Somebody's been using my computer... (and "this post magically takes on a mind of it's own")

And her name is...

Pooh Bear!


Whaaaat?!?! Just checking my fan mail!! People love me, they really really really love me... ooh! What was that over there? What's Ripper getting into? You should really watch him y'know. Geez, some dogs can be a pain in the butt.

So, apparently, PB has re-discovered the couch. Now I can't keep her scrawny butt off it. I blame it all on Amanda's visit, since PB hasn't been on the couch for about a year - she first discovered it then, and was on it a lot. Then she must have forgot about it. Because there are other things to do out there, like chase your tail! Or scream and spin in circles!!!

In other news, we got new lights around here!

New kitchen lights.






Since the remote died on the fan, I put my limited knowledge of all-things-electrical and wired in a speed control for the fan. It even works!

Speaking of electrical knowledge - here is one of the outdoor flood lights.


Boy these are sweet! It's light as day out there in the dog yard now. The switch is indoors too, so if there's any trouble brewing out there, I can flick on the thousand watts of light and see what's happening!

I'm kind of addicted to lights now, I want more...

And.... of course Gracie is always there to give a helping hand!

She was actually pretty brave, as she lay down right underneath me and the ladder. Apparently she didn't notice how I seem to drop things on a regular basis from the top of the ladder.  Just a few small things, like, oh a hammer, nails, a couple screwdrivers, screws, wirecutters, etc. Maybe I should invest in a tool belt or a tree bag.

So, HOURS later... and I got really distracted by going to look for a picture of a tool belt. I thought I might find an interesting tool belt on the internet, and that search took me in a million different directions.  There is probably about 32 degrees of separation between that search and what I ended up with: BACON FLAVOURED DENTAL FLOSS!!!  (god, I really really really love the internet).


AND... that's not all! I found more items to put on my Christmas shopping list. I hope I don't ruin the surprise, but mom - I really think this one's for you!


You needed a new shower curtain right?

'Tis the season!!!! :)

EEK!!!!

Haha, oh I kid. Look closely, that was from last January. Luckily we haven't had anywhere near those temps yet this year and I'll be quite happy if we don't see them at all this winter!  I'm just going through my old posts and finding some in "draft" form that I never finished. And wow, there are quite a few. It's quite entertaining, and looking at our Yukon river kayak trip from this summer and the scorching hot temperatures seem so long ago!

Although the temps seem to be heading in that direction now -  we're at around -5C which feels balmy right now. Things may look like this soon if it doesn't start to cool off!!  I don't want to see -47C, but I also don't want to see our snow melt!

Visitors! We like 'em. Sometimes.

Hey, hey, hey, looky here, it's Aunty Amanda-Jamboree! She graced us with her presence this weekend, my good ol' friend from cowtown was in the Territory giving a workshop at the College. Lucky for me (and the dogs), she decided to stay a couple of extra days.

So... I put her to work! Welcome to Chateau Stacie, where everyone is put to work (but they all actually insist on it!). She was a good wood hauler...

And ah, kind of needs to work on her dog driving skills...

Esther is looking back, and I KNOW she is thinking "thank god I'm alive!" after Amanda took the corner through the trees kind of fast and kind of cut the corner. In all honesty, I really shouldn't just assume all my friends who have never been around a dog team know instinctively how to drive a quad behind one. I think I said "use the brake" or...?  Oops! My bad.

I had to be up front because Ripper needed to be reminded of what "Haw" was. That is LEFT in case you, like him, were wondering.

Amanda almost looks as happy as the dogs for surviving that... or she's delirious! Right, that's what it is, when someone is forced to pee outside and fight for the couch to sleep on (the dogs don't give it up easily), they kind of start to lose it I guess.

Notice how Ivy is wayyyy over to the right there, well she popped out of her collar as Amanda careened around the tree. Good thing she's quick (Ivy that is, not Amanda)!  I guess I shouldn't have taken them on my new, still unfinished trails. That explains the abundance of trees in the way. Oops! My bad.

We also frolicked in the meadow!


Amanda ran the whole way as we went to make new trails. She figured that would help her keep warm. Little did she know that her (new) job of clearing the trail behind me after I went at it with the chainsaw would keep her plenty warm!

C'mon, keep up eh!? Jeez, even Kuna is faster than you! Hm, I don't recall it being this dark when we went out... Oops! My bad.

These were all blurry, but you can still see the DETERMINATION this woman had in getting that damned stump out of the frozen ground. I'm pretty happy she didn't maim herself as she was standing and jumping on it.  Jen - I even asked her where her HELMET was!!!  It's all about personal safety here.


Kill it real good!



And it worked - trail is clear!

What? Can't see anything??! How about that snow though?!?

Ok, is this better? Good...

Ok, I lie this is totally a different part of the trail, you'll just have to take my word for it. It was wayyyy too dark by the time we finished the stump part! It's funny how your eyes adjust to the darkness, then allofasudden you're like - "wow, is pitch black too dark to be running a chainsaw"??!!

Amanda is great at looking very excited during EVERY picture - no wonder her and Pooh Bear! got along so well!

Yay! We love everything!!! Seriously, they are both so easy to please. See, when you visit me, you even get compared to the dogs. LUCKY!

Happy Pack! Even Reuben is enjoying himself now.

Doesn't he look absolutely THRILLED?!?

And this is where Pooh Bear! stayed for oh, about 3 hours! Squashed in between us.

She insisted on constantly being petted (PB, not Amanda) - and not one hand was enough, oh no! We each had two so she figured we could spare at LEAST one each! Annoying little twit (PB, not Amanda).  :)


Aunty Amanda come baaaaack, we (I mean, I, because the others just don't appreciate everything and everyone like I do!) miss you sooo much! I'm being neglected, helllppppp meeeee, pleeease, hee hee.... just kidding, I really am not being neglected, but thought that might make you come back since I tried to fit in your suitcase before you left, but I think you might have forgotten me was that on purpose do you think, I dunno I think we really bonded and you are a really good petter, you never stop whereas Stacie usually says "PoohBear stoppit! after a few hours and you didn't I don't think, I don't even remember that was a few days ago but I remember really reallyreallyreally likeing it and, well I can remember even MORE if I shut my eyes REAAAAL tight and concentrate REAAAL hard, hey what was that?! I heard a noise, was that Stacie stirring to give me a pet ya think??  Hm, no she's not even looking at me darnit... so when I was trying to squash my body in your suitcase I even pulled out a few of those "Ice Fog" beers you liked so much, Stacie was happy I left them here for her, but I still couldn't fit 'cause you like have WAY too much clothes, or too little suitcase or something I'm not exactly sure what and I don't even remember what I started talking about, but... so, okay then, g'bye! 
   -Pooh Bear!

Forging new friendships

Little Ivy has had a rough time since Sage has been gone. Her bouncy buddy, the only one who put up with her, the only other dog SHE put up with, is gone. She's been like a little lost soul. I've been taking her to town with me everyday since Reuben has been here and took her pen. She's been loving it, and is the best traveling companion ever, even when she stares at me the whole time hoping with her intense non-stop stare, that she can control my brain and will me to pet her the whole way home. Well, she has super powers, 'cause it works.

Anyways, today was a bit of a revelation. She's been a bit down lately when we're home, won't tolerate too many dogs near her, has no one to play with early in the mornings - optimal play-time for her and Sage... so I decided to take the "good ol' boys" Jack and Harris out for a free run with her. Well, a NEW, HAPPY, GIDDY, FREAKISHLY EXCITEABLE Ivy emerged! It was so great to see, I almost cried watching her with them.  She is absolutely in LOVE with both of them, and acts like a puppy around them. It's funny how different their personalities can be around different dogs.

I'm so happy and relieved that she has some buddies again - and I'm going to make sure they get lots of free runs and play-time together!

Here she is after the run, Jack is flopped out on the ground, Harris is showing some interest in this "new" little freak.  These guys are the best dogs, they're just so easy-going and how could anyone not love them!??

Well, most dogs love them. Reuben wasn't wild about them when he first met them, but that was his first day here so we can cut him some slack for that. 

In Reuben news, I finally got him out on a free run with Pooh Bear! They were great together, and with the way Reuben pulled on the leash when we first left the yard - he was straight out in front, running straight down the trail, pulling HARD - I think I might harness him up and put him in the team soon.
His stamina and energy is amazing for a 6-yr old dog. He was barely breathing hard after a few km's of running and chasing me. He seemed to not run much further than he had to - quite unlike the huskies who go EVERYWHERE when loose and end up tripling the distance.  And other than the few times he tried to bite the 4-wheeler tires (!?!), he was great. 

In dog condo news...

I know, it looks like it's on fire - but that's the effect from a 100-watt light bulb! And no, it's not a heat lamp, just a regular bulb, far away from the walls too, just in case.

Anyways, I would totally live in it, it's pretty cozy!  Even though the door looks like I was drunk off my feet when I cut it out.

Miss Gracie exits the condo of comfort.

Kuna is happy there is a house he doesn't have to squeeze his 90lb frame into.

There are like 8,000 bones in there too.

Inside - Gracie and George are occupied by bones and bone bits on the floor. It's bright in there eh!??!! No need for using the flash, hahahahahaaaaa

First snow

This was written last week when the weather-people were predicting up to 30cm of snow (what a tease!)

So... it's been snowing out, but the "blizzard of the century" never arrived.  The 4-inches of the century, however, DID arrive and that's good enough for me. For now. It's nice and white out there now and the evil-creek-from-hell is starting to freeze over, yippeee! Hopefully it won't try to steal any other things of mine until spring.

The punks get rowdy! I love this shot, as this is a common occurrence everytime I let these yahoos out of the pen. Jack and Harris attack each other, ususally right in front of me, knocking me over but this was one rare moment where they were a safe distance from me.  Notice how trouble-maker Gracie is right in there, usually jumping and (lovingly) biting the head of one of the boys.

God I hate this new blogger and the way it formats text and pictures. I've tried messing with the code with all my new knowledge from my web design class... let's see if it works! Until I get my own website up and running... Ooh, I think it worked.  No annoying screwed up wrap-around text. wooo!!

Random pic of the day:

My ceiling! Took me like 2 months to add on the last 6 boards, god have I mentioned how much I truly hated that job? I think I would have been ok with it if it didn't go on FOREVER!!!!  But it's done yay.

Ivy says "hi" to Reuben the blue heeler...


Yes, she is a little darling - he respects her authorit-ay though! We're having a few "issues" with him and other males, but you can see he's certainly not scared of Ivy, his tail is going 100miles/hr, he really just wants to play (or hump) her, but I think he knows that mounting Ivy would be pretty much a death wish. The males he would like to eat sometimes. But! We are figuring things out and he's become a pretty good little guard dog as evidenced by his attitude when Dave and Heather came over on the weekend. He was really apprehensive and even started growling at these strangers (oh, if he only knew just how "strange" they are!! haha, sorry D/H, they rarely read this, but just in case...).

This non-husky behaviour, is weird, and having another breed around here really made me see how "different" all my dogs are. We'll see if we have an effect on poor Reuben after a few months!  He may become obsessed with fetch (right now he could care less), start peeing on everything - oh wait! He already does that. I'm sure we'll just be nothing but a good influence.  And Pooh Bear is starting to flirt with him, she's not even annoying him now by slowly wandering over to him in the cabin and standing on top of him!  I hear this breed likes a bit of "personal space" well, PB does not know the meaning of "personal space"!! Not even close. She has zero boundaries and everybody else's space is HER space. So the fact that he can put up with HER says a lot!

Ooh! You talking 'bout MEEEE!?!??!

Snow update

What a beautiful day! Great day to get out with the dogs, even if it was a bit warm - above zero. As you can see the snow is pretty sparse, but that's all good, we were 4-wheeling so things are just a bit more slippery, but the EVIL creek is freezing over!

Jack and the gang stop for 2 seconds on the trail to pose and to check out the trees (this was last weekend in case you're wondering why it got so cloudy out!)

Pooh Bear freaks out! I made them stop, how eeevil of me!













































Why do I always catch photos of some monster tongue action? Here's Esther and her tongue.















Loki


















Ivy, and I love that Pooh Bear! is in full view behind, looking like the HAPPIEST dog in the world!!!


















More Loki - he was very photogenic today!

 Rupert and Ripper lead the way. Good fun today, a warm November is actually not a bad thing at all... ;)