Jake and the chicks

My person Cheryl has a pretty cool job, sometimes. Granted there's a lot of desk work involved in getting a newspaper out (I know, I used to write a column for said newspaper). But sometimes she gets to get out of the office and meet neat people and pets. Today she went to this little bitty town called Icard and interviewed some really nice ladies who are opening a feed and seed store. "Do they have dog feed?" Lexie wanted to know. "They have feed for any animal you can think of," Cheryl explained. They also have a store mascot. His name is Jake and I think he's a Jack Russell terrier. One of Jake's jobs is to count the live baby chicks. They keep the chicks in these wash tubs under hot lights in the store. These chicks are pretty spoiled because when the people are not in the store they get to listen to music. (Sounds like Duchess. When our people leave her alone in the house sometimes they leave the radio or TV on for her). Anyway, Cheryl thought it was neat that Jake would look but not touch the chicks. If Lexie were that store's mascot, she would eat all of them in one swallow.

Here's a link to Cheryl's story: http://www2.morganton.com/content/2010/mar/26/farm-girls-turned-entrepreneurs-work-make-dream-co/

An update on Duchess

Duchess visited the vet specialist on Monday. Her protein levels are slowing coming up and so is her weight. We can tell she's feeling a ton better, too. The latest issue we are dealing with is hair loss. She's especially lost a lot of hair on her tail. Wes says she looks like an opossum. Her meds make her so hungry she gets to take her food to bed with her at night so she doesn't disturb the whole house when she wants a midnight snack. She's on a special prescription dog food and even has her own Pet Smart card with her name on it. There's been a couple of times that Lexie has gotten jealous of all the attention Duchess is getting. So much so that one weekend Lexie started limping to gain some sympathy points for herself. It worked until the next day when she forgot which foot "hurt" and started favoring the other one. We're still saying our puppy dog prayers for the little white not so fluffly thing. The next vet visit is in two weeks. Speaking of vet visits, I think it's about time for our annual check up. Yuk.

What we are doing with our extra hour of daylight

Though we lost an hour of sleep Saturday night, I'm liking this daylight savings time deal. On Sunday afternoon we played an extra long game of fetch. On Monday afternoon we picked daffodils, which are a little late blooming this year. And this afternoon we took a walk. It was our first walk since winter set in so we all were a bit out of shape. We, or at least Cheryl, have great intentions of walking everyday from now on. (We'll see how long that lasts.)