Yes, my dogs have no idea what they truly want. When they're in, they want to be out
And of course when they're out, they want to be in
Truly, they are not so different from us, are they?
Showing posts with label Loki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loki. Show all posts
The tile is always softer...
On the other side of the screen.
Yes, my dogs have no idea what they truly want. When they're in, they want to be out
And of course when they're out, they want to be in
Truly, they are not so different from us, are they?
Yes, my dogs have no idea what they truly want. When they're in, they want to be out
And of course when they're out, they want to be in
Truly, they are not so different from us, are they?
Memorial Weekend
This past weekend I spent a couple days at my mother's house. The plan was only to spend Sunday night with her and then go to work from there and then stay Monday night too. However, I found out ELVIS COSTELLO was going to be in Dallas playing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Now I understand that not everyone in the world is as much of a FREAK for ELVIS COSTELLO as I am but you would think if I offer to pay for the tickets, people would want to go. No one. Seriously people? Free concert (to you anyway!). I finally convinced my mother to go by promising to come Saturday afternoon and staying the weekend. It turned out to be a wonderful plan!
I wish, wish, wish I had at least one picture of the concert but, alas, I do not. My mom was freak out about someone seeing me and us getting kicked out. Then, at the end she said, "You should have taken a picture at the very end like those other people did."
"But, mom, when I said I was going to, you about tackled me in order to make sure I didn't."
I paid $200 for the tickets. That is the price I didn't pay last time he came, because he came with the Police and I swore I was not going to pay those outrageous prices just because some 80s band got back together. Yes, I like their music too, but COME ON people. I guess things are different when I'm thinking about where I'm going to sit and the fact that my entire two hours will be staring at ELVIS COSTELLO! I love him.
I could have paid for a seat in the chorus loft. If you've never been to the Symphony, then you should know that is the place behind the orchestra. If I was going to the listen to a symphony that'd be great. Cheap seats right behind the orchestra are pretty good, even if you can hear too much of the percussion. Besides, I've always liked the drummers (hehehe). But for the guy I love more than all other singers in the world EVER...it's not good enough. I want to be looking in his face. I couldn't get seats on the floor at all but I could get box seats practically over top his head. So I did, and stared at ELVIS COSTELLO all night! It was grand. My mom was a little unnerved by the fact that we could drop to our deaths if we moved wrong, but I figure it's all in the price of seeing ELVIS COSTELLO.
Now before my grand adventure seeing my music idol, I had to bring all the animals to my mom's house. Poor Lucina. I knew she wouldn't be getting much out time there since my mom also has two dogs and they're not used to being around a bird, so I made sure she got to spend the whole morning having momma time without the dogs. They got to be locked up for awhile.
She loves to cuddle up to my chin while I scratch her neck. One of these days I'm going to get video of her bumping my chin with her beak. This is how she asks for me to scratch her neck. BTW, she doesn't have "red eye" from the flash, she really does have red eyes. The flash freaked her out and she flew away before the next shot:
A few years ago I bought her a wonderful cage, which you can partly see in these pictures. All the bird experts say you have to get your bird acclimated to the new cage, that they'll freak out if you just stick them in before the used to it. So I brought it home and placed it beside the old and let her out to explore on her own just as they say. She went right to it and sat on top and never went back to the old one. So much for experts. To be fair, the old one was TINY. When I saw them side by side, I felt so bad for making her stay in there for so long!
Poor Lucina! Her old cage is at my mom's house so I don't have to lug that huge thing around when we go to visit. This is right after we got there on Saturday afternoon.
She looks so sad!
I wish, wish, wish I had at least one picture of the concert but, alas, I do not. My mom was freak out about someone seeing me and us getting kicked out. Then, at the end she said, "You should have taken a picture at the very end like those other people did."
"But, mom, when I said I was going to, you about tackled me in order to make sure I didn't."
I paid $200 for the tickets. That is the price I didn't pay last time he came, because he came with the Police and I swore I was not going to pay those outrageous prices just because some 80s band got back together. Yes, I like their music too, but COME ON people. I guess things are different when I'm thinking about where I'm going to sit and the fact that my entire two hours will be staring at ELVIS COSTELLO! I love him.
I could have paid for a seat in the chorus loft. If you've never been to the Symphony, then you should know that is the place behind the orchestra. If I was going to the listen to a symphony that'd be great. Cheap seats right behind the orchestra are pretty good, even if you can hear too much of the percussion. Besides, I've always liked the drummers (hehehe). But for the guy I love more than all other singers in the world EVER...it's not good enough. I want to be looking in his face. I couldn't get seats on the floor at all but I could get box seats practically over top his head. So I did, and stared at ELVIS COSTELLO all night! It was grand. My mom was a little unnerved by the fact that we could drop to our deaths if we moved wrong, but I figure it's all in the price of seeing ELVIS COSTELLO.
Now before my grand adventure seeing my music idol, I had to bring all the animals to my mom's house. Poor Lucina. I knew she wouldn't be getting much out time there since my mom also has two dogs and they're not used to being around a bird, so I made sure she got to spend the whole morning having momma time without the dogs. They got to be locked up for awhile.
She loves to cuddle up to my chin while I scratch her neck. One of these days I'm going to get video of her bumping my chin with her beak. This is how she asks for me to scratch her neck. BTW, she doesn't have "red eye" from the flash, she really does have red eyes. The flash freaked her out and she flew away before the next shot:
Poor Lucina! Her old cage is at my mom's house so I don't have to lug that huge thing around when we go to visit. This is right after we got there on Saturday afternoon.
She looks so sad!
"Won't you let me out?"
Later the dogs got to go out. If you missed the story I told about Loki and the mouse in the house (my old house, thank goodness), then you just won't get how crazy he is for other other creatures. I'm not sure if the breed or simply because he practically lived on his own for the first two years of his life. Aurora's not like that. In any case, my mom's neighbor is the cat lady. Not only does she have an absurd number of cats, but none of them are fixed so of course she gets a new one every day. Loki HATES cats. He spends the entire day staring at the breaks in the fence waiting for a cat to bark at.
At some point on Sunday afternoon, everyone was outside and a squirrel was in the yard. All the other dogs went nuts barking at the squirrel, trying to get it. Loki was doing this:
And he stayed there.
Home Story: Fleas
I haven't written much on here in the last few weeks, in fact I haven't done much of anything the last few weeks that didn't involve cleaning house. I thought I would share exactly why on here, because, let's face it, everyone else is tired of me talking about it and my readers can simply choose to stop reading and I'll never know!
Let this be a lesson to all of you organic-minded people out there: It is possible to get rid of fleas with natural and organic treatments. However, you will also have to live with flea bites on yourself and your animals for at least a month, maybe more. No matter how much I hate using chemicals in my house, this was simply unacceptable to me after desperately trying for 2 weeks to do everything I could and then discovering that Aurora (the collie) had contracted tapeworm. This is something that can only happen if she had ingested a flea (according to my vet).
So what does the person who is anti-chemicals in the house do in this situation? Get all the animals out of the house, close all dry food inside the fridge (luckily I haven't shopped much lately and there was room), bathe the dogs with flea shampoo (AGAIN) and spray them with the natural flea killing spray that seems to work (briefly, not a week like it claims), and flea bomb the sh** out of the house. At my mom's house I discovered a live flea on Loki (the cocker spaniel). So, off they go outside and off we go to PetSMart where we buy a different kind of flea shampoo and it's related spray (recommended by the trainers at the store). I'm going to place a free advertisement right here because it appears to be the ONLY thing that has worked. It says "Natural Chemistry" which seems to me to be an oxymoron but whatever, it worked and for that I am thankful. That awful "Hartz" stuff didn't work worth sh** and it smelled terrible too. They were at my mom's house for 2 days and were completely flea free.
THEN, I left leave the animals at mom's house while I went home and cleaned EVERYTHING. And I do mean everything. I put every dish I own in the dishwasher (or, that is, washed the few things that can't go in there by hand but you know...) and placed every thing that could be washed in the washing machine in the washing machine (obviously not all at once, what a mess that would be). I vacuumed floors and furniture and wiped counters and cleaned bathrooms and sprayed the yard (yep, more chemicals) and cleaned Lucina's cage and Loki's kennel all in between putting away clean clothes and dishes. I was very tired.
The next day I went to work and then over to my mom's to pick my now flea-free dogs and bird (thank goodness they aren't bothered by fleas!), take them all home where I am happily playing on my computer when I feel a terrible itching on my arm, look down and see a DA** flea on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I promptly check both dogs. Of course, Loki has one happily crawling on him and I freak out. What can I possibly do at this point that I haven't done? Did I mention that they've already had two doses of Frontline in three weeks instead of four as recommended? I can't possibly give them anymore.
Then I notice something sort of interesting. These fleas are not jumping quite as rapidly or as high. I CAN CATCH IT! That's not right. So, a little theory is forming in my head but I can't be sure until I call my vet the next day (the nice receptionist who talked to me for close to 10 minutes on a busy afternoon deserves an award). Apparently once you've given your animal Frontline, you actually want the flea to jump on him and bite him. This will cause neurological damage to the flea and prevent him from laying eggs. This is why if you only give your animal the Frontline and don't do anything else it takes so long. You will break the cycle but have to wait them out as the already laid eggs hatch. In my phone call I discover (or actually am told) about another wonderful drug that you can give your animals that will kill all the fleas that jump on them for a period of 24 hours. Yes, they got that too. I am simply at my wits end with the flea thing and nothing short of skinning the dogs is too much at this point. As of today (I believe) I am truly flea-free. Just in time for my beautiful nephew to visit me this weekend.
Let this be a lesson to all of you organic-minded people out there: It is possible to get rid of fleas with natural and organic treatments. However, you will also have to live with flea bites on yourself and your animals for at least a month, maybe more. No matter how much I hate using chemicals in my house, this was simply unacceptable to me after desperately trying for 2 weeks to do everything I could and then discovering that Aurora (the collie) had contracted tapeworm. This is something that can only happen if she had ingested a flea (according to my vet).
So what does the person who is anti-chemicals in the house do in this situation? Get all the animals out of the house, close all dry food inside the fridge (luckily I haven't shopped much lately and there was room), bathe the dogs with flea shampoo (AGAIN) and spray them with the natural flea killing spray that seems to work (briefly, not a week like it claims), and flea bomb the sh** out of the house. At my mom's house I discovered a live flea on Loki (the cocker spaniel). So, off they go outside and off we go to PetSMart where we buy a different kind of flea shampoo and it's related spray (recommended by the trainers at the store). I'm going to place a free advertisement right here because it appears to be the ONLY thing that has worked. It says "Natural Chemistry" which seems to me to be an oxymoron but whatever, it worked and for that I am thankful. That awful "Hartz" stuff didn't work worth sh** and it smelled terrible too. They were at my mom's house for 2 days and were completely flea free.
THEN, I left leave the animals at mom's house while I went home and cleaned EVERYTHING. And I do mean everything. I put every dish I own in the dishwasher (or, that is, washed the few things that can't go in there by hand but you know...) and placed every thing that could be washed in the washing machine in the washing machine (obviously not all at once, what a mess that would be). I vacuumed floors and furniture and wiped counters and cleaned bathrooms and sprayed the yard (yep, more chemicals) and cleaned Lucina's cage and Loki's kennel all in between putting away clean clothes and dishes. I was very tired.
The next day I went to work and then over to my mom's to pick my now flea-free dogs and bird (thank goodness they aren't bothered by fleas!), take them all home where I am happily playing on my computer when I feel a terrible itching on my arm, look down and see a DA** flea on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I promptly check both dogs. Of course, Loki has one happily crawling on him and I freak out. What can I possibly do at this point that I haven't done? Did I mention that they've already had two doses of Frontline in three weeks instead of four as recommended? I can't possibly give them anymore.
Then I notice something sort of interesting. These fleas are not jumping quite as rapidly or as high. I CAN CATCH IT! That's not right. So, a little theory is forming in my head but I can't be sure until I call my vet the next day (the nice receptionist who talked to me for close to 10 minutes on a busy afternoon deserves an award). Apparently once you've given your animal Frontline, you actually want the flea to jump on him and bite him. This will cause neurological damage to the flea and prevent him from laying eggs. This is why if you only give your animal the Frontline and don't do anything else it takes so long. You will break the cycle but have to wait them out as the already laid eggs hatch. In my phone call I discover (or actually am told) about another wonderful drug that you can give your animals that will kill all the fleas that jump on them for a period of 24 hours. Yes, they got that too. I am simply at my wits end with the flea thing and nothing short of skinning the dogs is too much at this point. As of today (I believe) I am truly flea-free. Just in time for my beautiful nephew to visit me this weekend.
Home Story - 3/12/09
I decided I'm going to start including some of my own stories, what I'll call "Home Story." Often my animals do some the funniest things and I would love to share these wonderful things that happen around my house. After all, this blog is called "Storytime With Tonya and Friends." It's about time I include some stories about us. My original idea was to have my sister post some her stories or chapters from her book on here, that's where the "and Friends" part came from, but I think the idea fell flat with her! I'm truly sad too, she's a wonderful writer (and hopefully reading this too)!
My first story is about the mouse in my house. Yes, I'm almost positive that I have my very own Jerry around here somewhere. A little info on my house might help to begin with. Picture a cute little house on the outside that looks like it could be a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, small living room type house on a corner lot. Ok, now take that house and cut it in thirds. Make the front 1/3 of the house a small one bedroom apartment and the back 2/3 thirds another one bedroom apartment. I rent the back of the house. My kitchen faces the north and the back door (my front door) faces the east. I noticed sometime in the fall, when the wind started blowing more, that my kitchen was fairly breezy. I could literally feel the wind rushing through the cabinets. Everything that touched an outside wall to the north and west had air rushing through it. I put plastic sheeting up over the windows, the cabinets under the sink and the cabinet just the left of that (which is just one large cabinet on the inside). This means, of course, that I can't use these cabinets but it's better than the wind rushing in. It doesn't completely kill the wind though. I have a refrigerated utensil drawer. I kid you not. When it's cold outside, I could freeze Popsicles in my utensil drawer.
Now recently I found mouse droppings in one of my drawers in the kitchen. Needless to say this freaked me out and I cleaned everything in the drawer. I was curious though, why I wasn't seeing signs of the little guy anywhere else. When my mom had mice in her house, we saw evidence of them everywhere. Why only this one drawer?
One night I was sitting on my couch reading. The whole house was pretty quiet and heard this scratch, clank, scratch sound coming from the kitchen. It seriously sounded like someone trying to get in the house. I live with two fairly noisy dogs, so I can't imagine anyone believing they can break into my house but I was still a little freaked out. I went into the kitchen and noticed the sound seemed to be coming from the cabinet under the sink. I opened the doors only to see...A MOUSE! The damn thing is scurry down a little hole in the floor of the cabinet to get under the house!
Now remember when I said I put plastic sheeting up there? This means not only can I not use these cabinets, but also that the mouse has no way to get to the rest of my house unless he makes new holes. I've seen a teeny little hole going to the drawer where I found the droppings so I guess that's how he got there but I don't believe he can get to any other part of my kitchen. I even closed the dogs out of the kitchen one day while I was at work and put out some food on the floor. It was still there when I got home. I'm pretty sure if he could have got to it, he would. Mice love people and dog food.
My cocker spaniel, Loki, aparently has noticed our newest resident. Every morning now when I get up and go make my coffee, I have to kick Loki out of my way because he has his nose stuck under the cabinet. I can only figure he either hears or smells something back in there and is just WAITING for it to come out. I dare you, he seems to be telling it. He has to be forced out of the kitchen, because god forbid he not be in there if it does decide to tempt fate and show itself. After coming back in the house from doing his business, he literally RUNS to the kitchen to stick his nose in his spot. It's starting to get a little disturbing. I haven't seen any evidence of the little guy in a couple weeks, but Loki seems obsessed with him. See for yourself:
My first story is about the mouse in my house. Yes, I'm almost positive that I have my very own Jerry around here somewhere. A little info on my house might help to begin with. Picture a cute little house on the outside that looks like it could be a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, small living room type house on a corner lot. Ok, now take that house and cut it in thirds. Make the front 1/3 of the house a small one bedroom apartment and the back 2/3 thirds another one bedroom apartment. I rent the back of the house. My kitchen faces the north and the back door (my front door) faces the east. I noticed sometime in the fall, when the wind started blowing more, that my kitchen was fairly breezy. I could literally feel the wind rushing through the cabinets. Everything that touched an outside wall to the north and west had air rushing through it. I put plastic sheeting up over the windows, the cabinets under the sink and the cabinet just the left of that (which is just one large cabinet on the inside). This means, of course, that I can't use these cabinets but it's better than the wind rushing in. It doesn't completely kill the wind though. I have a refrigerated utensil drawer. I kid you not. When it's cold outside, I could freeze Popsicles in my utensil drawer.
Now recently I found mouse droppings in one of my drawers in the kitchen. Needless to say this freaked me out and I cleaned everything in the drawer. I was curious though, why I wasn't seeing signs of the little guy anywhere else. When my mom had mice in her house, we saw evidence of them everywhere. Why only this one drawer?
One night I was sitting on my couch reading. The whole house was pretty quiet and heard this scratch, clank, scratch sound coming from the kitchen. It seriously sounded like someone trying to get in the house. I live with two fairly noisy dogs, so I can't imagine anyone believing they can break into my house but I was still a little freaked out. I went into the kitchen and noticed the sound seemed to be coming from the cabinet under the sink. I opened the doors only to see...A MOUSE! The damn thing is scurry down a little hole in the floor of the cabinet to get under the house!
Now remember when I said I put plastic sheeting up there? This means not only can I not use these cabinets, but also that the mouse has no way to get to the rest of my house unless he makes new holes. I've seen a teeny little hole going to the drawer where I found the droppings so I guess that's how he got there but I don't believe he can get to any other part of my kitchen. I even closed the dogs out of the kitchen one day while I was at work and put out some food on the floor. It was still there when I got home. I'm pretty sure if he could have got to it, he would. Mice love people and dog food.
My cocker spaniel, Loki, aparently has noticed our newest resident. Every morning now when I get up and go make my coffee, I have to kick Loki out of my way because he has his nose stuck under the cabinet. I can only figure he either hears or smells something back in there and is just WAITING for it to come out. I dare you, he seems to be telling it. He has to be forced out of the kitchen, because god forbid he not be in there if it does decide to tempt fate and show itself. After coming back in the house from doing his business, he literally RUNS to the kitchen to stick his nose in his spot. It's starting to get a little disturbing. I haven't seen any evidence of the little guy in a couple weeks, but Loki seems obsessed with him. See for yourself:
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