Merry Christmas Everyone! 2019

Here's a special Christmas present from me to you. This picture is for all of you who have decided to visit me on Christmas Eve, even though I haven't posted nearly enough this year. I share this same picture for most years, but the post is a little new. I encountered this scene several years ago. I really did take the picture. It was at a place called Carpenter Lake.

Click on the picture to make it bigger for the best effect. Take a close look at Santa's reindeer. There's something very strange about them. Santa is a little different than normal too, but I'll never tell how.

Maybe Santa will think of using turkeys or bison one of these upcoming years, but he still likes the squirrels. I wonder what happened to those reindeer. Maybe these guys are for alternate days. You will probably have trouble seeing it, but the lead squirrel has a red nose.

I keep promising to post more often, and one of these days I'll surprise you. I'm still getting my hiking skills back so maybe 2020 will be my year. Until then it's time to take a little break and to say...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Delilah's Birthday

Today is Delilah's birthday. She is 1 year old today. She was born on November 20, 2018. I keep telling her she's not going to be a puppy anymore, but I think she'll be a puppy forever. She still acts like a puppy.

Here she is a few weeks after I got her. Her ears were beginning to pop up. She only had one ear up for a few more weeks.

This last one is the first known picture of Delilah. I didn't take this one. This was the picture that made me go and get her. I had a choice between her and one of her sisters. I chose her all the way. She was the little lunatic that didn't conform to the standards of the rest of the dogs at the shelter. The other dogs constantly scolded her for her unruly behavior. She's still the same.

Delilah's life started out very difficult. She almost froze to death when she was only days old. Some in her litter didn't make it. I know of only her and two sisters that were lucky.

The rest of Delilah's life has been the easiest most pleasant life a dog could ever have. The only thing that needs to change is that I need to teach her that she doesn't run the house, I do.

So that summarizes Delilah. For her birthday, I bought her a huge box of dog biscuits, several rope toys, and a new kennel for riding in the truck. She loves them all already.

And with that, I'll talk to you later.

Here We Go! We're Off!

Okay, this is going to be my first try at posting a record of my travels. I almost forgot to do it this time. I put the camera on the dashboard and took pictures of scenes I thought looked good or were interesting in some way. I moved the camera sometimes to get some pictures from the side. They weren't usually very good.

I have way too many pictures this first time, so I'll try to keep my comments shorter than usual. Sometimes, as usual, my comments will be unrelated to the pictures. Let's go.

I had just finished up at the doctor so that was still on my mind. These first two pictures were where I remembered to turn on the camera. These are just outside the city.

This picture above is a terrible shot of my old family farm. My family doesn't live here anymore, but the surrounding countryside is officially named after us because we were here for so long. There are stories written about us in the local history books.

I tried to get a picture of the hills here in this one. I'll try to give a better look in future pictures. This road travels through the heart of the Loess Hills.

This one shows how driving along here is up and down the hills. These hills are as big as mountains but they are classified as hills because they are made of dirt and not rock.

To the left in the picture above is a snow-covered field. I don't know how it looks in the pictures, but the snow made it look like the surface of the water. This was actually our first snow of the year.

On the left of this road is all flat land up to the river. On the right are the steep hills. Outside of the Loess Hills, the land is mostly flat. This area floods very easily when they let too much water out of the dam north of us. This road is routinely underwater.

And now for the last one. This area of the road goes right up against the hills. The river is just to the left. It's kind of a tight squeeze, but this area doesn't flood as much. I left the truck in the picture because that's what I mostly see along this road.

You'll see some strange anomalies in these pictures. They are just reflections on the windshield.

I hope this first post was at least a little bit interesting. I'll try to show some animals and other more specific things in future posts. I'll fine-tune things as I go along. I'll have lots of posts of this nature. I'll mix them with some hiking posts when I get the time, and Delilah will be back too. I hope you liked this one. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah The Thief

Delilah has turned to thievery to satisfy her need for new toys. I always suspected she was an evil twin or something like that. I would have been sure of that theory if any of the rest of her sisters looked like her. The rest were black. So, she's the evil oddball of the bunch.

Let me tell you of her thievery as one example of her evil ways. I'll start from the beginning, naturally.

I've been letting Delilah go outside with me without her leash or without her being on a chain. I do this because she obsessively follows me wherever I go. She almost never leaves my side so I felt as if I could trust her outside. I'm mostly correct.

Whenever I need to go out to my garage I've been taking her out there with me. It's a fun little adventure for her. The last few times while I was distracted she decided to explore the garage just a bit. I didn't pay much attention.

By the time I got out the door with Delilah hot on my heels, I noticed she had something in her mouth. It was one of Isabella's old toys. The little thief found out where I was keeping them, and she snatched one for herself. Honestly, they kind of belong to Delilah now, but she knew they weren't exactly hers quite yet.

When I got to the front door of the house Delilah held back. I motioned for her to come with me but she backed away. I then stepped toward her to let her know she had to come, but she dodged me again. It was then that I realized she was protecting that toy from me. She knew she technically stole it and she thought I would take it from her.

After a few seconds, I decided to just go into the house hoping she would follow. She did follow me, but she left the toy outside. She did not want me to take it away. So then I went back outside and retrieved the toy and gave it to her inside. She was then happy and it was all over.

Delilah now sneaks a toy whenever I go out there. I really don't mind, but I don't want her to think she can disobey me. Still, I let her get away with this one. An evil twin has to get away with being at least a little evil sometimes.

Let's change the subject while I wrap this up. I think I may have come up with a good idea so I can post a little more often now. We'll see. I haven't had much time to try hiking again yet, but I drive around the countryside quite a bit. I see lots of cool naturey stuff but I can't get pictures while I'm in the truck. Until now.

I'm going to rig my camera up to my dashboard and get a remote shutter button to take the pictures. I can just press the button whenever I see something interesting. Hopefully, this works out very well. We'll see how it works. I'm hoping it can help me post much more often. My next post should be of this type. Until then, I'll talk to you later.

Robot Vacuum Cleaners

This one's going to be a little different. I haven't tried to go on a hiking trip yet, mostly because it's been raining and I also want to watch the last few games of baseball season. But this post is because I have many interests. One of those interests is technology. So today I'm talking about robot vacuum cleaners.

I've had an iRobot Roomba for years. It is from the 600 series of cleaners. I have loved this thing because it keeps my floors much cleaner than I'm willing to do myself. All I have to do is empty it sometime after most cleanings. And my house looks okay.

But there have been a few problems with it. The first one is that it gets stuck in places kind of easily. I end up having to go move it and restart it quite frequently. The second problem is that I had to stick it's recharging base to the wall because it kept knocking it out of position. So it had trouble recharging after it was done.

And it still has trouble finding the base properly. It usually takes several times for it to dock itself. It also doesn't have very strong suction in the vacuum, and since I got my new dog it has been having trouble with the dog hair. And this Roomba is getting kind of old, so I finally decided to replace it.

My new robot vacuum cleaner is the Neato Botvac D4. It's a mid-range cleaner as far as cost, but it has more features than most Roombas. It cost me $400. The Roomba cost more when I got it years ago. This one maps out my house instead of vacuuming randomly, so it is much more efficient than the old one, and it is finished much quicker.

This one also doesn't get stuck anywhere in my house and it has much greater suction in the vacuum. The pet hair is gone from the carpet. It also gets back to the base much better and doesn't ever ram into it and move it.

The disadvantages of the new one are first that you have to connect it to the internet. It's a slightly rough setup at first because of that. It also needs a bigger area where the dock can be placed. But other than those problems it has been wonderful.

The internet connection is actually an advantage because I can control the robot with my phone and I can do voice commands with Amazon Alexa. Overall, this newer technology robot is worth the price for me. I really like this new robot.

Oh, one more thing. Does Delilah like it? The answer is unfortunately no. She liked the old Roomba. It had been there with her for most of her life. She thought it was a playmate of hers. She considers the new Botvac to be a hated enemy, even though it's quieter than the old robot. Hopefully, she'll get used to it.

That's about all. I'll talk to you later.

Surprise! I'm Still Here, And So Is Delilah!

I bet you thought I was gone. I will tell you now that I'll never leave. I have watched so many of my blogging friends disappear, some very good ones this year, but I'll be here even after everyone else is gone. It's because I'm here for a better reason than most people. It's because I truly like why I'm here. No more explanation can be given in one post. Read all of them.

So let's get to my post today. What's been going on and why am I posting today? And why not before? I'm mostly posting today to check in because I haven't done it in so long. But I also have a tiny bit of an update for you.

I told you a while back at the beginning of the summer that we were going to have a lot of flooding around here. It wasn't supposed to let up for the whole summer, which would keep me from posting much of anything because there would just be nowhere for me to go.

That is exactly what has happened. The river is overflowing right now and might even get worse in the immediate future. All of my good nature parks are along the river. Not a recipe for fun. This will have to end someday though.

Another thing that has stopped me from posting is something I've been sort of hiding from you.

I couldn't walk.

I was in a car accident several years ago and my back was injured. It happened at the height of my blogging about my long nature hikes. Everything was abruptly stopped. I slowly tried to get back into it, but it has been mostly painful ever since. In the past few years, the pain had gotten to the point where I could only walk for very short distances, like from one room of my house to another.

Every once in a while I tried to go out to a nature park and struggle through a very short hike. I would usually barely make it back to my truck after only going a very short distance. I hoped I could get better with some exercise. It never worked. Most of my pictures these past few years came from the window of my truck.

I kept telling doctors about my problem, but none of them had any answers for me. The only thing I could do was to hope that one day I would somehow get better. I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen. But then recently something happened.

It began happening around June, but I was feeling less and less pain when I stood or walked. I was actually starting to feel better! After a while, I was able to go short distances without much pain at all. But I was afraid to go much farther for fear that I couldn't make it back.

And finally this week I decided to take a chance. I walked the distance through my small town to the post office. I was sure I would be exhausted when and if I made it back home. But I was just fine. My back hurt a little, but I wasn't very tired at all. I think I might finally be better.

I may need to take things slow and show a little care, but I'm going to try a little walk through whichever nature park is the dryest. I'm not sure how soon I can manage it, but I'll hopefully be back in one of my next few posts with pictures of a new short hike. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And My Sister

As you can see, I have finally come back for an update. It's been quite some time, hasn't it? I think last time I said I'd be posting more often. That turned out to be a whopper of a lie, didn't it? All I can say this time is that I'll be back whenever I can. So let's get to today's post.

This one is going to be a rambling two-parter. First I'll tell you about the pictures. Then I have an amusing story about my little sister. So about the pictures.

I took Delilah back out to the nearest nature park recently. She really loves to go, but she still has a hard time getting there. She's about 8 months old now and you are finally seeing the way she looks mostly grown up. She looks like a skinny German Shepherd. She's the same size as any normal German Shepherd but she is skinny looking compared to a full-bred dog of that kind.

That was a short update, so let's get to the story about my sister. She has a full-blooded German Shepherd and it's a huge one. My sister goes on Facebook, and everywhere else, constantly bragging about how big her dog, much bigger than all other dogs. She's one of those kind of people that has to have the biggest and best of everything, especially compared to yours.

So I decided to tweak her nose a bit about it. She, like you, has also only seen my dog in a few pictures. So I went on Facebook and began bragging about how it is actually my dog that is the biggest.

I didn't tell her this information specifically, but it got the desired results. Her whole family got angry at me for daring to say that my dog was the biggest. Maybe a little childish? Maybe I'm being childish as well, but I'm also having fun. And since I got the desired reaction I decided to add a little more to my puppy's story.

I went back on Facebook and posted that I got one of those doggy DNA tests to find out why my dog is just so huge, much bigger than all other German Shepherds. I said the results came back that the reason is that my dog is part German Shepherd and part Dire Wolf. Of course, Dire Wolves are long ago extinct.

My sister immediately got on my posts feed to inform me of that pesky extinction problem. She usually ignores me. She informed me that her oldest son told her about that knowledgable super-fact. Then she proceeded to comment on this same post about a dozen times with all of her knowledge on the subject and how superior she was for informing me of my lowly error.

That is the most she has spoken to me in the past year. She had no idea I did it all just to get her going and I was laughing at her the whole time. It's still pretty funny. I'm not sure if she has caught on to the joke yet. I do think she did finally begin to feel foolish towards her last comment or two. Next, I'll Photoshop a picture of me standing in front of my giant dog.

Just to finish today's post off, I want to say my sister and I get along just fine. I just thought it would be amusing to exploit this little vanity(insecurity) she has. And I had to tell a few people some of the kinds of things I do to make a person angry with me. And with that, hopefull sooner this time, I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And A New Camera

It's been a little while since my last post. I'm sure you've noticed. Like I said in my last post, it's because I've had nothing to post about. I wasn't going out because of the flooding and because of my dog's behavior. I'm going to try to change some of these problems now though.

But for now, let's talk about what's been happening since my last post.

I've been trying out a different camera than my usual one. My current camera is getting kind of old, even though there's still a lot of life left in it. It's a top of the line point and shoot camera. It looks like a DSLR but it's still just a point and shoot so it has some limitations.

Now I have a new DSLR I'm trying out for business. I won't use it for my personal photography. But after using this new one for a couple of weeks now, I'm seeing a huge difference in photo quality and ease in some cases.

The pictures on the DSLR seem so much smoother than with my point and shoot. And the manual settings are so much easier to work with. I can adjust so many things that I couldn't dream of before. I sometimes want to get a white background with some things, but that's unthinkable with my camera. The business camera can get it easily.

I'm not sure whether I'll get something like this for personal use yet, but it's a thought. One thing a point and shoot like mine is good for though is that I don't have to ever change lenses. That makes nature photography easy. So we'll see what happens.

Let's change the subject a little bit (a lot).

I took Delilah to the vet to get her nails clipped. She took the vet visit well, as usual. It's the rides that she hates. She was actually eager to go. She jumped up into the back of my Jeep and into her cage all by herself. She was very excited.

The big thing is that she didn't use the Jeep as a toilet, not even a little. I said before that I'd have to wait a while to take her on trips because of this little problem, but now maybe it is solved. So I'm going to take her on a trip to a nature park very soon to check her progress. Let's hope she is better.

Here's something good Delilah is doing at home. I have taught her to pick up any object that's not too heavy and bring it to me. I've been telling everyone that she can now help me keep the house clean because of this. She's a smart dog.

She's now much bigger than she was the last time you saw her. She's not the biggest dog in the world, but she's standard German Shepherd size, maybe a little skinnier. She may fill out later, but I'm not sure she'll be as widely built as a normal German Shepherd. We'll see. She's still only about 7 months old.

So we come to the end of my long update. Next time I'll have a little story about Delilah and a toad, with some toady pictures. I'll talk to you later.

Scrappy Delilah

It's Scrappy Doo! I have no idea why the camera gave Delilah a big head and a tiny little body. She's actually a big dog now, not a deformed Scrappy dog. I'll have to share a better picture sometime soon to show what she looks like now. If I can catch up to her.

I took lots of pictures of Delilah and they all turned out like this. She looks like a weirdo. I figured I'd post what I have right now just because I'm bored. I have absolutely nothing to do. Everything is closed up around here because of all the flooding. It's supposed to last throughout the summer. I'll show some of it in my next post.

Meanwhile, there hasn't been anything new with Delilah, except for her growth into a big dog. She's much bigger now than you last saw her. This bottom picture gives a small preview of that. This is her in mid-attack.

Mostly what she does is run throughout the house, and she only slows down to attack and play. She'll pick up one of her toys and run at top speed from one end of the house to the other. And unlike Isabella, she likes to attack and play with my robot vacuum cleaner. She thinks that's a great game. She has figured out how to turn it on all by herself.

This post explains my lack of posting recently. There's just nothing of much interest from me. There aren't even any interesting weeds on my property. I've had them all chopped down. Maybe I should have posted that event. Hmm, maybe next time. I'll talk to you later. 

Ratty And The Nature Park

This was my first trip to a nature park in quite some time. Luckily, this one is only about 5 miles away from me. This is a small walking park that sits between the highway and the railroad tracks. Beyond those tracks is the Big Sioux River, which has been flooded since winter.

For those of you who might wonder, the word Sioux is pronounced like Soo or the name Sue. It is the name of Sioux City, Iowa, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the Sioux Indian Nation. Isn't it great that we have the habit of naming places like these to commemorate certain people?

This park is small but it has several different features to keep a person occupied. This swampy looking area isn't usually quite so wet. It's usually a small creek that you could step across after going down into the gulley. It looks like this because it connects to the bigger river, so it's also flooded here.

Up on the top left of the picture is what appears to be a deer hunter's tree stand or maybe just an observation stand. I've never seen a deer here, but I'm sure they are here. I'm not sure how old this stand is, but I don't remember it from my other trips here.

You can see the river beyond the railroad tracks in the picture above. I can't get any closer than this because there are no passable trails that go near there. There used to be two trails that crossed the tracks and went to the edge of the river. Those have been purposely blocked off for a few years now. That's a shame. I liked those trails a lot.

And finally, you can see my first bird in flight picture in many years. This was directly above me. I just barely got this one. I'm very out of practice. I tried to get other bird pictures but they weren't coming out for me this time. Maybe on my next trip here.

Any of you who are missing The Everyday Adventurer Dog Blog shouldn't worry too much. Even though I'm going to try to start posting my good old nature stuff, Delilah will be back from time to time. She's too insistent in everything she does to ignore her all the time. But I really like posting about nature more than anything else, so that's the way it should be most of the time. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And The Nature Park

I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to load Delilah in the back of my truck and take her to the nature park yet, but I felt like I had no choice now. This is a story that will shock and amaze some of you, and maybe just put the rest of you to sleep. So let's get it over with.

It was a normal routine day when I let Delilah outside to do what she does in the yard. But then something very strange happened. Delilah came to the door scratching frantically wanting to be let in. Usually, it's not such an animated event. Of course, I wondered what the problem could be.

I watched her closely the next time I let her out. She wandered around the yard, as usual. But then I saw it! It was a little rabbit on the other side of the yard. Delilah saw it too. And she ran at full speed to the door wanting in the house again!

Yup, my growing German Shepherd was afraid of a soft little bunny rabbit! I couldn't let this problem stand. I tried to convince her that the rabbit was afraid of her too, but it didn't convince her. The rabbit didn't even care about her. It was busy collecting grass for a nest. And it seemed to know that the dog wouldn't harm it.

I had to toughen her up, and I figured the only way to do it was to get her a little life experience. So I decided to take her to the nearest nature park where there are lots more rabbits and many other animals.

The good thing is this seems to have worked a little bit. Being on the leash and close to me also seemed to help. She was stalking any birds that decided to show themselves to us. Of course, that was very few. But they certainly made lots of noise, and she was very curious about that.

Overall, she had a very good time at the nature park. She's still not the best truck rider, but she'll improve now that she'll get to go to some place that she loves. She also has a brand new cage she rides in. That helps a lot.

I had more pictures from the nature park other than just these of Delilah. I'll share some of them soon. Maybe even in less than a week. That will be my first non-Delilah post in quite a while. Finally, we'll be getting back to normal here.

I haven't had a post in a couple of weeks simply because I had nothing to write about. There wasn't really even any fun stuff with the dog, though I had lots of good pictures of her. As you can see, she's growing rapidly. She's beginning to look like a grown-up dog, even though she's only about five months old.

I'll share more Delilah posts, but let's get back to nature around here now. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And Her New Toy

Delilah finally made her last trip to the vet for a while. She had her spay stitches taken out. I held her front paws up while the vet removed the stitches. It was easy and fast. It seemed like it was done before it started.

Delilah was much better in the truck. But on the truck ride home, she had a little accident on the tarp she had to ride on. I still haven't had a chance to train her to ride better. That will start soon, even though I think she'll get better with age anyway.

I keep Isabella's old toys out in the garage. Every once-in-awhile I bring in a couple of them for Delilah. This time I brought her a squeaky pink pig toy.

Delilah ran back and forth as happy as can be for the rest of the day. I thought it was a good way to transition her from the idea of the vet trip. I think it worked very well.

I don't know how well you can see it in these blurry pictures, but Delilah is growing fast. Her face is changing from that of a puppy to an adult dog. It's about halfway through. I think she looks a great deal different than when I got her.

She is also a lot bigger than she was when I got her. It's hard to see it in the pictures, but she has very long legs and big feet. And her ears still seem very over-sized, so she still has quite a bit of growing to do.

It's difficult to get much better than blurry pictures of her right now. She's always moving. So I figure the blurry ones are fun anyway. This last one was in mid-leap right at me with a running start. I was prepared this time.

I'm thinking of going on a few trips to nature parks without Delilah pretty soon. I can't take her for rides yet, but I want to go on a few hikes. We'll see what I can do when I have the time. It should warm back up pretty soon. And hopefully, the flooding doesn't get worse.

They've been saying that this is going to be one of the worst years for flooding in this area. The roads have been closed twice already. That's supposed to be a common event for a while. I'll just have to live with it. I'll talk to you later.

Say No To Drugs

Today I got my dog off of drugs. After she was spayed her evil drug dealer the vet gave her some stuff that turned her into a psycho, aggressive and hyper lunatic. He called the pills "pain medication." I call them crazy pills. But let me tell you how all of this happened.

After Delilah was spayed the vet gave me three pills to give to Delilah to ease the pain. I was to give her one a day for three days. I had no idea what the awful results would be, but I wanted the best for my gentle little puppy.

The second day she was home, her first pill day, I gave her the first pill. In a little while, Delilah seemed to get a big boost of energy. She began running through the house at top speed. I was kind of surprised that she was feeling so much better already.

For the rest of the day, Delilah acted in her most obnoxious manner. She kept biting me and jumping on me much more than usual. This was much more aggressive than her usual playing. I had to push her away many times, but she insisted on attacking me, coming back each time. I just figured it was a bad day for her.

The second pill day, she went outside after her pill. I thought all was normal. Why would I not? But when I went outside I discovered that she had pulled a lot of the cable TV wire off of the side of the house! I caught her before she actually disconnected it or tore it apart. She was able to do this even though I always watch her closely when she's outside.

She was still being hyper-aggressive in everything she did for the whole day. She acted like this all day and much of the night. I got very little sleep because she kept me up almost till morning. She was just in a complete violent frenzy.

On the third pill day, I began to suspect that something wasn't quite right, but she was still behaving mostly like herself, just very much more so. It was just that all of her bad habits were greatly amplified. But then it got stranger.

After she had been outside for a little while, I went to the door to check on her. I looked down to discover that she had gathered her old poop into a pile on the porch! I suspected it was for snacks. Yuck! I quickly disposed of all of this.

I was pretty sure by now that the pills were somehow causing all of this behavior because it was only after giving her a pill that she acted crazy. I was glad they were now all gone.

And finally, the day after the pills, when they were all gone, she went back to behaving like her normal old self. The intense crazy behavior was gone. She still has some bad habits. All creatures do. But she's not so aggressively crazy and obnoxious.

I would still want her to have less pain after an operation like that, but I think I would be more prepared for the effects of pain pills now. This was not fun to deal with. She's still obnoxious sometimes, but in a normal way. I like normal.

I got her off the drugs. Say no to drugs, unless they're prescribed by a doctor. And even then, be prepared for the results. I'll talk to you later.

Spayed!

Delilah went back to the vet Tuesday to get spayed and get her adult shots. I had to take her in at about 7:30 in the morning and leave her there until 4:00. She didn't like it one bit, but it had to be done.

I spent the rest of the day worrying about my little puppy. I worried that she might think I had abandoned her. I worried that the vet might mess up the operation. And I worried that I would not have my dog anymore because of it.

But when I went back right at 4 o'clock to pick her up, Delilah was just fine. They told me everything was good, and she'd have to come back in two weeks to get her stitches removed.

I mentioned that I'd like to have her super sharp nails clipped, but I didn't want to do it yet because the bill for all this was huge. I needed a little money break. The woman told me that it would only be another $10 and they could do it right then, so I said sure.

So we took Delilah into the other room and got her nails clipped. This would be a huge relief to my arms, which Delilah had scratched bloody many many times. Like I said, super sharp. But not anymore!

The final bill came to about $250. Not too bad for what all was done, I guess. I also paid for some pain relief medication to take home. I was sure she needed it.

After I got her home, Delilah was out of it for several more hours. She was conscious but very tired. She also had a shaved belly and a row of white stitches there.

I want to keep this as only one little episode of the Delilah Chronicles so I'll wait till my next post to tell you what happened the next day when I gave her the pain pills. You'll appreciate that I separated these stories. I'll have this next episode of Days Of Delilah's Life up as soon as possible. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And The Vet

I almost didn't get this post written this week. I get obsessed with my business so much sometimes that I forget everything else. This can last for several weeks at a time. Making money is really fun. Other than this little mention, I try to keep my business stuff separate from my blog. That's why I seem so secretive about it. Trust me, it's for your own good.

But what I came here to talk about today is my dog, again. What else can I talk about here on The Everyday Adventurer Dog Blog? I promised to tell you about her little trip to the vet, so here I go.

Delilah needed her last puppy shots so we had to go. She also had a little trouble with diarrhea and going a little too often, even for a puppy. She got her shots and some precautionary worm medicine. She took it very well. Not even a flinch.

I talked to the vet about her other problem, so he gave me some antibiotics to give to her. I'm glad to say that her diarrhea is cured and she isn't going so often anymore. She seems just fine now. But there is another awful related problem.

When the poor little dog is afraid, she poops like a horse, constantly. And she doesn't like to ride in the truck yet. I've tried to take her on three trips so far, and none have gone well at all. My truck smelled like the worst part of an outhouse for a few days until I had it very thoroughly cleaned.

So Delilah isn't going to any nature parks until I can get this situation figured out. The first thing I have done is to buy a giant roll of plastic to lay down in the back of the truck if she has to go with me. That will work for any future accidents. But I have to help her feel better about riding.

In just two days from now, Delilah is going back to the vet to get spayed. She's going to hate it. But mostly because she can't stand for me to be out of her sight for more than a few seconds. Another thing we'll have to fix.

Other than these little problems, she is doing very well. I have now taught her to fetch a ball properly, and she knows the trick of roll over. She also has begun to grow very fast. She's twice as big as she was when I got her. See if you can tell the size difference in my new pictures. Her ears are also both standing up now.

This last picture is from last week, so only one ear is up. I just didn't have any more new pictures and I like this one. You can also see her new blue collar. I had to get her this one because the collar she came with had become too small. It can be adjusted much bigger than it is now.

And now on an unrelated note. I was dealing with a new computer keyboard for a while. It was a terrible keyboard. I kept making typing errors while using it because the keys were too close together. I finally got another new one that is much better. It is a Logitech Wave keyboard. This one is a pleasure to use.

My next post will hopefully be in a few days after Delilah gets spayed. We'll see how she's doing. I can't promise anything because I really do get obsessed with business. I love that and blogging so much that sometimes I think of one or the other and little else. So I will be back as soon as I can, and I'll talk to you later.