Poor puppy had to get her three month puppy shots (she is now 6.8 pounds, by the way), and wasn’t feeling good. She was shivering, so I bundled her up in my lap with a fuzzy blanket. Izzy the cat, who has been slowly reclaiming the house, saw the cue for nap time and joined us. I was shocked! Missy was too tired to show but mild interest before she fell asleep again. Here is the photo progression.
Missy ate well and by the next day was back to her rambunctious self!
I wondered where all the snails went. Actually, I’m still wondering where they were hiding, waiting for the rains before making a mass exodus. They were everywhere: crawling up the siding of the house (one snail made it up two stories), over the patio and the grass, and even on the dog droppings. Wha? Yup. My eldest found masses on the droppings as she was scooping. Interesting.
Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you hope. I had a grand idea of making mask frames (to hold the fabric away from the nose and mouth to make breathing a little easier) with a 3D printing pen. I thought this might help my youngest keep her mask on for longer time periods. I was super enthused and ordered all three types of material to test: PLA plastic, ABS, and flexy.
I used a chenille stick and aluminum foil to make a form for the mask. The plastic (PLA) stuck just enough to temporarily adhere to the form, which made forming the plastic easier. The ABS was harder to work with, but I found making small overlapping circles worked better than making long straight strings. The flexy was interesting to work with as the resulting mesh is very flexible, but it didn’t have enough strength to be a frame. I also did some destructive testing, because I would rather know how it breaks before I sew it into a mask. PLA and ABS do break when pressed flat, but not as much in the areas made of overlapped circles. I settled on using PLA and tiny circles, and managed to make and destructively test one frame before the pen broke. Ugh. I decided to just order some from Amazon. Then the first order was lost. Still waiting on the reorder.
My eldest likes to catch critters. The only one that has ever bit her here was a grasshopper! Here are a few she caught recently in the back yard!
The DNA panel on Missy, our 11-month-old pup, showed an eighth basically unknown. The listed possibilities included terrier, sporting, companion, herding (isn’t that just about all of them?). I am building evidence to support my theory that the last eighth is feline. (To recap, she is half cattle dog, quarter mini poodle, eighth bichon frise.)
Now I’m not sure any self respecting cat would put up with canine romantic attentions, even three generations back, so maybe in her last life she was feline. Or maybe she just identifies as feline in this life. Cats are pretty cool. Everybody wants to be a cat.
