My Life – Page 129 – The Dackel Princess

Coffee & Wagging Tails

I had to cross our beautiful state to go to see a doctor today. It’s a lovely time of year to do this, with the leaves changing and crisp Autumn winds. So, after feeding the pups their breakfast, I headed quickly to Weight Watchers, and then off I drove to Dartmouth. I saw my doctor and then began the trip home.

I felt a little peckish, so I stopped to get a “Hot Light Latte” for my drive back. I waited a few minutes after getting the coffee at the drive through before picking it up to drink. The girl had not placed the lid firmly in place and before I knew it the paper cup seemed to attack me with squirting coffee. It covered my light gray pants, the steering wheel and even the windshield of the car!

I will not tell you the terrible words that slipped passed my lips, let us just say, I was not a happy girl!

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I arrived back home and after throwing my pants into the washing machine, I came upstairs to my babies. Curt heard my voice, as I greeted the other dogs, and he started to fuss and whine. I went into the puppy room and there he was, waiting for me with bright eyes and a wagging tail!

I went in and one by one, I picked up the babies and held them. Here is Schnapps!

Fenway.

Wally.

And Calvin.

They are doing so well. Calvin, Curt and Schnapps are all over three pounds, with Fenway and Wally close behind.

They eat twice a day a gruel mixture, and by next week I will be starting to mix up puppy chow and make it soggy for them, to learn to eat.

This & That

Over the weekend I had a 48 hour virus of some sort. I didn’t move out of my recliner too often and found I had a wonderful nurse while I recovered. Was it Greta? No. Anneliese? No. Fritz? No. It was my sweetheart, Arnie! He hardly left my side. Here is a picture of my boy all snuggled up in the blankets with me. And yes, those are my super warm, leopard print, flannel pajamas!

I mean, just look at that sweet face!

I did get in to play and visit with the puppies, but I am more than grateful to Greta for being a totally awesome Mom to her kids.

They are growing like crazy and they are actually getting up on their little legs and walking around. Here is a short video of them walking today.

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I also got a cute picture of Claus and Caspar together. Do you suppose they are twins or something? They seem to have this friendship and are always together.

I will leave you this morning with this picture of Christel and Caspar. They were playing like crazy and just cracked me up.

Have a great day everyone!

A Not So Typical Saturday

Our Saturday started with a Skype call to our pal down under in Australia. He is going on an adventure to Qatar and will be leaving tomorrow, so I wanted to wish him a safe journey.

Hubby and I had our breakfast, then headed off to the big city to get our flu shots and some last minute items that I’d forgotten when I did our weekly shopping. We were half way there when the skies opened and it started to rain hard. Luckily, we had two umbrellas and so when we got to the Pharmacy for our flu shots we had covering from the rain.

The Pharmacist gave us our shots. A very pleasant young woman named Stephanie, who had recently graduated from Pharmacology College. She was nice and kind and gave a very good injection.

After that we did a few errands before heading off to our Chinese restaurant for lunch. As we drove in we were surprised to see so many police cars, and officers in the area on foot. We surmised that it was a bank robbery, as nothing else would shut the area down, quite like this. I whipped out my cell phone and took two pictures. Not the best, but it gives you an idea of what we saw.

Poor Hubby. I’m afraid that all during my lunch, all I did was look over my shoulder at what was going on at the bank. Even our waiter, was chatting with us about the excitement. You see, this sort of stuff just doesn’t happen in the area of New Hampshire that we live in. I guess I should say, it didn’t used to….

We drove home and started to play with the pups. Arnie joined us and we got some pictures of him with the babies. Arnie, Me and Curt.

Arnie, Me and Claus.

Arnie and Christel.

We also got some close ups of the pups, showing how grown up they are getting.

Here is Curt!

Caspar.

Christel.

And here is a short video of my two week old babies!

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Curt Wins!

Yes, Curt wins the contest, “Whose Eyes Will Open First”? When I got up this morning and looked into the whelping box, little old Curt was looking back at me with these half opened eyes!

The others all are close, but haven’t gotten to this point quite yet. I expect the next day or so to have everyone showing signs of eye opening!

Arnie continues to sleep in the puppy room with me. What a doll. If I go in for any reason he is right there with me, and loves to watch the babies. Anneliese and Fritz show no interest in the babies, but Arnie sure does.

The nice thing is that Greta doesn’t seem to mind his being in there any more. In fact she doesn’t even growl at him, and he just loves those babies!

Here are Calvin and Curt taking a nap together today.

Here is our Christel. She is quite a beauty!

Here is a very sleepy Claus.

The brood still snuggles all together.

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I went to see “Julie & Julia” today with Hubby. I have been waiting so long to go. What a fun movie! Meryl Streep was fabulous! I wonder if there is anything that she can’t do? I admit to almost drooling while watching the food being prepared on screen and I had a real urge to cook when we left the movie theater, so I came home and made lamb chops for our dinner! Oh Julia, you truly did excite the world with your cooking!

Passages Through Time

Thursday proved to be a very long and very busy day. Some of it was restful, like when I was getting my hair and nails done, but then I came back home and was consumed with puppy laundry, and cooking. Right now we have tomatoes coming in and we have far more than we can possibly eat, so I am making home-made spaghetti sauce with it. I’ve frozen some of the sauce to enjoy in the middle of a snowstorm this winter, and the rest I am using to make things like Eggplant Parmesan, and Lasagna.

The entire sauce making from beginning to end (including dinner), lasted from 1:30 until 7 pm! During this time I was letting dogs in and out, feeding Greta, who is constantly hungry, and checking on the puppies.

I actually didn’t take any pictures of them on Thursday. I will tell you though that their eyes are just starting to open. There are now lines where the eye lids meet, instead of the way the puppies are born, with the eyes tightly fused together. I wonder which puppy will have their eyes open first?

Arnie continues to be my special little guy. He follows me everywhere and sits by my feet when I am working in the kitchen. If I call to him he runs to me and leaps into my arms! What a guy!

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Today is September 11, 2009. Eight years have now passed since that terrible morning. So many innocent people died, and our safe little world forever changed. I have never understood how anyone could do such an evil thing. It still boggles my mind, and there are times I still hear the voices of those who were on those planes, in the World Trade Center, or in the Pentagon, cry out from their fiery graves.

The victims came from more than 90 countries around the world.
The following are the number of people who died at each site:

World Trade Center 2,823 (includes airline passengers)
Pentagon 125 (not including plane victims)
Flight 11 – 92 people on board
Flight 175 – 64 people on board
Flight 77 – 64 people on board
Flight 93 – 44 people on board

May we never forget…..

The Blog Thieves Got Me!

I wrote a long post last night about the puppies. It was beautiful. Eloquent! One of my very best! I had it all saved and set up and this morning when I checked….It had disappeared!

Granted, I was tired. I’d also taken something for a headache, but still, the post should have been there!

I will try to recreate my masterpiece, but frankly, since the blog thieves got it, I’m not sure that this is possible!

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On Monday we had Greta the the Vet to get out her IV. She is doing remarkably well and we are all thrilled. She lost 4 1/2 pounds and is back to eating and drinking as she normally does.

Each puppy was examined and they are doing well also. That is a real blessing!

I started to think on the drive back, how my life is really quite amazing. You see, when I was young I knew I wanted to get married, have children and be a Mommy. I could see that as clear as day. What I had no clue about was, what did I want to do as a career.

I’m a nurturer by heart, yet I’m also pretty emotional, so being a nurse, or something like that wouldn’t really work for me. I’d be destroyed if I ever lost a patient, even though I know that this is the cycle of life.

Then in 1996 I met the most wonderful little doggy named Shubi and my life changed. She showed me many things, but after losing my youngest daughter, and many years of depression after that, Shubi showed me how to love again and how to live!

And she never said a word! (Just an occasional bark!)

Shubi showed me how to make my own kind of music.

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So now, here I am a Granny to 14 puppies total, with the prospect of Anneliese giving me more little miracles to love and then move along to their forever friends.

You see, for me, that is the joy. I am able to bring these little creatures into the world, love them, teach them all that that they need to know about being little doggies, and then send them on to their new forever homes.

I found my music in the midst of this crazy world. The music is of mewling newborn puppies, barking growing puppies, and the laughter of the people who come to get their new baby from me.

And to think, it all started with a little puppy from Landshut, (in Bavaria) Germany.

Quick Post

As it is late on Thursday night and I am pretty tired this will be a brief accounting of today’s events. Most all of it revolves around getting ready for Greta’s babies.

We had a quick Chinese lunch, and then set about shopping for dog food, people food and I bought some puppy formula.

We had the dogs out in the yard, Hubby picked Castleton Plums, which he sold to a farm stand, and somehow I still managed to get the mail.

We had dinner plans with friends of ours tonight. Wonderful steak tips and salad. Delicious! As the sun went down and the sky got dark, the temperatures dropped and I am sitting here, next to Greta, feeling the cold, and drinking some hot tea.

Greta just gets bigger, and is showing the first signs that she will multiply in the next few days. I can hardly wait!

What To Do….

Okay, what do you do when you are waiting for your dog to multiply? Well, if you are like me and like to keep busy so that you don’t have to think about the impending birth of your grand-puppies, you cook.

On today’s agenda was grape juice. I had about 2 gallons of juice, made from our own Concord Grapes, and today I put together 4 batches of Grape Jelly. That’s 28 jars of jelly!

I love to can jelly and jams, as they make great gifts for people who do not have the time or the fruit in their yard, to make such things. Plus, I think it is very rewarding to actually produce something.

I think the next thing on my list of jams and jellies will be plum jam. It'[s one of my favorites and it appears we will have a good crop of those in about a week. I just hope I have the time and energy with the puppies due to arrive so soon.

Speaking of the puppies, I also decided to get my birthing kit out and ready. You just never know when Greta might pop these babies out and I want to be all prepared. I’ll move the bed into the puppy room on Saturday and then it’s just a matter of time.

Greta was sitting with me today and I had my hand on her belly and I could feel these guys just kicking her like crazy! It make me recall being pregnant and how it felt when the two girls had been kicking me.

I keep saying that what I really need is some rest, but I am starting to think that my nerves about Greta’s impending birth, are making me extremely productive. She better have these puppies soon or my husband will wonder who has kidnapped his real wife, and dropped her double into his house!

What I Did To Relax…Ha!

On Sunday I decided to spend the day just relaxing. The last week has been so busy, and I really wanted to take the day and do nothing but watch some TV or perhaps read. However, I went to the fridge for something and noticed an abundance of cucumbers, and since they weren’t getting any fresher, I knew that today was the day to do something wonderful with them.

But what?

I was tidying up some newspapers and I saw an article on the front page of the Lifestyle section. “Pickles”! It read. Eureka! That’s it!

I found a recipe for Bread and Butter Pickles and decided on that. I needed a gallon of sliced cucumbers. So I washed the cucumbers and got out my food processor and started to slice the cucumbers, and the onion and then made layers. Cucumbers, onion, canning salt and ice, repeat. I did that until I had the gallon of cucumbers done, then I set a full gallon jug of vinegar on a plate on top of it and let it set for 3 hours.

Then we cooked it down and canned the pickles.

And here is one of the 9 jars that we made.

While we did this Greta stretched out near us. She just gets bigger and bigger.

I also had Greta out to play ball in between rain drops. Then she would come back inside and collapse!

So my day was far from relaxing and restful. In fact I didn’t get done with cleaning up until well after 7:30 PM. I’m not too upset about it though because we now have all those wonderful pickles!

A Rainy, But Productive Day

Saturday saw us up early before the fog had lifted. I’d heard that we were going to be getting some rain, but I was able to walk the dachshunds before the sky opened, and rain began to fall.

Our total rainfall on Saturday was 2 and 3/4 inches and it is still raining as I write! Okay, Mother Nature, enough!

Greta spent the day picking various spots to lay down and spread herself out. She tended to stay by me, and since I was cooking in the kitchen most of the day, she lay down by my feet.

What was I cooking, you might ask. Heavenly Jam (again). We now have a total of 28 jars to keep our toast covered!

I think I will take the grape juice I froze last season out and make some jelly with that. Our plums will also be coming in soon and we will be making plum jam!

Later in the day Greta found Hubby’s chair and lay down on her back and got comfortable there.

You know it’s quite funny to think about my life now. When I was a teenager I never even imagined that I would be living the life that I am. I knew I wanted to get married and have children, but I never realized how tied to nature I would become. With my great love for my dogs, my pleasure in gardening, and of course canning what I grow, my life is fuller than I ever could have imagined. Yes, I am blessed, and life is good.