November 17, 2008

Puppy update

The puppies will be 5 weeks old on Wednesday! Time has flown with them & some of them are getting rather large, except for one who is pretty tiny & thin.

She's the one in the photos (which we need to update) that we were calling scar-back, but we renamed her Saphira because my youngest said he didn't like the name scar-back. It fits her!

She's out on the bed now (I'm watching from my desktop)... Theresa is letting her nurse & I'm hoping she's actually getting some milk out of her as we didn't see any signs of any yesterday. We're trying to give this puppy some extra attention & feeding her separately so that maybe we'll get some puppy fat on her... I don't think there's anything wrong with her, she's just small... so the true definition of "runt" probably doesn't apply to her. She's smaller, but is not weaker by any stretch of the imagination (though probably gets run over more than the others because of her size). She's pretty active & was the first to do a lot of things, first eye open (just one that first day, LOL), first to run & walk & she's very alert & interested in us.
We're giving her some extra attention & have been feeding her separately some of the time so that we can be sure she actually eats. Sometimes she eats really well & sometimes she eats a tiny bit or ignores the food. We'll see what happens!

I'll try to get some new photos today. Most of the puppies probably outweigh my food scale (which goes up to 7 pounds)...

Right now she's cuddling up to my oldest son and is interested in his cracker. Time to get her a little food & see if she's interested!

Posted by Jessica at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2008

Dumbledore rest in peace

One of my favorite cats, Dumbledore, died overnight after a 1 month fight with what was either FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis) or pneumonia... we had him on a week of antibiotic & it didn't help.
He was born in 2002 or 2003 and was a pretty funky, spunky boy... he loved to eat & gave me several heimlich maneuvers when he would cuddle with me (his way of petitioning for food) and then he heard someone else open the food container in preparation for feeding all the cats!

We got him in Wal-Marts parking lot (in Gainesville, when we still lived in Valley View) along with his brother (?) Liberty, who is a ragdoll cross... Liberty is still with us & likes to spend most of his time outside.

We think that Melody or Callie (strays, Callie had kittens in March, we still have the 3 kittens) had it. I hope we don't have to deal with any more FIP... it's not certain whether or not the vaccine listed on the site I mentioned would do any good or not.

I'll post photos later as TheGimp is acting up again... that program has to be the ONLY program up or else it locks up or something... arrrgh! He'll be in the same area as Opus in our backyard. My oldlady doggie, Roo (short for Hlao-Roo) is also buried there, she died in October or November 1994 from old age, she was almost 17)... Daphne, a retriever mix, who got run over in June of 1994 is also buried in that area...

Posted by Jessica at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2008

Nerd-Dork-Geek, Oh My!

I took one of those nerd-dork-geek tests and here's how I did:

Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test...

Tri-Lamb Material

65 % Nerd, 30% Geek, 52% Dork


For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.


You scored better than half in Nerd and Dork, earning you the coveted title of: Tri-Lamb Material.



The classic, "80's" nerd, you are what most people think of when they think "nerd," largely due to 80's movies like Revenge of the Nerds and TV shows like Head of the Class. You're exceptionally bright and smart, and partly because of that have never quite fit in with your peers or social groups. Perhaps you've realized, or will someday, that it is possible to retain all of the things that you like about being brilliant and still make peace with the social cliques around you. Or maybe you won't--it's really not necessary. As the brothers of Lambda Lambda Lambda discovered, you're fine just the way you are and can take pride in that. I mean, who wants to be like Ogre, right!?



Congratulations!




href="http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-nerd-geek-or-dork-test">Take The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test at HelloQuizzy

Compare with this, a bit over 2 years ago:

another nerd-geek test

Puppies!

The puppies are 3-1/2 weeks old now & have eyes open & are walking & playing & eating food & no longer look like guinea pigs!
I'm not too happy about the food eating part since they're still pretty young, but we have some problems getting momma to nurse them. If we bring the puppies TO her, she'll nurse them, and we're trying to figure out a sort of schedule for alternating puppies. We wait until we see puppies awake, bring them to her, but I think we need to make sure EVERYONE is getting time on the nipple(s)... we need some kind of system where we write down who nurses & when... and then 1 or 2 times a day, let them have some mushy kibble with yogurt & baby formula & then increase that as they get older... but for right now, I think they need more puppy-milk from mama...

Next entry ought to have some more puppy photos... I've been updating my Flickr page as of about a week ago:

http://flickr.com/photos/9283101@N06/

Gary finally got himself a laptop & is fussing because all the operating systems he wants to play with are on my computer, which is supposed to have a RW cd-rom DVD... but he says it won't burn... it's SUPPOSED to... maybe it's a Linux issue, not a problem with the hardware. I dunno, not my department!! He doesn't seem to care for Ubuntu, which makes sense since it's a non-nerd's operating system, LOL... oh well...

Posted by Jessica at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2008

Puppy Photos, finally!

The new DVD-CD rom drive arrived yesterday & I was able to transfer the puppy/mama photos onto the hard drive... also Evan tried installing Ubuntu. It has a program called F-Spot which I'm HOPING is the answer to my camera-computer communication issues! We shall see!

There's 12 puppies in here (she lost 2, not sure why, but now there are 10):

Theresa10-4a.jpg

Under the house the day after they were born:

puppies-10-16a.jpg

Puppies & mama in doghouse:

puppies-10-16b.jpg

She was so skinny... we'd been feeding her & caring for her for about 10 days before the puppies were born. I'm glad we found her, but wish we found her sooner so we could have fed her more...

Another (a day later):

puppies-10-16d.jpg

Puppies in the hand:

puppyinhand10-19a.jpg

puppyinhand10-19a.jpg

puppyinhand10-19c.jpg

Two pictures of a lapful of puppies:

Puppies-lapful10-22a.jpg

Puppies-lapful10-22b.jpg

Hope you enjoyed them! Sometime soon, I'll be taking photos of each puppy... it's getting easier for me to tell some of them apart now. :)

Posted by Jessica at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2008

Puppies

We have another new pooch! On October 4th, the boys found a dog wandering around town near our property: she was very skinny, scratched up & pregnant. We took care of her, fed her & offered her a blanket on the front porch & a few days later, the local shelter loaned us a doghouse for her, which she stayed in. Her name is Theresa (she told me her name within 10 minutes of meeting her) and she looks and acts like a blue tick coonhound

She had her puppies on October 15th... 12 of them, 2 didn't make it. She had her puppies under our house & on the 2nd night, we brought them in & the doghouse is now IN our house & she's in there with her puppies. 2 of them are black (may have a black & tan/brown coonhound face, not sure, we're being reserved about picking up the puppies and limiting to petting them) and the rest are black-charcoal-grey spotted & white or brown-tan spotted & white...and they have the homely puppy noses... LOL

IMPORTANT: we did NOT set out to bring new puppies into a world already overflowing with homeless animals: this dog was pretty far along in her pregnancy when she came to us so the best thing we could do was take her in & feed her & care for her. We volunteer with our local animal shelter & see how hard it is for them to find homes.

Once the puppies are weaned, we will have the mama spayed & rehome the puppies. We'll probably keep mama.

There's more, but today was a bit of a busy day & I need to make some Satin balls for Theresa. I'll also offer some to Dumbledore, one of our 6 yr old cats who has not been doing well the last few months, he's not been eating well, his breathing is a little labored, he just finished a round of antibiotics & we're not sure if that helped or not. It could be FIP (feline infectious peritonitis or pneumonia or something else. He's still kind of active and sometimes follows me around in the kitchen, but when I offer him stuff, he doesn't do well with it...

We're still working on the camera-computer-communication issues & my CD rom drive isn't working, but I've got another on the way so will be able to transfer pictures that way. It's a little klutzy: I take the pictures, bring the SD card to the store to have the pictures burned onto a CD and then come home & upload the CD media onto the computer & voila. For $2.50 a CD that's not TOO terrible! I'll probably have photos around midweek!

Hope everyone is finding this blog okay! I forgot to post the link for this page on some of my ads on the fiber lists... oops!

Posted by Jessica at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2008

Just testing

to see if this shows up on the public page... if it does, I'll start posting more here since for some reason anything I post on my (main blog) has not been showing updated entries... I hope this one will!!!!! I miss posting & have some photos to share, etc., etc... new puppy that we got in August, etc...

Posted by Jessica at 12:12 PM | Comments (1)