Hibernating Be Back Soon!

We are taking a short blogging break while we hibernate. We plan to leave our den early February.

Stay safe dear friends! 

-Lee and Phod (and their peeps)

Wordless Wednesday - A Saturday Afternoon Bed Nap

Tongue Out Tuesday

 Waiting for pork belly!

Not Mischief Monday - My Birthday Treats Day - by Lee

Dear pals, 

I wanted to tell you about the wonderful treat I got AFTER my birthday breakfast. I should let you know that I often get pancakes on Sunday morning because I am a completely spoiled girl my people are kind and generous. On my birthday the Man made extra special ones. Their Sunday morning pancakes were peanut butter with chocolate ones, but the Man kept some batter without the chocolate chips for us.  Then he decorated them with whip cream. Mine is in the pink bowl and had 9 dollops of whip cream, because I am now 9. Phod's was the one with the heart. 

The only bad thing (maybe a little bit of mischief on the Man's part) is that he made me wait and wait and wait for this pancake. It was my birthday, he should have just put it down and let me at it. However, I will forgive him because I want more pancakes in the future. 

Finally he left me alone and I licked all the whip cream off before eating the pancake.

It was a nice birthday snack.

-Hailey Bug

Nature Friday - A Random Selection

The deer track in the side yard

A Red John scampering away as Lady approaches to fill the feeders

A cold morning sunrise (it was about -30C when this picture was taken)

Phod playing disc in the extreme cold (it was a short time)

Throw Back Thursday - Lee's First Birthday Picture

This was Lee's first official birthday portrait. It is interesting to note how the highlights in her fur have changed over 8 years! 

Wordless Wednesday - A Boy and His Precious

The Best Chicken by Lee

Phenny, Nelly - I may have killed the chicken, but the carcass is still useful. I (the dog who doesn't play much) have been loving playing tug with it. This was a very special toy!

Mischief Monday - The Ear - By Phod

Dear pals,

I have a very serious problem. I am having trouble with my ears again. They get yucky and I itch them and apparently 'make them a bloody mess' which is not a good thing.

The first terrible thing that happened was the Man has to clean them. I have a love hate thing with this. I hate it but it kind of feels good. I am a very good boy while the Man does it, although I make sure to use a lot of sad eyes. 

In spite of this, they were very itchy on Thursday, so the Lady did the most terrible thing, she left me at home in the cone. (Editor's note: It is kind of smushed because of how it was stored in the closet).  I was a very good boy and let Lady put it on, but then I started bunter her to get it off. She didn't take it off, she just picked up her bags and left. 

I had to wait 87 million years before the Man got home. I bunted him right away and he took it off. I told him how mean the Lady was.  I was miserable. It was a terrible day.  I wouldn't talk to the Lady Thursday night. I was very mad.

I got lucky on Friday as the Man was home sick so he could just monitor me.

I hate to admit it, but the  Lady may have been right to do this because they have been less itchy.

Anyway, that was the terrible mischief that happened in our house last week.

I hope the cone stays in the closet this week.

Your Phoddy boy

Happy 9th Birthday Hailey!

Today's a special day,

A special day for Hailey,

so Hailey bark and Hailey sing,

A birthday is a special thing,

Happy Birthday,

Happy Birthday,

Happy Birthday Hailey!

Today we celebrate our sweet girl's 9th birthday. She is now the oldest dog we have ever had. Our other angels were taken too early. At 9, she is showing no signs of slowing down. I keep joking that she will be 22 before she calms down. 

While I prefer to do her official birthday portrait outside (the contrast of my beautiful black dog against the white snow is one of my favourites), however, given the deep freeze we are in (-30C/-22F), that would be punishing my birthday girl. She is barely tolerating going out long enough to do her business. So instead we took some pictures in the house.

We will celebrate by singing at her too much, and giving her lots of extra treats.

Happy birthday to our love!

H appy

A gile 

I intelligent

L oving

E energetic

Y oungish

Nature Friday - Snowshoeing

Lady's feet

On the weekend, because we can go for a walk in daylight, I decided instead of a traditional street walk, I would take the dogs snowshoeing in the bush behind our house. We were blessed with temperatures sitting around freezing last weekend.  Our neighbour's own this land but are totally cool with us using it. The sound you hear is the crunching of the snow (as it had a hard crust) under my shoes.

Lee loves snowshoeing. Phod doesn't want to be left out but does not love it. I think that is because I make him wear his harness and because he is heavier he sinks more.  In spite of this, as long as the temperature allows I hope we get to go every weekend we have snow! 

Why are we doing this?

Here are some other pictures I captured on my Olympus Tough camera (it is waterproof so the perfect camera to take on this type of adventure - as perhaps sometimes I get pulled over). 

Tracking the deer

Can you spot the wild turkey that flew away as it heard us coming?

Looking up to our house

Hope you enjoyed a walk behind our house. 

This and That Thursday

At the beginning of the week we thought we were going to have to tell you the terrible story about how we had to go to camp on Monday because Lady and Man had to work and then were having dinner with our vet and his family. (The horror of that last sentence is almost too much for us to bear). However, our vet and his family had to postpone dinner, which was good because Man has been quite ill with a bad cold. We have been saved from that for a bit. We are hoping they reschedule for a weekend so at least when they are socializing with the vet we can be at home and not at camp. 

The mice are also back after a quiet 4 weeks. The fall saw at least 20. So far this week 4 have gone in the Man's mouse Uber. 

In other news, the lovely chicken that Nelly and Phenny sent (see Tuesday's post) has met its fate. Lee killed the sound and then took all the stuffing out. She continues to attack the carcass to make sure it has not come back to life. While it is good and dead now, there hasn't been a toy Lee has loved as much for a long time, so thanks guys! 

Chicken parts everywhere. We did remove the plastic for safety reasons right away. 

Where she has removed the insides

Besides he daily chase of the wild turkeys, Phod has been joining Lady during her 30 days of yoga challenge (Yoga with Adriene, which is appropriate because Adriene's dog Benji appears in many videos).   The lighting in this picture is very bright because the Lady does her morning yoga in front of her seasonal affect disorder light.  The blanket you see on the left of the picture was made by Lady's Great-grandmother in the early 1980s (with some help from our Grammie).

This is some of the things we have been up to as we prepare for Lee's 9th birthday on Sunday!

Hope you are all having a good week!

Wordless Wednesday - Sweet Dream

Thanks Phenny and Nelly

The post lady came to our crib . . . in the box was these two wonderful toys, from Phenny and Nelly.

Somehow Lady got this picture upside down and she is too lazy to flip it lol!

Here is how the ball did:

It lasted less than 10 minutes. Professor Lee did her best work on it. Little bits of ball were everywhere, and really smooshed into our bed. It was a great enjoyable mess.

The chicken has still survived, mainly because after supervised playtime it gets taken away (talk about ruining the fun), but it is one of the toys Lee has played with the most, so Lady and Man are trying to make it last. Soon the chicken will not have wings. The chicken is a lot of fun for both the dogs and the people. 

Then the post lady left a package pick up and Lady went to the corner store to pick up our parcel (cause that is where it was left). There was a huge box. 

Inside it was full of treats! Lady and Man said we are very, very spoiled dogs. We think we are just the right amount spoiled.

Thank you Phenny and Nelly for the wonderful gifts. We love them all!

Mischief Monday - Toys, Toys, Toys!

First, insert HBO words here, Lady is frustrated with Blogger. She thought she had figured it out and actually went a number of days commenting, but since Thursday she has not been able to comment again. Sigh! She can comment on non-blogger blogs or blogger ones that are not embedded comments.  So please don't think her lack of commenting has anything to do with not visiting. 

Secondly, our house cleaner (who is a wonderful lovely lady who loves dogs and has 2 of her own) had a death in the family over the holidays and has not been in. To keep Lady on her toes, we have been doing a lot of destruction and making a big mess!

Tomorrow we will share a very specific mess we have made!

Nature Friday - Turkeys on Ice

Friends on Facebook will have seen this, but I know now everyone is on Facebook, so here is a very short video of turkeys walking on ice.  It snowed and then there was freezing rain which made the yard very slippery. For those of us with a little more weight, we could break through the crust, but our little turkeys couldn't. They brought a lot of laughs to our house that day.

Thankful Thursday - Fire - by Lee

I am thankful to have a nice warm fire to sleep by. I am thankful for a blanket in front of said fire. I am thankful that I can rip the blanket up sometimes.  I am also thankful when Lady and Man forget to pick up the blanket and I pee on it.  

Wordless Wednesday - Snuggles in the Sun

Happy New Year!

My Great-grandmother always said the years go by faster and faster as you age (even if some days can feel endless), and I have to say I am sure she is right. Looking back it feels like 2018 happened in wink! To be honest, I don't remember a lot of what happened. We had Emma for 172 days and we had a great trip over the summer and we clearly continued to live. I believe it was the heaviness of my job and how busy the Man was at work that has just made 2018 melt into the past.

Instead of doing resolutions, I am doing word of the year. 2018 was "no" in which I was somewhat successful with. I don't think I said no enough, but when I did I didn't feel bad about it, so that is something. 2018 my word will be 'calm' in hopes of actually getting to remember more of it!

Thanks to Aunt K for this perfect t-shirt!

I spoke to the pups, and they each want to have their own word of the year too.

Phod said it was easy for a word, his word is going to be 'love'. He truly does get suckier and suckier every single day. He slept on the bed with us most of the night a couple times over the holidays. This never happens. He would also like to share his love with the deer, turkeys, etc. who share our yard.

Lee had to think very hard about her word for the year and she landed on 'helpful'. She thought there was more she could be doing to make our lives better, and help make me get to live my word 'calm'. 

She asked I share some examples of her helping:

Watching me cook (I so rarely do it, it was a likely a marvel)

Helping clean up the kitchen when I dropped food while cooking

Supervising my eating - she was there to help me finish it if I needed it.

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To all our friends all over the world, may 2019 bring you peace and joy.