it.

We walked up the front steps and I said

"Seriously Jimmy! He knows you're a terrier. He knows it's just your nature to do what you do!"

"If you are good this whole last week, I'm sure he'll put you on his "NICE" list".

I hope that reassured him some.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES!

Yesterday I did a post of two videos.
It showed a massive amount of birds flying over my home.
I've learned from my wise Blogger buddies that they were starlings.
Those birds were pretty smart too and obviously they knew what was coming!
This morning I woke up to this-

It's one of the trees I showed in the video.
To be honest, I'm not happy about the snow.
And it continued to fall all day.
Here's a photo of the bush just outside my backdoor.
All of it's leaves had not fallen yet.

It's kinda pretty, but it's still snow.
I had some plans for today, including running some errands.
Instead I just stayed inside all day.
My back is hurting and I just didn't want to shovel.
(Although I eventually gave in and shoveled out my car.)
But my sore back didn't stop me from re-arranging the furniture again.

Eventually I should post photos of the back bedroom that I'm decided to use as my Art space.
I emptied everything out of the room and then dragged just what I wanted back in.
I still have Blue's twin bed in there though.
My plan is to work at the big table and then slide my projects into the empty drawers
of the several dressers I have in there when I leave the room to go to work or whatever.
My reasoning behind that is because not only is Blue in that room while I'm gone,
but also Nora and Jimmy Chew.

 Yeah, he looks like a sweet, innocent good boy but I know him better than that.

THE GRUMPY OLD MAN TURNS ELEVEN

Today Blue turned ELEVEN!
I took this photo just before leaving the house this morning.
I used a couple of apps to make it more like a painting-

Yep, He's eleven and he is a grumpy old man.

The grumpiness has been building.
The occasional ROAR of irritation when someone is in his way
or laying his spot.

He's just low on patience.
He'll do that bark growl that sends the other dogs into a tizzy.
They jump up and bark at him
and he storms through the herd of them like an angry bull.

If anyone really gets in his face,
he'll grab ahold of them and slam them to the floor and hold them there
until they stop fighting and are totally submissive.

Years ago when Jimmy Chew was very young, he challenged Blue
and Blue body slammed him to the ground and held him by the throat.
Jimmy was so terrified that his anal glands expressed themselves.
Jimmy was fine, just wet with saliva but he never challenged him again.

Sometimes when Blue is really in a mood and is stomping around roaring
I can tell that Jimmy thinks he needs to protect me.
He doesn't, I'm the Alpha dog
but Jimmy will stand in front of me and face-off with Blue.
He will  bark with all his might as his whole body trembles in fear.
Yep, Jimmy can push my buttons and sometimes really frustrate the Hell out of me
but I know he's got my back.

Lately though, Blue's fuse has been super short.
The other day as the little ones ran through the kitchen for the laundry room to get their dinner,
Blue decided to walk out of the kitchen and into the living room.
I always feed Blue first, so it wasn't like he was hungry but
all the little dogs rushing past him, must have annoyed him
because I heard that ROAR
and then a horrible little scream.

It was my little Poppy.

She doesn't even weigh a full 5 pounds
and he had her down.
Now if it was one of the bigger dogs it would have just been a moment
of catch and release
but in this case, he caught her head and left a little small cut above her eye from his tooth.
I was there in a second
and of course I couldn't yell at him to STOP!
because he's deaf.
But I grabbed ahold of his head and neck and pulled him away
and he instantly ran and hid up the kitchen table.
He always hides there when he gets into trouble
because no one can see him there....

or so he thinks.

I realize that he's just being a cranky ass because if
he really meant business, she'd be dead.
But... it has me on hyper alert now.

I talked with Doc and because we just ran all sorts of blood-work tests
and did x-rays and everything on Blue when he was so ill,
we know there's nothing physically wrong with him except as Doc says -
He's a grumpy old man. That's what happens to us, we get grumpy."
I told him about Poppy and Doc said, "She's just a mouthful!"
and then he just shook his head and said "that's what can happen with a pack".

Without going into extreme detail about pack mentality,
I'll just say that I'm aware of that and that wasn't it.
It wasn't the group of them in some sort of frenzy
or them trying to weed out the weak
or one or more trying to take over the group.
They know I'm the leader.
There's no doubt of that.
Even Blue knows, that's why he hightails it to under the kitchen table.

Nope, it's just Blue doesn't really care about the other dogs.
They just mostly annoy him.
He's a people dog.
And if he sees Lily or my sister he jumps up and down in excitement.

Yep, I think I'm living with a "Lion" (who I love with all my heart)
and a houseful of "Lemurs" who like to run around and play
and get in the way of the Lion who just wants to sleep.

So I'm making sure to keep the lines of visual communication open with Blue and me.
That's always worked before.
He has always watched me to see what to do and not to do.
I just have to stay very attentive to him when he gets up and moves about.

As I type out this post, he's at my feet.
Not on the dog bed
or my BIG chair that he loves but on the wood floor.
I do adore this grumpy dog.
I brought birthday cupcakes in his honor to work

and wrote on the medical board for all to see that today was his Eleventh birthday
and I thanked everyone who made that possible!

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRUMPY OLD MAN!
I love you with all my heart
and I hope all the little ones just stay out of your way.

SO MANY THINGS....

So many things have been going through my head this week.

So many blog posts that I want to write.

So many different topics.

So little time. 

Soon work will slow down 

(kids go back to school soon and families won't be taking vacations and leaving their dogs with me.)

and then I'll be able to write posts about everything I've been thinking about.

So, for now I will just share some of my photography that I first altered in the Aviary app and then the Prism app.

My dog - Jimmy Chew

Blue, of course

And my little Chihuahua, Twinkle

Christmas Morning 2015

It's Christmas!

Wake up Jimmy!

Maybe Santa came?!

Are you getting up?

Maybe there's something in your stocking?

Like coal LOL!

Oh come on, get up!

Sleepy head dog

OK! He's UP!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

XOXOXOXOXO 

LET"S TRY THIS AGAIN.... BLUE WAS SICK

OK, let's try this again.
Although it has become kinda of a mute point, seeings how Blue is now doing well.
But I did have some cute photos of Jimmy AND there's a part of me that just wants to fix this darn post!
At first I couldn't load my photos.
Then the post didn't post, just the header I guess.
But some people got just the words of the post in an email.
Jeez, I have no idea what was going on.
Now I think maybe it was a blogger problem because when I went back and read this morning's post
I noticed that the font was all wonky.
So of it was big and some small and while I was super tired and had not had my coffee...
I don't think I did that.
I'm thinking something was/is up with blogger.
SO, here's my final effort for my post entitled -
"BLUE WAS SICK"
I just thought some fans of Jimmy Chew would like to see how his guilty little face gives him away every time!
OK, here it goes! I hope this posts as it should. (Fingers crossed.)
* and Thanks again for all the kind words and concern over my boy Blue*

Wednesday night Blue didn't want to eat.

That is NOT normal.

Then he started making a deep "humming" noise.

A couple of times he made a little gagging noise and then back to the humming.

I felt his belly. It wasn't swollen or hard.

If it had been, I would have loaded him up and driven like a bat out of Hell to get him help.

A swollen hard belly accompanied by drooling, pacing and the inability to get comfortable are all signs of bloat.

Dogs very rarely survive bloat.

But nevertheless, I spent most of the  evening just staring at him and trying to get him to eat some bread or just poking his tummy.

He finally hid under the kitchen table, to get away from me.

Sometimes his upper body trembled and wouldn't stop when I stroked his coat.

He went outside and had a loose stool.

I Googled all his symptoms and posted them on Facebook as most of the vet techs that I know and one of the doctors, follow me on there.

Everyone seemed to think he was just having an "off" night and most likely be better in the morning.

So he and I had a restless night and he had to go outside once at about 2:30 am.

In the morning he was sluggish and still would not eat.

I took him and Nora and Jimmy to work.

He didn't have the strength to pull himself up onto the van seat so I had pick up his hind end and shove him in.

I strapped the seatbelt over him and the other two bounced happily in the back.

When I got to work I went in said that I knew it was surgery day but - these were his symptoms.
Then I said that this was THE reason I worked there and that someone needed to look at him ASAP.

They took his temperature right away, drew blood and ran several tests and...
found nothing.

That's when we decided to do an X-Ray.
I knew something was really wrong when we lifted him to the table and he just laid there without moving.

As they positioned him I held his head. The vet techs remarked how good he was and I said that I really worried because he had to feel horrible if he didn't move at all.

So the X-rays showed some opaque objects in his stomach.

I had no clue what it could be.

They gave him some injections for pain and some pills for the loose stools and special canned food.

The vet said that whatever it was could remain in his belly for sometime but they were small enough that they should eventually pass.

Thankfully he's so big that it should TRAVEL out...

I kept running through my mind what he could have gotten into.

He's just not the type of dog to eat things he shouldn't.

Then it dawned on me.

Last week I was going through things in the spare bedroom where Blue, Nora and Jimmy stay during the day while I'm at work.

I had a big retro shelving unit in there that I cleared off and took to my booth.

I had a lot of art/craft stuff on those shelves and I suddenly remembered how I had moved a bag of little pebbles that I had bought at the dollar store.

I had gotten them to use in my little fairy garden (and of course, never did).

After I had moved them, I came home to find the bag off the top of the dresser where I had placed it and ripped apart and scattered all over the floor and over the bed they sleep on.

I had gathered them up and for a moment worried about the dogs possibly eating some.

But then I thought NO, they wouldn't eat rocks!

The pebbles were small dime-sized in brown, tan and white colors.

Now I suddenly I thought 

What if Blue just slurped some up?

I went to the vet and told him about the pebbles and he said - Yep! That could be it!

I was very irritated that someone had gotten those pebbles off the dresser and made Blue so sick.

OK. I hate to blame anyone when I can't be sure but...

I'm betting it was Jimmy Chew!

Grrrr

Later in the afternoon Blue started to perk up.

He wasn't a 100 % but he was much better than before.

I took all three dogs out to the play yard.-

Hey Jimmy! Come here!

Blue isn't feeling good.

He slurped up some pebbles.

Do you know who ripped open that bag?   

Jimmy? Jimmy? Was it you?

I think it was.

And Nora? No, I doubt that it was Nora.

She doesn't care.

She's busy looking for sticks.

Yep, she's just happy with her stick.

I might be joking now... but I tell ya.

I was a basket case.

Truly, I hate loving anyone this much.

THIS HALLOWEEN...

Jimmy Chew is going as a Gentleman.

We all know THAT is a big act.

I went as ....

Everyone at work dressed as CATS!

Doc dressed in a robe, slippers, a scarf on his head and carried a Hello Kitty Halloween bucket plus a few "cats" hanging about.

His costume was a "Crazy Cat Lady" and we all were his cats. 

It was a big hit with the clients. 

I posted my photo on Facebook.

I, unlike many people on that social site, hate posting photos of myself.

One person REALLY wanted to see " the rest of me"....

Sigh and Grrrrr.

Finally I posted this as a reason.

LOL!

Obviously I need to start dieting so that I feel better about myself AND of course to get HEALTHY.

Anyway....

I took some Fall photos the other day.
I went over to one of the cemeteries in town.
Chippiannnock Cemetery.

One of few beautiful spots in town.

Lovely but kinda spooky at this time of the year.

I was alone and the leaves kept swirling, rustling and making noises at though someone was walking through them
but no one was there.

The birds were really loud.

Cawing and chattering.

I didn't stay long!

Have a Happy Halloween!
XOXO