There's Hope!

Today's forecast is decent for us.  Well once we get past the 30% chance of snow flurries early this morning.  There's a skiff of ice on the dog pool.  But......the big thing is....IT ISN'T RAINING!!

Running Loose

Yesterdays's run went well.  We were late getting started, as we both forgot to eat our breakfast early enough.  Turned out that the timing was good though, as although it was raining lightly on the ten minute drive to the dyke, it didn't rain noticeably while we were running, but started again right as we were finished and were doing our stretches. Couldn't have worked out better.  Started off with Luna off leash.  We are in a regional park, and yes, she's supposed to be on leash.  There wasn't a soul in sight, and once we got running she stayed on the top of the dyke with us.  Eventually we had to go down on a trail that was closer to the river, to pass by the sewage treatment plant.  The wind was blowing the wrong way:(  We stayed on the lower trail once we were past and into clearer air.  We spotted our first people, heading our way, with a dog.  Luna was still off leash, and so was that dog.  As they got closer they shouted that the dog, a small Sharpei, who was coming ahead to greet us, was friendly (don't they all say that?).  I just told them that Luna would tell him to get lost, which she did. I had planned on putting Luna on leash, but left it a bit too long.  Just after that a quad with two people on it appeared around a bend in the trail.  Busted!  I knew it was the parks guys, so quickly fumbled around and put Luna on the leash, and they just smiled at me as they passed.  Not sure what happened when they caught  up to the other couple.  Further along when we got to the parking lot near the Mission Bridge, we made a 'Pit' stop.  And then the Sharpei came running out of the trail we had been on.  He was running around like he was lost, I tried to call him to us but had no success.  We were at the halfway point, so just started running back down the dyke.  We did eventually come across the dog's owners, and the dog had run back down the trail and joined them just before we got there.  The guy said that the dog had just suddenly taken off, and even then, after he had come back, he wouldn't come close enough to be caught.  Leashes were meant for dogs like that.

We were happy with the run.  Meredith had been having some knee pain.  After watching The Perfect Runner, she was trying to run less flat footed, and more on the balls of her feet.  She said her knees felt pretty good at the end.  7.4 kilometers in 40 minutes of running, and 14 minutes of walking.

This morning it wasn't raining, it was snowing.  Then it turned to rain, then there was snow mixed in.  Global warming, wherefore art thou?  Must be back east....26 C predicted for Winnipeg today, and 23 C for Ottawa.  That's above zero, not below.  That's summer weather.  My sister is coming out from Ontario next week, hopefully she'll bring a bit of warmth with her.

Rambling Randomly

I am fed up to here (holds hand at neck height) with rain.  It's been raining just about every morning for what seems like weeks.  I know it's not, but it seems like it.  Actually, I do remember seeing some blue sky one morning not too long ago when I got up, but by the time I got outside it had disappeared, and guess what, it was raining again.

Here's two pictures taken taken late Thursday afternoon, within a minute of each other.  To the west it has cleared up, and the sun actually shone for a bit, and to the east is the storm that has just passed over, with it's rain, hail and thunder.  Apparently Jake glued himself to Meredith's leg in the kitchen while the thunder rumbled.  I was off to the west, enjoying that sunshine, sort of, and looking at the black clouds to the east and wondering if they were dumping on our place.  

  The blue sky didn't last long, and a couple of hours later, as the sun was setting, we got this rainbow.  It disappeared into the clouds in the middle, and the right side was not as bright at the left, but it was the full thing.

  

Sure, Spring is coming, the grass is growing, the crocuses are blooming, and the daffodils are almost there.  But the temperatures are well below seasonal normal, we had snow on Wednesday, and we have had so much rain that the ground is sodden and still cold.   I started a some kale seedlings in the house.  They are in a south facing window, but are already getting leggy, so I want to move them out to the greenhouse.  Before getting the benches set up in the greenhouse, I wanted to power wash it, inside and out.  This afternoon I dragged the powerwasher out, filled it with gas, gave it a couple of pulls to make sure it was going to start.  Yay for Honda engines.  Then I hooked up the hoses, got the ladder in position, got my rain gear on, and started it up.  I couldn't get any water out, grrrr.  In the end I took the whole nozzle assembly apart, flushed it, and got the water moving through, but then there was no pressure.  It seemed like the pump wasn't working.  I'll have to see if I can get David to have a look at it.  I spent an hour and a half fiddling around with it, accomplishing nothing, so was feeling  just a leeetle pissed off. 

 Normally I would have potatoes planted by now.  The fruit trees aren't all pruned yet.  None of the garden has been rototilled.

I started writing this Friday night.  It's now Saturday morning.  Despite seeing stars out of the window as I was going to bed, guess what, it's raining again.

Hope it dries up by 10am.  That's when Meredith are going out for our training run.  We've done a few runs in the rain just lately. Light misty rain is fine, it's a natural coolant.  Heavy rain not so much.  Today we do our 5 minute warm up and cool down, and 40 minutes of running, split into 10 minute segments with one minute of walking in between.  On Monday we did 55 minutes of running, in 10, 15, 20 and 10 minute segments.  I survived.  My legs were dead at the end of the last 10 minutes, but after doing the 5 minute walk at the end, they felt 'normal' again.  I walk away from those Monday night runs feeling so proud of myself.
On Thursday night we watched an interesting program.  It was called The Perfect Runner.  How as a biped, man evolved into the perfect endurance runner.  How early man used to run his prey down, using endurance, not speed.  If you've got 45 minutes to watch it, it's really quite interesting.  It makes me want to run more, and I feel excited about this morning's run.  We are going to the dyke along the Fraser River, which is not the one where we usually walk the dogs.  It is flat of course, but the footing will be a bit uneven, which brings it's own challenges.  Quite often, for whatever reason, Meredith or I seem to struggle with the Saturday run.  We ran hills on Monday and Wednesday, so flat will be a nice change today.  The Sun Run is four weeks tomorrow.  I'm starting to feel excited.  The organization that is putting on the running clinic has rented a bus.  It costs us of course, but it's easier than trying to get into downtown Vancouver with 50,000 other people early Sunday morning.  I'm hoping that morning dawns cloudy with a nice cool breeze. It'll be here before I know it.

Getting By With Help From Your Friends

I was woken early, before daylight (or maybe I was already awake?) by Luna barking down by the family room door, a floor below and at the other end of the house.  Just a quick sharp bark, to tell whom ever's listening, that she needs to go out.  Seems that the only one ever listening is me.  The only reason I can figure that she goes to that door, which is not a door that we go out very often at all, is because it was the first door she was let out of when she came here.  Sometimes it only takes doing it once to teach something to a border collie:)
I dragged myself out of bed and called her up and let her out the back door onto the deck, with it's nine stairs that leads to the patio and the back lawn.  A few minutes later I opened the door to let her back in, and heard a sheep bawl.  A rather feeble, mournful bawl.  Sounded like The Fat Ewe.  It was rather weird. There was no need for them to bawl, they had access to the hayfield, they hadn't been getting any grain, so weren't expecting any.  I opened the door again, and another mournful bawl, and The Young Ewe bawled at me as well.  Time to take a look.  There were no shoes near the back door, and I didn't want to go downstairs which would cause a mad rush of border collies, because SOMETHING EXCITING MUST BE HAPPENING OUTSIDE.  I figured I'd just tiptoe across the gravel driveway in my bare feet and nightie, and see what I could see.  Thankfully there was a flashlight in the kitchen.  I did take note of a few frozen snowflakes on the deck.  When I get across the driveway, the two aforementioned ewes stared back at me through the gate, but I could hear some banging from in the barn.  The Old Ewe must be stuck in something.  So I figured I'd already come that far, what the heck.  On I went, through the gate, tromped through the mud and sheep muck to the barn, where The Old Ewe was flat on her side, legs flailing, unable to get up.  Heaved her over, and pulled her up, and tromped back through the muck to the driveway.  (Larry asked me later why I didn't go up the driveway and through the barn to the end where the sheep were, which would have avoided most of the muck, but isn't it already obvious I wasn't thinking very straight at that time in the morning?)  

The stuff I  slopped through last night with today's moisture added to it.    Not deep, just slimy.

 There was a hose hanging there, so I stood on the grass and turned it on and tried to spray my feet off.  Got my feet a bit cleaned off, but then the water stopped, as it was just cold enough outside to freeze part of the hose.  Continued to the patio and then stood on one foot and then the other, swishing the opposite one in the water in the dog pool.  Back inside, dragged something out of the clothes hamper to rub my hopefully relatively clean feet dry. No lights were turned on during this whole episode, well other than the flashlight.  Climbed back into bed and actually managed to fall back to sleep for a little bit.  The Old Ewe was not looking particularly thrilled about life this morning, although she did take a bit of grain I offered her, and then later drank quite a bit of warm water with molasses in it.  Time will tell.  But I have to wonder....were those other two ewes really trying to tell me something was wrong?

PS - By this afternoon, between rain and snow storms, (it's been a very weird day weather wise) all three ewes were back out grazing.  The Old Ewe's ears are still hanging a bit low, a sign that not everything is necessarily all right in her world.  April would have been 16 this year, so this ewe could easily be 14 years old.

Look What We Got!

 Luna and I went to an agility trial last night and today.  I think it's been six months since our last one.  Not really sure why we didn't enter in any, well in the Fall it was because we were still doing the farmers markets, but no real excuse for not entering in January and February.  Even this one, which I had planned on attending, well I didn't get my entry done in time.  They even have online entries.  But then it just happened that the lady running the trial had to phone me about something, and in the end she told me to just email her with my entry, so I did.  And we were in.  We had two classes last evening (the trial started at 6pm) and then 6 classes today, which started at 8am.  This meant I needed to be up at 6, but that just seemed too early (I haven't been doing early mornings much lately, well really not at all).  So I set the alarm for 6:15, and then hit the snooze button twice, and then turned the alarm off, and then had to leap out of bed at 6:45.  A bit of a rush, but we were on the road at 7:13, and it is a 25 minute drive.  Just enough time for Luna to do her morning business before she went into her crate which was still there from the night before. I walked two courses, and then we were the fifth team in.

Between last night and today we had 8 runs.  Luna 'qualified' in 5 of those runs.  That means the run was clean with no faults, and was under the allowable time.  In one of the other runs, she didn't qualify, but still came in first place in her group.   To qualify is more important than a placement ribbon.  It is the qualifying runs that allow you to advance into the more difficult divisions.  The red and white rosettes are the qualifying ribbons.  The plain red one is her first place ribbon.  The turquoise ribbon is because she received enough qualifying runs of a certain type, to move her up to the next division. Clear as mud I know.

 But for the Lunatic, this was probably the best trial she has ever had.  Some of the runs were a bit wild and a lot 'not pretty', but what counts in the end was that she got around the course clear and under time.  I don't have any video, just these sad looking pictures.  Because I don't bother to keep the ribbons, I just 'borrowed' them to take this photo, which was on a relatively clean looking table under the grandstand next to where her crate was.  Then the ribbons were put back and we went home without them.

 I tried hard to make her look alert and intelligent, but no matter how many exciting things I talked about...

She found it all verrrrry  boring

And figured she'd just take a nap until I was done

Making Dog Treats

I don't buy any dog treats.  The good ones are too expensive, and the cheap ones, well they're cheap for a reason, mostly because they are full of nothing much that's any good for a dog.

Yesterday I picked up a package of chicken gizzards and one of chicken hearts.  They were at their best before date, so they were 30% off.  That's the gizzards on the left, and the chicken hearts bottom right.  The two big chunks at the top are a piece of beef heart I already had thawed out, and underneath is the last bit of a piece of beef liver I had been feeding the dogs.

I put them in the oven at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Then I turned the oven off, left them in there to  cook a bit more, and then cool off,  and we went outside and did our morning chores and our bush walk.  When I got back to it about 45 minutes later, the chicken gizzards were done enough, so I just cut them into little pieces and bagged them up.

The chicken hearts I cut into four or six little pieces, depending on how big the heart was, and I sliced the beef liver and heart up small.  Each piece is about the size of a pea, or the end of your little finger, or about 1/4 inch square.  The trays went back into the oven.  I had it at 225 degrees this time, and I just left them in there until they were fairly dry and firm, but not hard, maybe an hour or so.  They can be cooked at a higher or lower temperature, but if the temperature is higher, you just have to keep a closer watch on them.  The lower temperature gives you more room for error, and since I tend to wander off and forget about them for a while, it saves them getting overcooked, which makes them really hard. They do harden more as they cool. 

This is some of the beef liver and heart after they are done.

The chicken hearts were quite fatty, and I probably could have left them in a bit longer, but I didn't.  I wrapped them up in some paper towel to absorb the fat and dry them off.

I mixed them all together, put them in a zip lock bag and keep them in the freezer.  So for about $5 of meat, I got 1 1/4 lbs of additive and preservative free dog treats.  They are the perfect size for training, and are soft enough that they can even be broken into smaller bits.  Nelson and Smudge like them too, right out of the freezer.  And I'll confess that I do like liver, so I've been known to eat some of them myself.

I can hear some of you saying 'oh...gross' from here:)

Wordless.....Oops, it's only Tuesday