After target practice today, we pulled over to the Everett Bowman Rodeo Grounds where a practice session was underway for an upcoming rodeo event. There are a couple of cowboys in the photo that are doing some calf roping practice. Click on the image to enlarge.

Compost red wiggler worms slow down their consumption of organic scraps in the wintertime, but we humans keep producing the scraps. So, to reinforce the worm workload, we ordered a thousand more red wigglers from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.

Image - the compost bin after introducing the new worms. Click on the image to enlarge.

The worms arrived in the mail today, so to get things started, I gave them a “drink.” The worms are packed in dry peat and come in a bag (see insert in photo). The next step was to dig down below the organic scraps in the compost bin to the layer of worm castings below. I added some moist garden soil and put the ball of worms on top of the soil. The instructions that come with the worms say to cover them with a wet newspaper. The worms will absorb the moisture and begin to crawl into the soil and thence start consuming scraps within 48 hours.

When we returned from running errands today, we were greeted by a covey of quail on and around the courtyard wall. We have seen them do this before, but this is the first time my camera caught them in the act. When we first arrived, there were five or six on the wall but as I approached with the camera, they started to retreat toward the wash. Click on the image to enlarge.

You may recall that our two Min-Pins got into some rat poison on November 16th during our visit to the California House. We immediately took them to the California vet for treatment. The vet gave us a regimen to follow and sent treatment history and recommendations for our Arizona vet. Since then, we have been following the dosage of vitamin K-1 until last week when the medication stopped.

Today, we took them to the Arizona vet for their last visit and blood tests (we hope). After the exams, the vet told us that everything looked good and she would call us with the results from this last coagulation test. I’m sure that the little dogs will be much happier with fewer visits to the vet.

When the weather gets gloomy, Beethoven likes to snuggle under his blanket. Click on the image to enlarge.

Too much football, family and food to blog. Have a nice day!

We went to the County recycle center today to turn in aluminum cans. After that, we did some grocery shopping. We left the dogs in the fenced-in patio while we were doing errands. When we got home, we discovered to our horror that the little dogs had found some rat bait in a bucket on top of a small table. Somehow, they got up on the table and drug the package out. We’re not sure how much was left in the package, but it was sure all gone now.

We called the vet and they advised bringing the pets and the package of bait immediately to the animal hospital. To make a long story short, the vet induced both of them to vomit and then gave them an activated charcoal treatment to absorb any residual poison in their gastrointestinal tracts.

Bottom line, there is a 99% chance of them recovering. We have some vitamin K-1 tablets for them to take over the next month or so with some follow-up visits to our Arizona vet.

This nice Boston Terrier showed up unexpectedly at our back screen door this morning just after I finished taking our dogs for a walk. She was wearing a harness but there were no tags or other identifying information. She was friendly and just wanted to meet and greet our dogs.

Image - “Oreo” courtesy Damsel. Click image to enlarge.

Eventually, we could hear someone up on the hill behind us calling out, “OREO!” It was her owner - I called back and told him that we had the dog. I walked her up the wash where the owner met us and took custody of her.

We saw this roadrunner on our way back from taking the dogs to the park. It was about 500 feet down the road from our house. I got out of the truck to try and get a closer picture but the little guy ran down the road (what else would a roadrunner do?) into a thicket. Click on the image to enlarge.

We took Bear, Cabela and Bay Bay to the Wickenburg Dog Park today. The dogs all enjoyed it including little Bay Bay who decided to get in the water tub. Click on the image to enlarge.