LLEWIS

Llewis  is Bonsai's Gravity Storm according to his papers, but is Lewis Lewis according to us or Llewis which is easier to write.
He was born here, in this room, one very hot summer morning very early morning with my friend MCBeth attending (Vet). I had the windows open it was so hot in the room but I could not run the window a/c unit for fear of chilling the little bratwurst with feet.
Nothing says sausage as much as a newborn Basset.

This was probably around 12 days. Eyes not open  but starting, and ears as well. . All the puppies were great. Ate well, Zelda was a great Mom, and they grew like weeds.

Eyes just getting there. Probably taken the same day. Such cuties.

And then we began to notice that Llewis was having trouble moving around with the others. We were told oh, he'd be fine. But we weren't so sure. This was my first (and only ever) litter so I was depending on others to tell me what to do. Finally, I decided to do something myself and took little Llewis to see the Vet, who thought it looked like a "Swimmer puppy" and it did. So we taped his back legs together in hobbles, and actually, he did better.

But they had to be taped. When the tape came off, he went right back to his hobbedly gimpy tumbly self. Nahh...there was something else going on.

I took him one afternoon to the home of one of my other Vets. This one has horses and is perhaps a bit more attuned to lameness. She watched him "walk" and fall and trip, drag one leg, hoisting it at a funny angle, and when she palated his rear she said she didn't think there was a femur there!

So off we went to the University of Wisconsin, and they poked and prodded and xrayed and palpated and their official diagnosis written in his chart, was that he was "a mess". The femur did not reach the hip socket which was basically not there anyway, and the patella was either so far out of place and misshapen or not there (to be honest I do not remember) that he could not properly bend that back leg at the hock.

 

 

If you look at these, you will see the problem. We knew we were going to keep him. I picked his brother Nigel as my future show puppy even tho his shoulders were a bit heavy and his front wide...

Off we went with Llewis to a doggie Re-habilitation place. Not for drugs, but physical re-hab.
There he became a clinic favorite as he ate frozen peanut butter while they did acupuncture and chiropractic, and we had a state of the art brace made which he wore awhile. And after awhile, the re=hab place asked us to have him re-evaluated by an orthopedic specialist because nothing much was happening.

So we called in Dr Lou. We showed him the U of Wisconsin xrays, showed him the puppy, let him do his own exam and at the end he said "Take that brace off of him, take him home and let him run around and be a puppy. He needs to USE those muscles..." and so we did.

 

 

He has learned to use his disability to his advantage.

 

This is one of his favorite toys, a carrot. He has had it for years altho I think Doc has pretty much destroyed it now. He uses just his incisors on toys and kind of gnaws on them.

 

That silly leg just won't bend and won't do what he wants.

 

 

 

All the boys, back when everyone's legs were working better.

 

 

 

 

 

SQURLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

​This is about Doc and his neverending Quest for squirrels.

 

About 10 feet behind our back windows there is another structure which has become the neighborhood blight and fire-trap. (Seriously). Years ago squirrels gnawed a hole in the soffit and began nesting in there. We paid no attention and sometimes in the morning I would see the babies poking their noses out of the hole, watching me watch them.

 

 

 

 

 

Nigel discovered them originally and set up the first Squirrel Patrol long before Doc was even born.

 

 

 

 

                                  (Nigel on squirrel patrol long ago.)

 

 

 

Now, apparently, the baton has been passed.

 

This morning, when they were outside, Doc discovered a squirrel IN the "summerhouse" (not hard: no screens) then it ran out, up the drainpipe and into the nest site.

 

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! and right in FRONT of him!!!! Berserker time. OMG he went totally insane trying to get up a ladder, trying to get into the summerhouse, leaping straight up in the air maybe 4 feet off the ground, snapping and (of course) screaming.

 

I made him come in. I have no photos of what happened next, alas.

 

Doc ran inside and stood, forepaws on the windowsill, staring at the summerhouse. Inside it was a squirrel. Doc tapped on the window. The squirrel ran out of the summerhouse, up the drainpipe, across the roof and leaped onto the windowsill of our house, separated from Doc by a window and screen.

 

THE NERVE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAIEEEEEEEEEEEE

right in FRONT of him OHMYGOD!!

 

That we have a window left is miraculous. The squirrel dashed along the sill past the kitchen window and there was Doc trying to climb into the sink, all the time screaming, bellowing, leaping crashing-- you get the idea.

 

And when I walked back through the dining room after picking up dishes and dish towels and mopping up water, I glanced up at the summerhouse and

 

Oh no.

 

Oh please no....

UNLOADING/UPLOADING/DOWNLOADING

I had to do some stuff for the Gallery website, and some things for my son's SO. It involved going through old photos. And ohhhh, I found some doozies!!

 

I don't know who these people are but I think I was related to them.

Once upon a time I really looked like that. Look at that! I'm wearing heels!!!

 

 

Back when Nigel(nearest to the camera) still had all fours that worked. Llewis is in the middle. Conley at the end. You think they want in?

 

 

Who knows which is which?

                              

Smothered

 

 

 

 

For some reason I really like this picture. The composition isn't very good, everything is in the middle, but it isn't terrible, either.

 

 

 

I went to the Iowa State Fair every year for about a hundred years, but I never saw a reindeer there before. But there it is.

 

 

Standing on the second story of the Industrial Arts building, looking down and out at the Iowa State Fair. The butter cow is down there someplace. On the far right I think, but you can't see it from this photo.

 

 

There she is. Every year. Handmade. Pure butter. Honest.

 

 

Mr.Biskit when the boys were babes. That's Mitchell speaking to him about the situation.

The only thing that's changed is that Mitchell is gone and the dogs laying on Mr.Biskit are much bigger now.

STUFF

My husband bought an espresso machine. A real one. We had a Mr. Coffee espresso machine and it made espresso that tasted like it had been made in a Mr. Coffee machine: a touch stronger than real coffee but a lot weaker than real espresso.

Starbuck's makes real espresso.
Dunkin Donuts makes almost real espresso.

I drink coffee, when I drink it at all, black. Very black. The stronger the coffee is, the happier I am with it. Most people cannot drink my coffee because it is too strong. And I do not drink decaf. What's the point in drinking coffee at all unless it has some caffeine in it? It's like drinking non-alcoholic beer. (I think beer tastes nasty after the first few sips, so I am biased anyway.)

It was very weird because I had been looking at these very expensive espresso machines but had not said anything to him because they were...well...very expensive.

I kept thinking how much dog food it would buy.

My dogs would not have to eat sticks to survive. I could buy real food for them.

 

I thought of how many dog show entries it would be.

How many books would it have bought.

How many groceries.

How many bottles of my Barefoot Cellars Chardonnay.

 

 

How many Basset Hounds I could have.

 

But instead, we bought the espresso machine.

 

And I have to say, it makes damn good espresso. I will never go back to regular coffee, and my consumption of Coca Cola has even dropped a bit. (I go through a 2 liter bottle a day, usually.)

 

So if you want real espresso, come on over.

 

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It snowed.

Not a lot but enough that there was some on the ground and Doc was absolutely thrilled.

 

He doesn't look thrilled in this photo but he was very happy, and oddly, so were the Bassets for about 15 minutes. Then they all realized ( all the Bassets) how cold and wet it was and that was the end of that. Which is why Doc is looking dejected: the Bassets all went in the house.

 

He laid outside by himself chewing on a stick which is his favorite toy.

This is about how much snow there was. Not enough, according to Doc who, even though he is from Texas likes his cold weather.

 

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DAY BEHIND

I am behind. I did not write yesterday.
But in the morning as the sun came up I looked out my window and saw the light in the fall leaves and went out and photographed. It is hard to get the full impact, but it was stunning. (Not because I was staring into the sun, altho perhaps that had something to do with the headache I had all day.)

This is what I saw when I looked out the window at Dustin/Justin's (not sure-- could be either one) house, or rather, above and behind his house. The contrast is missing because the trees around were still shrouded in heavy dawn, only the tops of the trees had light.

There's not a lot of color choices in the neighborhood. There are a few trees that apparently do not care for yellow raiment. If I knew anything about trees I could tell you why but, lucky you, I know only that they grow, have leaves, then change color and don't have leaves, and that some --like the only two we had-- also have bugs that force you to cut them down.

Looking across the fence in the backyard down the street.

And at Sara's huge pine tree in the front.

 

(Isn't this exciting?) (It really was quite beautiful or I would not inflict it upon you.)

 

This is my favorite. It's a house down and across the next street.

And this is my real favorite: Nigel on his throne in the sunlight.

 

BREEDERS CUP

The Breeder's Cup is today. It is horse racing-- flat racing, not trotters or pacers. I am not sure where it is being held. They hold an entire day of racing and the last race, of course, is the Breeder's Cup,  which is being held this year in Santa Anita, California.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding horse racing, but that is not what I am interested in for the purposes of this.
A few years ago a friend of mine and I went to Lexington, Ky just a few days before the start of the racing season. We went to Churchill Downs where the Kentucky Derby is held, and it was impressive, but heavy on security.

We also went to Keeneland, which at that time was much more open. We ate in the track kitchen with the trainers and exercisers and grooms and touts. It was great. And it was very early morning, very early, the lights were still on, and it was beautiful even without the horses.

 

 

 

Keeneland, early in the morning

 

Then the horses start coming out onto the track, and the trainers standing around, and a few owners. Trainers tend to kind of stand apart from each other, leaning on the rail or standing up in the stands.

 

Trainer at Churchill Downs, watching her horse breeze in the morning.

The horses come out singly, and in groups, some with ponies and some without, the riders are exercise riders not usually the jockeys. Now and then you see one horse really being run, but generally it seemed to me that they were a lot more leisurely. It was clear the horses WANTED to run more, but this was warm up, and
they were moving which was better than not moving, standing in a stall, watching the others...

                           Exercise girls start out together.

The horses work on the dirt track, and also on the turf track. Some horses never run on dirt, others never run on turf, and of course we all know some horses do best in horrible, sloppy, muddy, rainslick conditions.
But not today.
Today the sun is out and this is not a race.

 

 

 

But at the end of the workout, it's back to the stable, and their grooms, and their stablemate cats and goats and ponies, and a quiet evening....

 

 

Good luck to all of them: may none make a wrong step as the Baffert filly did this morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAND SIGNALS

I read an article that claimed that if you point at an object a dog will look at the object rather than your pointed finger.

Clearly, my dogs have not read this article, because they insist on staring raptly at my finger: "What? What? What? Where?" I have to practically touch the object, drawing their stares [slowly] from my finger to the object.
50% of the dogs watch my finger anyway, as if I had a hotdog glued to it.

Here are some other hand signals that might come in handy if only I could teach them to the dogs.

Now. This one they know. I have to admit that. This is the "I have no more treats in my hands. See? They are EMPTY. Nothing here but fingers."
 This is the one time when their attention wanders from my hands immediately. By the time they have glanced briefly at my hands they are sniffing the floor, my shoes, anywhere I might have stashed food since, we all understand, I never feed them and they are starving.

This is "Hold it, wait there!"
The dogs know exactly what it means. It means (to them) OBOY THERE'S SOMETHING HAPPENING,LET'S GO!!

This is DOWN. Meaning lay down. It is a movement signal starting up and traveling downward. The dogs watch and then wander off doing whatever they were doing before, snuffling along the ground in case I was pointing at spilled food.

This is "come".It begins out and sweeps toward the body . I have one dog who responds but the rest (short legs) all stare at my hand as if convinced I am having some kind of seizure. The one who responds would also respond if I did not make any hand gesture but simply walked through the room and looked at him.

This is a really important hand signal. It means STOPSTAY. DO NOT MOVE.
Since 3 of 4 dogs are not moving anyway but are sound asleep, this is meant for the 4th dog who stops, edges forward, stops, edges forward.....

The final Hand signal is used after training the former hand signals and consists of a closed fist with one finger extended and will not be shown since the photographer thought I was extending the finger in his direction in response to his photography skills and left the room muttering the same words I am usually muttering after a training session with the dogs....