Weight Loss Secret

We have a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog, Max.  He is a runt for a Berner, but is beautifully colored  and according to the vet weighs just the right amount.  According to her, you should be able to feel the animals ribs but not see them.  The interesting thing is that Max has a ton of extra skin.  You can pull up gobs of it.  He seems to need a tummy tuck very badly.  Of course with all of his hair, you would never notice.  So the question is how can a dog that eats constantly and sleeps in any of his spare time have such a svelt figure.

Yesterday, I realized the answer: his tail is in constant motion. We actually sometimes call him Flip because that is all his tail does: flip, flip, flip.  So I'm thinking that this is the dog equivalent to the person who can stop shaking his leg or tapping his hands.  Maybe if I start to become figitty, I too can become fit and sexy.

Sewing Help

Let me introduce you to another member of our family, Bandit. As I I created my Little Dresses for Africa yesterday, he couldn't help but get involved. Of course, I'm not sure if he was more of a help or a hinderance.

What to do when a porcupine raises his quills?

Sorry that I haven't posted in a few days. We have been traveling, I will tell you more in the next couple of days, but I wanted to show what we came by along our route:








Mind you we have seen porcupines in the zoo, but never up close and personal. As you can see, when DH tried to take his picture out his window, Mr. Porcupine became a little camera shy and raised his quills. This was the only picture we took before we decided to move along. Of course, when I look at this, I thought how useful quills could be on humans. When someone was annoyed or out of sorts, we would know to avoid them just by quill position. Just think of all the fights and uncomfortable conversations you could avoid.


Porcupines, by the way, are rodents. He is a mammal and dines on plants (herbivore). Porcupines cannot shoot there quills and regrow quills as they loose them. One of Mr. Porcupine's relatives actually can grow quills up to a foot long. He does not have quills on his under belly. When a baby porcupine is born the quills are soft but harden within an hour or so.

Helping your children fufil their dreams

Have you ever been blessed to see one of your child’s dreams come true in front of your eyes? DD and I were up at the horse rescue brushing one of the horses when the owner of the shelter asked DD if she would like to help bring in one of the new horses. Bringing in a new horse at a rescue is not as easy as it sounds. The poor things have been horribly abused and come with various different issues. Buckaroo has only been at the rescue for about a week. He is a beautifully mixed breed pony (FYI – pony does not mean young hours, but describes the height of a full grown horse. . . In case any of you are as horse illiterate as I am.), but is very skittish. Vicki, the owner of the shelter, has had a very difficult time getting his lead line on him so that she can bring him to his stall and believes that this is a tell for some of what this poor horse has experienced.

Dd went out to the coral with Vicki. Vicki explained about not squaring off to the horse and about stopping before he was spooked to “take off the pressure”. If he bolted, she explained they needed to shoo him so the horse thought that it was their idea and not the horses. Vicki worked with the horse first and then had DD try. It took quite awhile and several restarts, but they accomplished it. And then to what would seem crazy, Vicky released the horse again. She explained that she wanted him to feel safe and to that the lead line meant being caged. So then she let DD not just help her, but take the lead and try on her own. It was like watching magic. Souls coming together. Vicki encouraged DD to bed over and breathe into the horses nostrils in a replica of how horses greet each other. DD did a wonderful job and the horse was put to bed without issue. DD was easily able to lead the horse from the coral to her stable for the evening. I felt blessed to see this and can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be her having her dream of not just caring for horses, but truly becoming one with them come true.

Right now I can hear her playing her keyboard upstairs . . .Life is good. . .I think she is starting to see some of the benefits of continuing to homeschool, which, by the way, is what she has chosen to do : )