Hat Tax - Reindeer Games

 

I am looking at the camera, give me the cookie already! 

Wordless Wednesday - Reluctant Participant

 

Travel Tuesday - The Man's 50th Birthday Trip - Santa Cruz de Tenerife

 Our next port of call, was one of my favourites (and one I was most excited about), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Canary Islands.  

After a short walk from the ship to the port, we joined another couple from Austria, for a trip around the island, with the highlight of Teide National Park.

A statue in town

Looking at the city from the port

We had the most wonderful guide on this tour. He took a total of 1 personal photo and made sure to take pictures of us. 

Teide is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is home to Teide-Pico Viejo stratovolcano that is the highest peak on Spanish soil.  It is the most visited national park in Spain an the 8th most visited in the world. It did not disappoint and I would love to go back some day. Here are some pictures from the park.

It was windy and the clouds moved quickly! 

It was so windy, Chris had to hold onto his hat!

Man wasn't dressed right because it was 4C/39F 

This is where some people believe the moon landing was filmed. 

After the park we went to visit a few small towns. We were supposed to wander in one of them for an hour but at this point it was raining soooooooo hard, our group decided to drive around a bit and then go back to the ship a little early. 

There was a beautiful garden in one town

The tour was the perfect introduction to a place I really hope to go back to again.

Next week we will have our first visit to Portugal. 

Mischief Monday - Tis the Season - The Hat Tax Returns - by Lee

 Dear pals,

I kind of hoped that now that I am so old that Lady would skip the tax this year. She said because she cleans up poop every day, she is collecting now more than ever.

Stay tuned for embarrassing pictures of us!

Your pal, the resigned to this Hailey Bug

Nature Friday - The Girls

 Thanks to Rosy and Sunny for hosting this event.

While many of these pictures were taken before the snow hit, the girls as Lady calls them have been around a lot.

We have a unique member, we have dubbed Snow White. She is not the right colour, and is not an albino, but as people who know way more about birds than I do, say she is leucistic one. She has some pigment. (This is the power of the internet, you can share and learn!)

The girls int he driveway

Hailey checking out where they have been on the old deck that we are still working on burning

Turkey marks

Roosting Snow White

If they stay around (and they might, they like our feeders, expect more of them!)

The Hard Phase - by the Lady

Living with 2 senior dogs has reminded me that we aren't good at talking about the challenges of the golden years (of people or dogs if we are honest). We talk about some about the grief when a beloved pet goes to the rainbow bridge, we talk about the challenges of having a puppy but we don't talk talk a lot about living with senior dogs.

While I don't want to dwell on the negative (and to be frank we still have a lot of golden in our days), this phase, especially with our girl, is hard. There are parts of it I hate and I do want to reflect on these, because I wonder if the silence and the difficulty of it all is one of the reasons senior dogs are "dumped" so often. 

Here is a sample night from last week. At 11:30 pm, our girl had an upset stomach on the bedroom floor. I took her out, while Man cleaned. Then I washed the floor. The same thing happened around 2 and around 6. Each time, she made it to about the bedroom door, so it would have been impossible for me to get her outside in time. Some nights, she doesn't make it off her bed. Those thankfully are easier to clean up as we have her sleep on a towel. Almost every day or night we have some sort of accident to clean up. 

I still surprise my people by doing things like this

The Man and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what may have upset her stomach, what the patterns are etc. etc.. She is on a probiotic to help. We are trying to be very mindful of what she eats, however, there is the balance between giving her a great chapter, and the inconvenience of being up in the night, dealing with accidents. We do both work full time and sleep can be important. 

The other loss for me, and the thing that is driving me to want another dog, is the walk. We don't walk far these days. Now that it is cold and the snow is deep, the walks are even shorter.  Some mornings at say 5 am, in the dark, I am less sad about this, but as I write this and look at the beautiful snow and plan to snowshoe later today, I am sad I will do this alone as neither can physically do the deep snow. 

The cost of their medical care is also high. We chose to give them Librela (as it is very helpful for them) and we are extremely fortunate to be in the position to do so. I feel for people who can't support their pets in this way. However, it is a cost. 

While this chapter is hard, I know in my heart I will do it again and have no regrets with the choices I have made that have led me to this moment.  We still have love and adventure and some of the lost habits (counter-surfing, decrease in anxiety) are welcome. Life most of life, it is beautiful and ugly at the same time. 

Thanks for listening friends.

The Lady

Wordless Wednesday - Phod Face