Sam

Every morning I wake up early and take the boys for a walk. I say it's for the boys, but it's really for me. I LOVE my morning walks. I love when I force myself out of bed around 6:30 or earlier, before the sun has come up over the mountains and it's quiet, and it's peaceful and the air is crisp and cool.

I always take Sam first, his hips are in pretty bad shape and he has to go for a shorter walk and not romp and play with his brothers. He loves that he gets to be the first one out the door. He loves the smell of the morning air and meets each morning with new enthusiasm. He's so certain that if he could only catch a bunny his life would be complete.

A couple of years ago a bunch of shitty bugs invaded the trees in the Rocky Mountains and killed a bunch of trees. Our yard (20 acres) was no exception. A logger guy came to us and said, I'm really good at this, blah, blah, blah let me cut the trees and clean up the fire hazard. Ok...well, let me tell you he's a dork. Not only did it take him 983,432,343,342,235 days to do a 30 day job, he did a really crappy job, shit in the yard every day and hired a freak to help him, but that's a story for another day. The long and short of it is, we have a GREAT BIG burn pile. It's away from the house, we can't see it from the house and while it's an eye sore it has become a bunny house. There are 2,234,453,567,432,432 bunnies living in it. I was anxious for the burn pile to get gone, but now it's full of bunnies and it's a great, safe place for bunnies to live, I don't want to burn it. The bunnies have to evade mountain lions, bears, bobcats, foxes and coyotes . . .and Sam, the Bouvier des Flanders and great white black hunter. Their only defense is that they know how to sit still. Not much of a defense. I'll be lobbying this fall to save the burn pile, because seriously, where will the bunnies live?

Anyhow, Sammy has a very high prey drive, plus he's a great defender. He's brave and willing to kick ass on anyone who comes over uninvited. I love that about him. But when it comes to Alice and the bunnies....not so much. We've has a "come to Jesus", so to speak and I think he understands... eating bunnies or cats...BAD, bark and growl at the boogie man...GOOD.

Sam and Alice size each other up...

Gas 2.0

There is a little Mexican joint just outside of Hamilton. It's the "real" deal. Owned and operated by real Mexicans, from Mexico, who travel to Mexico each December to restock their chili supply and other yummy stuff that they can only get in Mexico...YUMMY! You have no idea how great it is to have the real thing after the culinary famine we've been experiencing for the past five years. Seriously, Taco Time is NOT Mexican; and that shitty taco bus in Dillon serves food made by American Mexicans who can't cook.

So we made the two hour trek to visit the tanquera and partake of the glorious grub. I ate until I almost popped and then brought another meal home. BT had shredded beef enchiladas with beans. I had two shredded beef soft shell tacos and half of BT's beans and all of his rice. Here's the other bonus of this place, they put onions in their rice, but not much else. BT can't eat onions, (they HATE him, the onions I mean, and make him shit his pants) so extra big bonus. The gas that follows, however, is brutal. Good thing we both have it and, of course, we can always blame it on the boys. They really don't care, those boys are great that way!

gas...

A bouvier is a dog that does not hesitate to fart. . . just saying.

Old dogs have lumps and bumps...

BT and I gave the boys super short hair cuts. They look really cute, but my camera is tired and I haven't taken any photos for months. I really need to either get a new camera or just be patience with the old girl. Anyway, since Ross died I've been really anxious about any lumps or bumps that I find on the boys, turns out that's a good thing. First we found a weird bump on Sam's back turned out to be a weird skin thing the Dr. G removed and shaved a big square on his back which is now covered in back hair again and not too ugly. At the same time, we had all the boys teeth cleaned again so they all have minty fresh breath (well, that lasted for about a week, still, they all have clean teeth). A week later, I found a weird lump on Frank's back leg. This time Dr. G was worried and took it off the same day. It could be okay, or it could be bad. If it comes back within 6 months, it will most likely be cancer this time and kill him. However, Dr. G. praised us repeatedly for finding it when it was so small. He's confident he'll be fine. Knock on wood...In the mean time, Frank looks like he took his pants off and is wearing tights on one leg. It's cute sort of and of all the boys, Frank can pull off the look. Plus that boy has already cheated death of three separate occasions. I'm hoping he's like a cat and has 6 more to go before we lose him. He's a groovy little (99#) dog.

Frank (pre hair cut) Fall 2008

Frank January 2012

Alice caught a mouse. Yes, we had a mouse in our house, bah! Just when I was on the verge of calling Alice a worthless cat, she caught and ate the mouse. Yes, she ate it, the entire thing. I don't really think she's worthless, she's actually a very cool cat.

We've had a very abnormally hot summer. Seriously, we usually have 4 days max in the 90's. This year we've had more like 4 weeks. Lucky for us we also had a crazy few days of heavy rain and the forest (at least in our neck of the woods) hasn't started on fire. It's hot right now so we're all laying around watching TV, glad that someone somewhere invented air conditioning.