100-Yard Butterfly

That's the category Juan Ma won at the county swim meet that took place in Augusta last night. His name was published in the Augusta Chronicle!!! Click here for article. The article mainly talks about the overall meet winners, but Juan Ma's name is listed as one of the category winners [which is rather exciting!]

We are so proud of him!

So there, there's my bragging for the week!

Eight Feet Got Two Beds

Our dogs have had no beds. When Pellet was a baby, he would get the blanket out of his cage, pull it out and shred it to 8 million strings. After devouring probably about 10 blankets, we gave up on it and his cage became blanket free. Then Cali came along, and we put a blanket in her cage when she was a little baby [you may click here for a reference back up] but then for some reason her cage became blanket free also. 

Somewhere between Cali being super cold this winter (she refuses to wear her sweater - actually takes it off - and curls up in a tiny ball) and being concerned about Pellet's joints (always laying on hard surfaces) we decided to buy them beds. 

This is going to sound like something out of a statistical analysis class, but here it goes:

Pellet smells his bed:

Cali smells her bed:

Cali smells Pellet's bed:

Pellet smells Cali's bed:

They both smells Pellet's bed:

Then they both smell Cali's bed:

Pellet lays on his bed (on his own):

Cali sits on her bed (with help of yours truly):

Here is the 2 minute and 23 second animated version:

Pellet looooooooooooooooooooooooves his bed. He is actually laying on it as I type. I bet his hips and elbows are thanking us for the new bed.

Cali, well, let's just say that for Cali it's a matter of time, she will learn to love her bed (she just doesn't know it yet).

Dyson Wonders

For a long time, Norm and I had been eying the Dyson vacuum cleaners. We had heard nothing but awesome and wonderful things about them. Our only hold back was the price (so super expensive) and the fact that our current vacuum cleaner worked just fine (relatively speaking).

Finally our vacuum died in December. So we hesitantly ventured out to shop for a Dyson. We lucked out and they were on ridiculous discount, so we put our Christmas money (and Norm's birthday money) and made the big leap and purchased a Dyson.

It is hard to describe how amazing this vacuum cleaner is. It not only picks up dog hair from the carpet (along with strings, leaves, whatever) but it also picks up unbelievable (and disgusting) amounts of dirt, dust and whatever else happens to be living in our carpets at the moment.

I thought about taking a picture to upload... but it's actually quite gross and I wasn't 100% comfortable sharing the grossness of our carpets online.

Besides the house and the cars, I think this purchase has been the wisest investment of our funds.

Ice Storm 2011

Earlier this week we were iced in (not snowed in). We spent all day Monday in the house, going outside from time to time to do things such as: check up on the status of the sleet and the ice, break open the frozen trash can, play in the driveway and the road. Video time!

Cali had a blast playing in the ice. If you turn the volume up high, you can actually hear the sleet coming down. Video time!

The satellite signal went out - there was ice on the receiver which apparently messed the signal up, so we tried to knock the ice off. Well, Norm got up on the ladder and literally tried to knock the ice off, I held the ladder and recorded the moment. We were not successful...

Norm's poor car lives outside (as opposed to my car that lives in the garage). The Escape had a nice solid layer of ice. At one point on Tuesday he cranked it so it would start thawing out. We forgot about it and realized it 45 minutes later that the car was still running. It was still mostly frozen.

Although the weather was horrible, we did get to spend two full days together - in a row - something that happens once in a blue moon when all the stars and planets line up (or when the world freezes over, I guess we can say).

Today is Friday and there are still good amounts of ice in the yard, our roof is still all white, and parts of our winding and hilly road are out of control. I think they are predicting normal Georgia weather for the weekend - finally!

A Wonderful Invention

This my dear blog-reading, dog-owning friends is an absolutely wonderful invention. Disclaimer: if you've clicked on the link, please disregard the corny video.

Forget paying the vet to trim their nails (which usually involves something along the lines of knocking Pellet out). Not to brag, but Norm and I do have this nail trimming down to a science.

Get a raw hide
Go in the den (or a confined space) with one dog at a time
Norm tackles dog that's pre-occupied with raw hide
Fern quickly trims all accessible nails with real clippers and follows with the PediPaws file until job is complete and nails are at desired length.

It's almost magical.