Her mother, in black?

I've always known that Lizzie takes strongly after her dam Lily. But I was looking at these two photos side by side and was suddenly struck by how MUCH I think she looks like her! Topline and maturity aside for now, of course. :P Of course she doesn't have Lily's gorgeous brindle color (drool) or flashy markings...and their heads are a bit different. But still. Am I crazy?

ARGHHHH

I really wanted them to be perfect. :-( Someday I will learn how long in body she is, and therefore how far I need to stretch her legs.

OK Houston, we have a problem

I think I need to back off and switch more slowly. After Lizzie's barf-o-rama this afternoon, now after leaving the house for a few hours for dinner at Dave's parent's house, we came home to the NASTIEST pile of d*arrhea that I have ever seen. Since Lizzie is in a crate, we know it wasn't her. My guess is Leo, because there were again many parts of crunched up beetles mixed in and I don't *think* that Brady eats beetles. At least this time it wasn't on my carpet, and he was actually kind enough to put it on a crate pad that we had on the floor so I could just pick it up and rinse. :o) Plus, Brady is the one going through the least amount of diet change because I'm still using up the last half of his bulldog kibble, and just adding stuff to it, whereas the other two I switched to the Evo.

I've done lots of diet switching before, but this is probably the most radical change. Either that, or the beetle infestation from last night didn't agree with their delicate stomachs. :P

Why, why, why??

On Wednesday, we had professional carpet cleaners over to do a number on our carpets. They also scrubbed the kitchen tile and grout, yay! The house goes on the market next week.

Today, Lizzie barfed. Copious amounts, in many piles all over my clean carpet. :( No idea why, but she seems to feel better now after completely voiding her stomach of all food, munched on poop (someday, I'd love to get a dog that didn't snack on poop), crunched up beetles (yuck), and eventually bile. And I am left crying over my once-clean carpet, that I somehow have to get the d*&$#&@ spots out of by next week.

Maybe they won't notice the spots, they'll be too busy looking at the eaten bare spots on the carpet about a foot from the puke spots.

Just for the heck of it

I've started planning out what shows I might go to in the near future, which pretty much translates to HARDLY ANY since I'll be busy, I don't know, having a baby or something. :P But, we are planning a trip to South Carolina in about a month which should pull majors. After that I'll be out of commission for a while! I still want to go to the Western Reserve specialty, but as it's two weeks before I'm due AND a 9 hour drive (although I'd be staying at my mom's)...it's doubtful at best.

Anyway, I'm bored today. Pictures of Lizzie at almost 11 months old. Topline is better but still not quite there...looking at her mother around the same age I'm not surprised. Seems like no matter how far I think I'm stretching out her back legs, it's not quite far enough...she's a loooooong little doggie. :o)

OK, let's see if this works

Nothing like jumping on a bandwagon. :P Although I'm not quite ready to make the time/shopping commitment that Carolyn is making, we're going to give the more natural feeding thing a try. I did stop today and buy a bag of Evo...I plan to use that as a base. I then went to Costco and bought a 10-pound box of 1/4 pound frozen beef patties ($19.99), a bucket of cottage cheese ($3.79), and an 18 pack of eggs ($1.79). I'll look for some other meat sources when I have some more time to shop around. The Evo was $45 for a 35 pound bag. I'm not sure how long it will last, but I'm guessing over a month with only feeding partial. And all of my dogs eat fairly low amounts of food in general...Lizzie, although young, is a piggie who gains weight just LOOKING at food, and while Leo is also young and very active he's just never required much kibble to keep a good weight.

But still, with only 3 dogs it looks like this will cost me about $100 a month? Maybe a bit less. We'll have to see. That sort of number kind of hurts after paying only for the cheap Costco food. :P

My HOPE is that this not only makes my dogs coats nice and is healthier for them...but I REALLY want to find something to stop Brady's stinkiness. He has had the WORST gas for probably going on 2 years now. It was bad when I was feeding Chicken Soup, and still bad when we switched to the Costco chicken & rice food. Obviously, something about the way he processes food has changed in his old age, because I had fed Chicken Soup for quite a while before this became an issue. He also became a poop eater at the same time.

Some 2-legged child pictures

I needed to go through a lot of pictures that we've taken in the past month...and I needed to look at some cute pictures to remind myself that Charlie is NOT always such a witch. LOL She is cutting her 2-year molars, and therefore has not been sleeping well. And a tired toddler is a CRANKY toddler, so it's been a bit...trying lately.

Hamming around on the back porch...for dog content, she loves to play on that dog cot/bed.

Peek-a-boo, of course!

Some pictures from when we went to the Nashville Zoo...they have a petting zoo that she is VERY fond of.

This llama is HILARIOUS...you may have to click to the bigger picture, but his bottom teeth just stick straight out of his mouth! The zookeeper was telling the kids all about how he got special food, etc.

Yes, she is a daddy's girl.

Eggs

Leo is too...dumb? gentle?...to figure out how to get into a whole egg. He wanted to carry it around all night. The other two heathens were encouraging him to do just that, so that they could swipe it when he inevitably did something stupid.

I used to give whole eggs about once a week on their food, but haven't done it for quite a while. All this talk of natural feeding has me considering it again, and in the meantime I figured they could have an egg. Brady needs something to fatten him up anyway...speaking of which, I need to have some bloodwork run on him, because he keeps dropping weight for no apparent reason despite me continually upping his food portion. Sigh...silly stinky old dog, anyway.

Stake out

We did finally put our money where our mouth is and sign a contract with a builder. Last weekend we *gulp* made the final adjustments to the contract and off we go! Or at least, we hope...they did give us a completion date of Sept 30 (in the contract), so hopefully it will be at least sometime around then. LOL For some reason I am more nervous having a house built this time around. This is our THIRD yes third house that we are building...one in Denver, and the one we're in here now. I think we're build-aholics. Or at least, move-aholics. ;-)

Anyway. It is going to be HARD to give up our backyard here...we have 3/4 of an acre, back to a wooded creek, lots of pretty trees in the backyard, etc. Our current lot is remarkably similar in some ways...it also backs to a creek with some trees. However, it's a wider shorter lot, and the creek is further up towards the house, so we'll have quite a bit less usable backyard. Maybe half as much, if we're lucky. Oh well...we really don't USE all of the yard we have now, it just looks pretty and gives us privacy, which we should also have at the new house, so... But I think the dogs will miss it here.

So, if you're interested, we are building this house: House Plan with a few rather minor changes. And I'm hoping, really hoping, that just maybe we can stay in this one for a while. And in the meantime, we are frantically trying to get our current house ready to put on the market. Stupid dogs...everything we have to fix in the house is their fault! LOL Grumble grumble.

Pictures

I call this picture..."Leo, summed up".