Backyard Jungle Adventure

Lately the kitties have been begging to go outside into the backyard, and usually I will rotate and take one out with me when I am watering the plants since they are not allowed out unattended. The other day Abby and Itty Bitty slipped out while I was heading into the backyard so I figured why not and let the whole gang go outside, minus High Cotton and Ms. Wiggles who were very concerned about the effects the humidity might have on their fluffy white hair. 

Itty Bitty dashed out into the yard only to remember he is a big giant scaredy cat, and he spent most of his time looking around like this to make sure nothing scary was after him.

Abby thinks she is a jungle cat, and out of my whole crew she is the one I am constantly on the look out for because she will dart out a door in a second if given the opportunity. She lives to eat the grass and always makes herself right at home. She likes to pretend that she is a big tough kitty, but once she has had her fun she wants back inside and does not like being left unattended while out in the big outdoors.

Bella went right to the good stuff, the dirt! She didn't waste any time heading for the flower bed where there was no shortage of wonderful dirt filled smells to be had!

Sophie, not one to be left behind, was hot on Bella's trail! I don't know why they do it, but my cats have a habit of pairing off according to color, so while Itty Bitty and Abby were busy watching for bugs in the grass, Bella and Sophie were strolling the flower bed, while High Cotton and Ms. Wiggles lounged on the porch sipping water!

When Bella hit the brakes to stop and sniff the ground, Sophie, never one to miss an opportunity regardless of where the situation presents itself, went in for the butt sniff!! Haha! Seriously, with all the exciting stuff outside, Sophie still could not pass up the chance to get a big whiff of Bella's behind! Sophie "The Perpetual Butt Sniffer" strikes again!

So what! I like sniffing butts, you gotta problem with that?!?!

Never one to be left out, Red was whining up a storm on the porch wanting to be let out into he backyard so he could have fun with the kitties too, so I finally relented and went to let him join in. Red was so overjoyed that he could come out and play too that he saw what he thought was Abby hanging out in the grass, and ran full speed towards what he thought was his bestest buddy. He was wrong, very wrong. 

It was in fact not Abby he was running towards, but Itty Bitty, his mortal enemy! It was too late by the time he realized, and tried to put the brakes on...

Puffed up kitty in 3...2...1...

Just a mere second before I snapped this shot, Bitty had made a almost successful attempt at removing Red's nose from his face! Haha!

I swear you could almost hear Bitty as Red ran away...

And don't you ever come near me again you big dumb dog! Unless, of course, you want your face permanently rearranged!!!

Poor guy, luckily Red was able to shake off his near death experience and enjoy the rest of his backyard adventure. After stopping to smell the flowers...

He found a nice cool dirt spot to relax in where he could keep a watchful eye on the kitties.

Bitty went back to bug hunting in the grass and all was well. All in all, the kitties and Red enjoyed their group outing to the backyard!

Red Goes to College

It's been a crazy and busy past couple of weeks and I have been lacking in my blog postings, if only there were a few more hours in the day! I've been in and out of town the past week, as my brother and I are now in charge of getting my grandmother's home that she moved out of, ready to go on the market. My grandmother has been in that house for about 45 years, so it's a very big job, but thankfully Red loves to come along with me.

Last weekend Red went to college! I was busy with the Nana, helping her get some final things straightened out, so Red got to stay with my brother for the weekend, who is still in college. This was my brother's first test of how he would do with the responsibility of taking care of a dog all by himself, and he failed! Haha! Okay, so I was a little tough on him, but he did forget to feed Red the first day until I called and reminded him! Red is such a good sport, he never begs or lets on when he is hungry, so he didn't even try and clue in Uncle Reyn that he had forgotten his dinner. Initially I had these visions of a crowd of rowdy college boys chanting Red's name, while they prepared a beer funnel for him, but thankfully things went really well and Red did enjoy his time spent with Uncle Reyn.

But Red does love his Uncle, and even though my brother had sworn Red would not be allowed on his bed, Red had worked his magic within minutes of arriving and promptly spent the next few days cuddled up in his Uncle's bed! Haha! Red knows how to work his charms!

They are quite the silly pair, and have similar senses of humor and you never know what you'll find them up to when they get together, haha!

There are no words. Hahahahaha!

The best thing about Uncle Reyn's place is that there is a dog park right across the street, this pleased Red to no end! He loves other dogs, so he was thrilled to make multiple daily visits with the other pups during his stay. Of course, with the lovely hot and humid summer weather in full effect, he worked up quite the stink. And since it is so hot out, I figured there was no better time than to break out the hose for some cooling off and a little stink removal.

Red was all blissed out just enjoying the beautiful summer day.

Hey! What's this green bottle for?

Not cool my friend, so not cool!

Would you put the stupid camera down and get these suds off me now!!

Could he possibly look any more pathetic? Haha!

You owe me lots and lots of cookies for this.

And in the category of 'Pretending to be Killed by a Harmless Medical Proceure,' the winner is...

After some procrastination on my part it was time for Red's annual heartworm test, and with the snake bites as a motivator I took Red in to the see the vet on Monday. After a quick look at Red's nose area, since he seemed to be tender there, it was decided to put him on a round of antibiotics just to be on the safe side since he got bitten so many times. Red was excited because it meant twice daily spoon fulls of peanut butter to conceal the pills in!

Now for the fun part of the visit! Red has built somewhat of a reputation at the vet's for being, just a wee bit overly dramatic. Thankfully he doesn't have an aggressive bone in his body, but even the smallest attempt at being restrained sends him into a panic attack. We've tried the less is more approach and also the opposite, and even the anxiety meds approach, but it all really comes down to wrangling him till he gives in.

Sometimes we luck out, but Monday was not one of those days. After his best impression of a bucking bronco when we attempted to draw blood from his back leg, we gave up and moved to the front leg. The vet took his leg in her hand and readied the needle in the other and prepared to slide the needle under his skin when Red started yelping and crying and literally flailing around like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

The vet, vet tech, and I all just got silent and then the vet goes, "But Red I didn't even touch you with the needle yet!" And I swear to you, Red stopped flailing around, looked down at his arm which had no needle in it and stopped. Hahahahahahahahaha! It was as if he could understand the vet and totally realized that he had been busted totally faking being in pain! Ha ha! We all just died laughing and right after that he let her stick him and draw his blood. I'm thinking that he was feeling a little embarrassed! Haha!

Don't listen to her! It was a big ginormous needle and it hurt really really badly! I'm telling you the truth, I swear!!!

Luckily once this was all over Red was back to his silly happy self boucing around the vet's office looking for the office kitty to give a few friendly nose pokes to! On our way home I decided to take a detour to a little community called Fearrington Village, to stop and take Red for a walk around their cute little community.

 We quickly came upon a very scary site...something that sends shivers down any dogs spine...stone sheep sculptures. Yes, my dog was afraid of the stone sheep.

Red quickly went into bad guy woofing mode...

Danger! Danger! There is a scary herd of grey sheep ahead! Run away, run away!

For a dog willing to take a snake head on, Red is quite the wuss when it comes to encounters with unfamiliar things, haha! Red made it clear he needed some time to think about the scary sheep before we could approach them, so we went around the pond and stopped at the small creek.

Once we made it back around to the sheep, Red had moved into a more curious frame of mind in regards to the sheep, so after some circling and reassurement that the sheep would not in fact eat him, he moved in to give them a good sniffing.

Hmmm...you guys are some shady looking sheep, and I don't trust you one bit!

 

 Never underestimate the power of yummy duck treats...one whiff of those and Red threw his caution to the wind and hopped atop one of the sheep!

::yawn:: These sheep aren't even real, why didn't you tell me this from the beginning!

I look good from up here!

We should visit these sheepies more often, they make great lookout towers!

Once he realized the herd of sheep couldn't eat him he had a blast taking in all the sights and smells. When we finished visiting the sheep and walking around the pond, we headed over to visit the Belted Galloway cows and the guard donkey, which I will post about tomorrow!

**Thanks to PiedmontAnimalAlliance for the post title and for always having the best captions!**

Snake Bite

Red and I had quite the eventful Sunday afternoon.

Red was on the screen porch and started whining like he normally does when he sees a squirrel, so thinking nothing of it, I let him out. He ran straight to the back of the yard into the bushes we have along the fence line. As I stood watching I heard him start growling, which is out of character for him if it were just a squirrel and then like a shot of lightning, a snake shot out of the bushes towards the fence with Red right behind it. Let me just say they don't call them Black Racers for nothing! Ha Ha!

It started shooting up and down the fence line, obviously looking for a way out, and trying to hurl itself over the fence when it couldn't find a way out. When it couldn't get out, it turned to defend itself.

Red went right after it, and cornered it against the fence lunging, barking, growling, and trying to bite it. Once the shock of what I was seeing wore off I just ran into the backyard, barefoot and still in my pajamas,  just screaming my head off telling Red no and trying to call him off, but he was too focused on the snake to even hear me. My mom heard me and came running onto the porch and threw a broom out to me. By this point I could see the snake striking Red in the face and I just was desperate to separate them.

I was able to use the broom as a shield, as the snake was very unhappy at this point, all coiled up and striking at any movement. Once I was able to grab a hold of Red's collar he dropped to the ground and went onto his back, which scared the crap out of me. With the snake all coiled up and staring right at us, all I could think was this snake is going to launch itself right as us both as I'm trying to get Red to stand back up. He wouldn't get up, so while still holding the snake back with the broom I just grabbed Red's two front feet and drug him to the middle of the yard. I guess he was so determined not to leave the snake, that he did the back flop in a effort to keep me from dragging him away. Red doesn't take kindly to what we like to call "perimeter breaches" by certain animals coming into his backyard. Apparently this snake was not on the guest list, and Red wasn't going to leave it alone without putting up a fight! Ha!

Once we were a safe distance I just lifted him up and threw him over my shoulder and ran inside with him. He had blood all over his snout, teeth, and chin. Once I was able to clean him up I was able to see that he only had about three bites, two above his nose and one on the chin. I ran back outside and took a picture of the snake because I thought if I needed to take him to the vet I could show them what kind it was, since I am not well versed in identifying snakes. After a call in to the emergency vet, it was decided that it was a Black Racer, a non-poisonous snake, and all I needed to do was flush out the bites with some warm water and to keep an eye out for any swelling.

I was so relieved is wasn't a more dangerous snake, but Red sure didn't think things through when he picked out one of the most aggressive non-poisonous snakes out there to tangle with! Cornering a Black Racer is a very bad idea. They do not take kindly to that sort of treatment! Ha!

But holy crap, I hope I never encounter anything like that again because I'm not sure my heart could take it.

For the curious out there I will share some of the pictures of our lovely visitor...

And here is one I took a little while after the bite, where you can see the small amount of swelling across the bridge of his nose, and you can see two of the fang marks from one of the bites.

Red was really working the sympathy angle yesterday, and made it very clear that the only way he could move past the trauma of his encounter with the snake was lots and lots of cookies! Haha!

This of course led to the cookie coma!