sheepdog

Ah...fun summer stuff, wish I could get in a little of that myself! Here it's work work and more work. Of course, part of that is my fault, I should stop coming up with new ideas for stuff I want around here. Atnother project I just started is a display to hide or protect a driveway beeper so I will know when a car is coming up the drive. I had the hired man fix up an old dog house with a new coat of paint, and I will put the sensor in it to protect it from the elements, and then put some new concrete dog statues I got on our last trip down south out in front of it. We are at least, catching up on the rain here, it started raining yesterday morning about 9:30 am and absolutly rained all day long, not hard, but a slow nice rain that would soak in good.

Thanks for reopening the topic. It's always a challenge for me to rattle on enough to keep up my hosting credits so every conversation we can keep going makes it easier. Otherwise I have to blather on about my weird and rather crazy life that I'm sure would be of no interest to anyone except me of course. My seed room as I call it isn't a green house at all. It's just a space I use to dry my flower seed. Years ago we started building a new kennel building. It's quite large, with concrete floor and concrete block walls. We never finished it and over the years we've started using it for various other projects. The south side is set up for building dog houses and other large projects. The inside of the building is mostly used for storage, dog crates, swap meet supplies, tools, sign painting since it can be fairly dark so I can use my projector to lay out the signs, just all sorts of stuff. Then on the north side on the outside of the building in what would be the outdoor part of the dog runs, we did get it divided up into dog runs, but not all the divider walls got put up. So I have a space that would otherwise be 2 dog runs in which I have a chair I can sit in and large metal trays that can catch unde the arms of the lawn chair so they are secure and I can sit there comfortable and hand shell all the flower blooms that I pick for seed. I have about a dozen large screens that I picked up at the swap meet, some regualr window screens, and even several full size screen doors. After I harvest my flower seed heads, I spread them out on the screens to dry. I keep them all in my seed room, where they are actually out in the open air, but are protected from the rain. One of the divider walls is a well braced up concrete form, it makes perfect shelves for my jars of dryed seed. The area is also protected from most of the wind, so I can shell the seed without it blowing away, but because it is covered, it stays pretty cool in there and is a comfortable place to work in the hot part of the afternoon. I have a really huge flower bed, I'll post a picture of it I took already this year, and it takes a lot of seed to plant it. It would cost many 100's of dollars if I had to buy all the seed especially at todays seed prices. It's a pretty big project, but having a room set aside just for that job makes it a lot easier and efficient. I'll attach 1 pictures, one that will show the length of the bed, the other is a close up of the flowers

Well, I have had quite the week. Started off Saterday with an out of state road trip to purchase a new dog. Aside from a little rain that went pretty well. Dog seemed calm and contented with us, we just had him loose in the back of the car. He has to be quaranteened for some time before I can put him in with my dogs to assure he is healthy. We got home near midnight so I put him in a pen in the new kennel building that I'd allready gotten prepared for him. Early sunday morning we headed out to the swap meet and did some shopping in the big city, I was in need of several things, a new shop vac and a bucket of Thompsons Water seal. (Had I known how much of that stuff I was going to use over the years I would of bought stock in the company!) By the time we got home from shopping I was dead tired and decided a nap was in order. Was sleeping pretty sound severa hours later when the neighboor called and said 2 of my dogs were under his car and were trying to bite them when they walked by. So we drove over there and found 2 of my renter's pups under their car. So we drove on down to his place to see if he is home, which he wasn't, and while we were turning around the front wheel of the car dropped off in a hole and we got stuck. Poor hubby had to walk all the way home to get the tractor to come pull us out. In the meantime I was checking out the renters trailer. I'd heard a rumor he was going to move out and I found the electric meter had been pulled and I had a pretty good idea he was leaving. I was just sick about the place. The weeds in the yard are nearly head high. And there is so much garbage thrown around that you can't even put a foot down on the ground without stepping on garbage. I looked in one of the broken windows, didn't go in, but you couldn't even see the floor for garbage. There was a mattress down on the front room floor and there were cats laying all over it. Never saw anything so nasty in my life. How in the hell can people live like that? The husband in the home has only been working for a few months, besides the part time work he did over here to pay his rent. Even the days he worked here he never put in more than 3 hours at a time. The wife does not work at all. They have 5 kids. And I can very well tell you, if I kept my dogs in a kennel that looked as bad as that house did, I would be in jail. Yet they can raise children like that? What in the hell is wrong with people? I understand that children are messy, but there is a big difference between a place being cluttered and being downright filthy. Might be different if they both had jobs and were at least trying to work for a living, but they aren't even doing that. I called him and finally after 2 days heard back, yes, he is moving and he said he would come back and clean up the mess but honestly, I am not holding my breath he will do it. I sure as hell hope so, because I wouldn't even go in the place, I'm allergic to cats, it would kill me. Not only is the place trashed, he left his dogs and cats there too. He said he comes out occasionally and dumps out a bag of cheap dog food for them. I did see some dog food spilled out on the driveway, but it had been partially washed away by the big rain we had and of course, it was wet and will soon rot or spoil. He said he was going to turn them over to a no kill shelter, and asked if I wanted the dog he got from me and her 2 pups so I said I would take them back, they are Komondors and have no place being in an animal shelter. So, last night I was waiting on some customers to pick up a puppy, and I was trying to figure out the best way to bring the 3 dogs over here. So weird, when I came up to the house to get something, one of the pups was just laying there on my front porch like he belonged. I thought that was pretty strange, how he just appeared like that. I gave him some food but when the people came to look at the puppy he was all over them and since he is a flea bag I had to go move him away from them so my pup didn't get all full of fleas. I gave him a good bath this morning and we have fixed a place in the barn to keep him until he decides that this is now his new home. I went over to see if I could get the other pup and the mom, but couldn't find either one. Hopefully they will turn up soon. With everything else going on it was monday morning before I had a chance to mess with my new dog again. I took him down a hot dog for a treat and when I went up and started talking to him he actually started growling at me. Surprised the heck out of me! This is totally out of charector for this breed. I left him the hotdog and decided to try again later. Once again he started growling at me. I just couldn't believe it. There wasn't much else I could do, I have to be able to handle him, so I just went in with him anyway and started petting him. He didn't really stop growling, and jerked his head back when I petted him but at least he didn't bite me. For which I was glad, he is a large dog, about 85lbs and could of taken a fair sized chunk out of me. At any rate, he was much better this morning, he didn't growl at me when I went in to pet him, so we are gaining on it anyway. I guess he was just freaked out the first day. Needless to say it's going to be a crazy time for awhile around here. 2 more half wild dogs to catch and bath, another tempermental one to tame, and that's on top of everything I have to do every day anyway. My big worry is that mess next door, and if the guy will come back and clean it up. I have all I can do here trying to keep this place looking half way decent.

I would really love some input from everyone here to help me design the ultimate puppy playpen. My goals include not only socialization for the pups, but also physical and mental stimulation. I want to build a play or exercise area that will help develop young pups into becoming the very best companions they can be. When my pups go to their new homes I want them to be friendly, confident and less stressed by new situations. The more exposure to different sights and sounds they get when they live here the easier it will be for them to adapt to new surrounding when they go to their new homes. What would you, as a pet owner, like to see a breeder do with their pups that would help develop their full potential? When you bought a new puppy, what kind of things did the pup have problems getting used to when you first got him or her? I have some general ideas on what I want to accomplish. For starters, I want the pups to experience a variety of flooring surfaces. Separate areas for gravel, grass, sand, concrete, basically any outdoor surface they might in the future come in contact with. Since it will be an outdoor area, I’m not sure how I could include indoor type surfaces like carpeting or linoleum that would hold up, perhaps indoor/outdoor carpeting might work, but soggy shag carpet would never do. I plan to build a small, puppy size deck, with stairs to walk up to it, maybe a child’s slide to come down. Some small tunnels to crawl threw. Also want to include a water fountain for the running water sounds. Perhaps a bell with a rope chew toy attached that would ring when they played with it. What other ways could I make strange sounds part of the experience? Seems like I’ve seen some motion detector type ornaments that might be cool, like a frog that croaked when a pup went by it? I have even had a few wild notions about using a section of Plexiglas as part of the exterior fence, and getting a decorative small chicken house with a pair of Banty chickens in it so they can become accustom to birds. Direct contact would be a no no of course, but at least they could see and smell them. I probably have a squirrel or 2 around here I could coax to come to a feeder. I feel a bird feeder would bring contaminants into the area, so that probably isn’t a great idea. Any ideas or input would be appreciated. Any suggestions, for types of toys, or anything else will be appreciated.

I'll just start it over, You don't have to unlock it. Sorry I was away from home for a few days and not keeping up with the board here. That happens a lot with me. Always seem to be matters more pressing. Did an out of state road trip. To buy a dog of course. Why else would I go anywhere? government transparency tackling tax evasion ongoing Syrian crisis I have a lot to say about government transparency! We need a heck of a lot more of it. We do not need our government spying on us, we are the ones that need to be keeping an eye on them. When they won't allow the citizens to use our national parks and they will give money to make stupid line dancing movies or to show people what it feels like to be a cow, we dang sure need to be keeping an eye on them! Who is the idiot responsible for passing out this money for grants that are totally stupid to start with? They won't take care of the vetrans who did their duty but will gather and store information about us for 40 years, including every picture of our cars going threw a traffic camera, all our emails and phone calls. All this with no control over who has access to this information. All that can be used as evidence against us at any time they choose to paint a bullseye on any citizens back. And don't think I am a conspiracy theory nut, I have first hand experience at what the government will do to you if you ever piss them off. Say your not doing anything wroung and you don't care if big brother is watching you? Better think again. What if you want to run for office, or even get a better job and someone finds a picture of you sitting in traffic picking your nose? (or something like that) What would that do to your campaigne? You can bet if you have someone running against you, or trying for the same job, if they could get their hands on that information they would darn sure use it against you. Now as to tax evasion, well, they way they waste what money they do get, I honeslty don't care if they get all they think is coming to them anyway. When they make the tax laws so complicated nobody understands them and you have to hire your taxes done, things are just too complicated. If they would simplfy the tax codes, or find a different way to collect tax that problem would be solved. As for the Syrian crisis, I don't know enough about that situation to make any intelligent comments. Say, why is it exactly we have world organizations like NATO anyway? Isn't it their job to handle these situations? Oh, wait, they are busy trying to unarm United States citizens and steal our property to deal with Syria!

That's ok, you can talk about your garden too! You can talk about anything! Shucks, just talk! Well, we finally got some badly needed rain here. Things were about to dry up and blow away. Sure glad I have a good well to water plants from. But now I won't have to waste electricity for several days pupmping the water out to keep up with all my plants.

Bummer you missed the drink and movie! But I know the feeling myself. Sometimes you are just too tired to care anymore. I wish it would rain here too, boy is it ever getting dry! I had some hopes day before yesterday, it clouded up suddenly and started to thunder. I was working at getting my seed room cleaned up and ready for the new season so just as it started to rain I put a little bowel out in it so see how much rain we were getting, since I kind of have to keep track so I know how much supplemental watering I will need to do, and we barely got an eighth of an inch. Pretty dissapointing.

Haven't heard from Velma much lately either. You might be right, she could just be taking a break, but our fearless leader OpaQue is present and accounted for lately. For which I am greatful, my site went down the other day and he had it fixed in a flash!

Your probably right, though he did make his first post in English, and even I had no problems in understanding what he meant, thought his English was pretty good. Wish he would of stayed, we could sure use some fresh faces and new folks around here! I keep hoping for another dog breeder to sign up here, or at least another farmer!

Here is a picture of the pathetic excuse I have for a garden this year. So tiny I'm almost ashamed of it. It is exactly the size of a 1984 Ford conversion van. I know this because our old van was parked in this exact spot for several years, and I'd been trying for ages to get it moved back somewhere out of site instead of right along the driveway where it was. I tried really hard to get the hubby to plow up our real garden this year, to no avail. We have about an acre of ground fenced off on the property next door where I used to live that I had been working on and building up the soil for several years. It's a really nice spot, and certainly big enough to plant any and everything you would ever want to grow. HIs excuse this year was that we have renters over there now, and they have a bunch of kids that are pretty wild, and he was afraid that they would just get into it and tear it all to pieces. The renters had actually tried to plant some stuff one year and their boy pulled up all the plants. I can understand how putting that much work and effort into a garden to have it destroyed by some little hooligan would tend to really upset the garden owner, so I suppose he had a point, but I have a lot of things I would like to plant this I simply do not have room for here. Watermelons for one in particluar, they take up a lot of room, and they have been really expensive this year. At the swap meet last week they were $10, which I think is just crazy. Especially since they are relatively easy to grow. So anyway, I am stuck with this tiny spot. Oh well, maybe next year. You can see I tried to protect it with some chicken wire. I've been blaming the wild rabbits on the destruction of a number of my plants, so I put that around them. Then come to find out, when the pepper plants I had set out got stripped to bare stalks it was one of those huge green tomato horn worms. I didn't think they ate pepper plants but all the peppers I set out this year got stripped by them. And they were hot peppers too!

Your welcome! I'm glad that at least someone got some benefit from this complete insanity. It is funny I suppose that they could come up with something this stupid to spend money on. This I think is actually a double dose of stupid. This was done so people would feel bad for the cows we eat, to encourage them to stop eating meat. But our government also spends money (or used to) to help farmers raise beef.

Well, considering the lousy topic titles I come up with I sure can't fault him for the warning title! So what happened to Vitalii? One post and gone? He seemed to have a good enough grasp of English to fit right in here.

Very good advise. Many people don't take in near enough water any time of year, let alone in the summer when you need even more. I know when hubby and I got together I used to worry about him a lot, he was one of those people that drink maybe 2-3 cups of coffee a day and maybe half a glass of water. If that was all I drank I'm sure I would dry up and blow away. He's doing a lot better now, and I think it makes him feel better, not that he would admit that I was righ tof course. I personally drink a lot of fluid, though most of it is ice tea. Probably a gallon and a half per day. And I usually drink a little water first thing in the morning, and a big glass at night before bedtime to take my vitamins. So I think I keep myself pretty well hydrated. And while we are doing public service announcments, let me remind all of you that it's not only humans that need lots of water in the summer. Don't forget to make sure all of your pets have clean fresh water available to them all day too!

Well I for one am certainly glad you are back among the living. How is your health these days by the way? Hope things are going better for you. Funny about all the site problems here lately. My site was down for awhile today, but I sent in a ticket and it was back in a flash thank goodness. But it seems like now that things are slow here there are more gliches than there used to be when we had tons of traffic here. Seems like it should be the other way around, but the slower it gets the more things go wroung. I just think that's kind of weird.

T'Pel is one year old last month. She has a really hard hair coat, so I had never clipped her. I kept hoping I could keep it stripped out, but that's a complicated grooming tecnique that I just don't have the hang of yet, so finally last week I took the clippers to her. One of the other reasons I didn't want to clip her is because of her nice hard hair coat, if you clip them that coat tends to get soft over time. The hard coated dogs are much easier to keep groomed up and looking nice without all the extra work. But she was starting to look pretty shaggy, so last week I gave up and clipped her. I have to say, now I'm glad I did. She ended up looking pretty good after all. It bugged me at first to see her that way, but now that I've had a few days to get used to it, I like it a lot better. Will post her picture with the new haircut.

WEll, I got the picture of the original flower from last year to attach to the topic, but not the 2 pictures of the results that grew this year, will try this again. As you can see, there are no flowers in this years growth that even faintly resemble the two parent flowers. Shucks. Oh well can't win them all.

In a post about my garden last year, http://forums.xisto.com/topic/78436-this-year/ I mentioned an experiment I was planning on doing this year so wanted to follow up on that. I ended up with 2 exceptionally beautiful Zinna blooms last year, one is described on the post linked above, I'll post the picture of the other bloom here on this post if I can. Pictures really don't do it justice, it's a beautiful shade of bright pink fading to purple. I was very careful in saving these 2 blooms, dryed them seperatly and carefully shelled them and put them in different jars to save until this year. I wanted to find out if Zinna's breed true to color. I would of really liked to have more blooms like these two. But unfortunatly, this is not the case. I planted the seed from each flower into two different tubs and the pictures below are the flowers I got this year. Oh well, now I know. Never know until you try!

Actually, was trying to start a new topic, but let me see if this works. Well, that worked, now I have to figure out how to do it with a new topic. I did finally find gallery, but didn't see any way to upload pictures there. Thanks!

This one is even more stupid than some of the others I have heard! $748,000 dollars to see what it feels like to be a cow!? Our soldiers who have fought and died for our freedom and to protect our country who can't even get any help and then they spend money on this??? dailycaller.com/2013/07/10/taxpayer-funded-research-lets-people-experience-what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-cow/ Children in this country can't even tour the white house because of the sequester, our seniors are getting medicad cuts, National parks are being closed but they spend money on this? What on earth can we do to stop these morons????

I was just trying to make a post in the lawn and garden forum and when I clicked on the icon to post the picture, I just got a box to enter the url. We used to be able to upload pictures, but now I can't figure out how to do it, is that still an option to do here? Or did we loose that feature in the latest upgrade? Or does the picture have to be uploaded someplace else, like you used to have to do years ago with a site called Photo Point, and some others?

Let me say first, I am not a cat person. Since I am allergic to them, if it was my cat he would just have to heal on his own, because I couldn't physically handle the cat to tape up the leg. He might heal on his own, but the process would be long, drawn out and probably quite painful for the cat. The leg really should be stablized to prevent further damage and to start the healing process. It won't heal back if he is constantly redamaging it. If he is an indoor cat he stands a better chance of recuperating than an outdoor cat would, but even indoor cats jump around enough that he could still continue damaging the leg. Are you even sure if the leg is broken? You should be able to feel it and tell for sure. It might just be a bad sprain, or even a cut on his foot that is making him limp. If it's a cut or a bite on his leg, it will heal ok if you just keep the wound clean. You can make a pretty good splint and cast with a product called Vet Wrap. It's a self sticking elastic wrap. Popcycle sticks make good splints. We had a dog break a front leg once, we wrapped it up this way first, then took it to the vet, when the vet saw it he said he couldn't do a better job himself with it, so sent us home.

Ah shucks, I thought that was a petty good title, better than some I come up with. He is always finding excuses for not putting gravel in the pens. I guess I'm no good at titles. Come to think of it, I'm not good at nameing anything, you should hear some of the crazy names I come up with for my dogs! Many years ago I had a dog I named Donename. Pronounced Doe knee Name. The dog was deaf, so she "don't need name" since she coudn't hear it anyway.

Mrdee, I'm sure you weren't happy, I sure wouldn't be! And I would be worried about what I did wrong and who I offended to get kicked off the site. Anyway, after you click on the red number you got to a page that tries to sell you a domain name, or actually check to see if the domain is available, then under that on the right is the button to click for secure login, after you enter name/password you get another page that should show your account balance, it's right in the middle, one line all the way across the page and it is highlighted in a green box. (or maybe it was a tan box?) It's a lot harder to find than it used to be.

Hi Mrdee, good to hear from you, sorry to hear your account got suspended, I was wondering what had happened to you, hadn't seen you post for awhile. To see your mycents in this new upgrade was tricky for me to find too. Only way I know is to find one of your own posts, then click on the number that is in red just under your name and info, then you have to log in to your account and then look at that page real close, have to scroll down past all the stuff on top and you will finally see it. I hope you get your account straightened out, I miss seeing you here.

Oh yes, definatly warm here! So glad I finally got my pool set up. I thought I was going to croak the week before, it was so hot and I didn't have any way to cool down except the shower, and that doesn't help all that much, in 5 minutes your dry and burning up again, but for some reason getting in the pool actually cools me off and I stay cool at least for a little while. I wish I could see in the dark, so I could work in the cool instead of the heat of the day, but I don't have that capability, so I goof off in mid afternoon, and then after about 5 start working until it gets too dark to see what I'm doing. I do stay away from the bottle though. That will just get you into trouble! I know that all too well!