June 3, 2010, Summer is in Full Swing~~~Well, we have had a busy summer so far and its only beginning. We have Zoey and Tundra's litter of six, who are all as adorable as ever. We have decided to keep a puppy for ourselves out of this litter. She will be our "Tundra's Abby Rose", or "Abby" for short, and she will be our only husky with 2 brown eyes. She has already proven to be the "wild one" out of the bunch :) We are planning on making Abby a house dog. We will be taking these little guys and girls for their vet visit next Friday morning. The dogs are all doing well, and we are managing Jazzy's herniated disc with medication. Of course, with the heat comes blowing coat. Stormy, Mystic, Tundra, Buddy, Zoey, and Jazzy have all either already blown coat or are in the process. We are still waiting on Boo Bear to start----he is the worst!!! He has soooooo much fur it is amazing what comes out of him, but I'm sure he'll be a lot more comfortable once that is all out of him. We will be getting the dog's pool out this weekend for some soaking fun for them. Buddy absolutely loves his swimming pool. He loves water period. It is very funny to try to watch a very large husky try to fit himself into his 2 gallon water bucket, but he tries LOL! Our 2 hogs, Daisy and Spot are growing very quickly. We may have to make a feed change in a few weeks to slow down their grow rate. They cannot be over 300 pounds by the first Sunday in July, which is when our fair starts. We are also doctoring Daisy for some type of skin rash or bug bites, but it looks like it is starting to dry up and heal up. It is always something with animals, but we wouldn't trade life on the farm for anything.......
January 5, 2010, A New Year~~~Well, thank goodness the holidays are over. They seemed to go by in a blur this year and I don't even feel as if I got to enjoy them. We started a major remodeling project in our kitchen on Halloween and did not finish up until Christmas Eve! Somehow I managed to do Christmas shopping, take care of 7 puppies, go to basketball games, and get the kitchen finished just in time to host Christmas Day dinner. We have 7 adorable puppies right now who will start leaving us this weekend which always makes me a little sad. Just when they are starting to get fun (play and be ornery), it is time for them to leave us. We also had a health scare with our Jazzy girl. She had a really rapid onset of some partial paralysis in her front legs. She was literally stumbling around and fallling down. She was also curling her front feet under while walking. We took her to our vet and were very surprised to find that she had a herniated disc in her neck, which was pressing on her spinal cord, causing the paralysis. We have no idea how she injured it---our vet said it could come from running, playing, jumping off a couch, etc. She spent 2 days in our vet's office with really no improvement. I was afraid I was going to have to make the very difficult decision to have her put to sleep, because our vet advised there was some permanent nerve damage, and even though we could undergo neurosurgery, there were really no guarantees she would get better. I was so depressed and could feel tears welling up in my eyes everytime I though about putting her down. It's silly how we get so attached to our animal friends. I told my husband I had relatives who had died that I wasn't that upset over, compared to how upset I was over this silly dog LOL. Thankfully, on the 3rd day she began to respond to her medication, and she got to come home on the 4th day. She is on anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers, and if I have to give them to her for the rest of her life to keep her comfortable and well, then I will. She is now, of course, retired from breeding because the extra weight carried during a pregnancy would not be good for her neck. So anyone out there who has a Jazzy "baby" should feel blessed that their puppy had such a sweet Mom. She is also walking much better but still not 100%. We have received a LOT of snow here. I'm looking forward to the weekend and letting the dogs out to play.......
October 29, 2009, Time to Catch Up~~~Well, I can see my promise to myself and others to write in this blog about once a month has fallen a little behind, so it's time to catch up. We had a busy summer and had a pretty successful showing at our county fair with our market hog, Daisy. She placed as reserve champion in her class, and had an outside shot at being the overall grand champion. The puppies all went to their new homes, and we even had one go as far away as Casper, Wyoming. Hannah flew all the way to Pittsburgh, and Northwest Airlines allowed her to take Sashura on the flight with her as her carry-on. Once again, this puppy season we met a lot of really great people and some really nice families, and hopefully made some new friends. We encourage all new owners to please keep in touch and send us some pics! Our son did not play fall league baseball this year, so we really didn't know what to do with ourselves and all the extra time on our hands, so we started tearing out our 27 year old kitchen and have started doing some much-needed remodeling. All of the dogs are doing well, and because I decided I needed exercise as much as they do, we have been going on some nice walks down along the creek. We had our little medical emergency for 2009 about a month ago when Jazzy began chewing the footpads off of the bottom of her feet. Turns out she was having an allergic reaction to something in her food (she had just started on a different brand). Our housedog, Barney, was also chewing and pulling his hair out the same week and was also having an allergic reaction to something in the food. So we had a dog with bloody sore feet, and a dog with bald spots. After a trip to the vet, some antibiotics and steroids, and Barney getting shaved, everyone is good as new again. We did get some news I was not too happy with. We had one of our families "give up" on their new puppy after only one week. I try to carefully screen who our dogs go to, and as most of you know, you will get the lecture with all the pros and cons about this breed. I thought he was going to the best possible home because this family already had another husky. Turns out I couldn't have been any more wrong---they couldn't understand why their new puppy whined and cried, and got rid of him after only a week. He lived with his second owner for several months, and then they got rid of him because he was killing their chickens (they do have that strong prey drive--remember?), so he is now with his third family and not even a year old. It makes me both sad--and mad! Hopefully everything will work out well for him this time. It has caused me to be even more careful about who gets them---at least he did not end up in a shelter. If you do not own a husky and are reading this blog and considering buying one, please do some RESEARCH on this breed because they are not the dog for everyone. However, once your heart has been stolen by this breed, you will find there can never be another dog for you---and you may even find yourself wanting more :)
June 23, 2009, New Beginnings ~~~ Whew! What a busy past couple of months. I started a new job on June 1 which I am totally enjoying and which is much closer to home, so my commute time is a lot less, which means I can get home much earlier to do my dog chores LOL. Zoey's little pups left us around Memorial Weekend. Cole is playing summer league baseball and that has kept us busy as always. He is currently at the beach in Nags Head, NC, enjoying himself with 4 other families and a lot of his friends. Our hogs, Daisy and Rosie, have grown a lot---they are now over 200 pounds and are eating a LOT of hog food, which is a little rough on the bank account LOL. As for the dogs---they are great as always. We have 2 very pretty litters right now, which will be our last for the year. We pretty much have every color of pup right now. Stormy's litter is the oldest, and we started them on puppy food last night, which they really loved. Mystic's pups are 2 weeks old right now. We will be taking down the barrier in front of their box this weekend as they should be able to walk around on their own and get in and out of the box. We have been brushing a LOT of fur----all of the dogs have blown coat except for Stormy and Mystic, who are just now starting. We have kenneled Tundra with Buddy and I was a little afraid that wouldn't work out because they are both unneutered males, but so far it has been a good move. Buddy definitely lets Tundra know who the boss is, but their little squabbles have not really been vicious---it is more like Tundra, as the young dog sometimes gets on Buddy's nerves, and Buddy will let him know when it's time to stop. It has been hot out, and Buddy has enjoyed swimming in the fish pond, even though it is a little green right now.
April 29, 2009, Spring is Finally Here ~~~ Well, it finally warmed up and we had a really nice weekend this past weekend. It was actually hot, and it was time to get the tarps stretched over the kennels so the dogs don't overheat this summer. It was also time to break out my best friend---my pressure washer---so that the kennels could get a really good cleaning. We spent Saturday at the ballfield, and then Saturday evening finally mowing our yard. After that was done we pressure washed the kennels, and I disinfected them. I have always done that with a mop and a bucket before, but I decided to try something new this year and bought myself a little garden sprayer. I mixed up my disinfectant and after everything was pressure washed I sprayed everything down. Wow, that works so much better and was such a time saver. Jazzy has blown her coat and Zoey is starting to blow hers but, unfortunately, everyone else is still wearing their winter coat. The little pups are growing like weeds. Since I've been feeding their Mom puppy food in her self-feeder, they have learned where the food is and have been helping themselves. For the first time ever, though, we have a true runt of the litter. There have always been some slight size differences, of course, but this time we have a true little runt and she is just the sweetest thing! Our big dark red/white boy is the largest, and the little grey/white girl is the smallest. It cracks me up to put them side-by-side, but she is doing very well. I have a theory that possibly during the mating period, she was the last to be conceived and was probably conceived several days after the rest of the litter. From my research it does appear that this is possible. Anyway, it's just my theory and I could be totally wrong, but I'm sure she'll catch up with the rest of the litter.
March 30, 2009, Little Dogs and Little Hogs ~~~ What a busy time this is for us. Zoey's little pups were born on March 25 and are doing well. We had a litter of seven---with just about every color in the litter. 2 black/whites that are really black, a light gray/white that looks like it will have a mask similar to Tundra, a dark gray/white, a solid white, a light red/white, and a dark copper red/white. So far everyone is doing well. It's that time of year again for us to pick out our little fair pigs, so my husband and son had a busy day Saturday. 4 of Zoey's pups had rear dewclaws, so they took them to the vet's office and dropped them off and then headed north to pick up our 2 little fair pigs. Then back to the vet's office to pick up the puppies, and have the vet check our pigs and fill out their health info. Everyone made it home safe and sound and they are all doing well. Not only are little dogs cute, but little hogs are cute as well. Right now they weigh about 45-50 pounds, which is not really that big for a hog, and they both fit in one of our dog crates pretty nicely. They will gain about 200 pounds by the end of July. We have 2 girl pigs, and one of them will be named "Daisy", because we always have a Daisy that gets to go to the fair. They are blue butts, which are white pigs with black on their rumps and sometimes on their faces. They are a cross between the Yorkshire and Hampshire breed. The hog project for 4-H is very popular in our county, and there will be over 100 children take this project and exhibit their hogs at our fair. It is a fun project, and also an easy project. Hogs are actually very smart, and are easy to train. They usually end up loving the big marshmallows, so we use these for training. They start out a little wild, but get really tame by the time the fair rolls around. The only bad thing about them is that they do get really smelly LOL, but a week at our fair socializing with our friends and family who have a similar interest is really a lot of fun. We will be taking pictures of our new puppies on Friday and posting them on the site. I have quite a waiting list this time around, with several "husky experienced" families on the list, so that's great. Until next month . . .
March 9, 2009 ~~~ Well, after a little bit of deliberation, I decided to take down the "Guestbook" from my site and add a blog instead. I really wasn't getting that many comments in the Guestbook, and it seemed like a wasted page for my website. The Blog will make it much easier for you to keep track of us, the dogs, and all the happenings at Howling Ridge. Cole started baseball practice last week for high school, and we have a brutal schedule of 32 games in 45 days. That will keep us running, and then I wonder why I have over 60,000 miles on my car which won't be 3 years old until September LOL. Boo Bear is scheduled to go to the vet's office on Thursday for his yearly checkup. He is also going to get his OFA hip x-ray taken. Hopefully, he will be a good boy for them and hold still during the x-ray so he doesn't have to be anesthetized. We still have 7 dogs and 5 kennels, which makes for a lot of shifting around when it comes time to have puppies, but the dogs enjoy being together. We put Stormy in with Tundra yesterday so they could keep each other company. Tundra loves to jump on, chew on, play-bite at, and just generally playfully maul all of the other dogs. Needless to say, Stormy is not very white right now after all of that. We are probably going to move Tundra in with Buddy just so I can keep Stormy clean, and as long as Buddy and Tundra get along that might be a permanent move. I think I will add one more kennel just for convenience. We did let most of the dogs out in the yard all day yesterday, which they enjoyed. Zoey's little pups will be due sometime between March 20 and 27. I'll keep you posted.~~~
