Juggling… And BEES!

I made a blunder! Although I refreshed my memory ahead of time before the arrival of one of the families coming to visit the puppies, I mixed this family up with another family getting a puppy. What did I mix up? The gender of puppy they are getting. The folks were incredibly gracious while I sat there trying to figure out how I mixed them up? And I realized my error was due to “juggling”! This is SO not like me!

I could say that I’m thinking of puppies in Nebraska sired by Rooster and the new homes they are going to this week. I still need/want the names/contact info for those homes to keep track of puppies related to my dogs. And why is it so difficult to NOT send me this information? I’m disappointed a home I sent for one of those puppies was never contacted. I just recently was told this and yet, I have no way of “fixing” this problem for this person. This is not the first “problem” I’ve heard back regarding this “breeder” and her Rooster puppies either!

I could say I’m thinking about local puppies sired by Rooster and what homes those puppies are going to in the next two weeks. We are going to see those puppies this upcoming weekend… It’s important to see, for myself, exactly what “my dogs” have produced! And yes, I want names/contact info for each family who is getting one of those puppies too.

I could say that I wanted to contact my vet who has gone above and beyond in helping me with all of my dogs to let her know… I don’t have any problems and just send her puppy photos as a “thank you” for being there for me and my dogs. I missed that chance because she’s contacted me first asking to see “how things are going?” and to let me know their new surgery lights have now been installed. We can now schedule Beanie’s surgery to fix her breathing problems. Ahhh… French Bulldogs! A genetic mess of a breed but so darling too! We are going to hopefully “fix” Beanie’s breathing problem with this upcoming surgery!

But most of all… I’m worried about poor Rooster! He has a BAD hot spot I am treating and yes, he is wearing the “cone of  shame” to keep him from scratching/irritating the hot spot. Because my dogs use doggy doors, Rooster can’t get out the doggy door with the other dogs because of Elizabethian Collar. I took it off of him for a short while and yep, he scratched his hot spot which was just starting to heal. Poor, poor baby!

There are alot of reasons dog’s get “hot spots”. Our hot, humid weather is one of them. Dead undercoat because Rooster’s bath/grooming was delayed due to puppies is one of them. I feel very guilty about that! But a big problem we have right now are BEES!

Several of my neighbors have decided to keep bees. Great! I’m all for “saving the planet”; I’m well aware of the benefits of the bees. But when folks keep bees and don’t provide a food or water source for them, yep, they are all in MY YARD and flower beds! I’ve been told the only way to get rid of all of the bees in my yard is to destroy my landscaping and flower beds… NOT a good option in my mind. So every time my dogs go outside in the yard/landscaping that I’ve created for them, they run the risk of being stung by bees… Hence Rooster’s hot spot! He has “stings” all around his hot spot, in his ears, and around his face! That toy left in the midst of the flower bed (or that peanut the blue jays dropped from our bird feeder) was too much of a prize for him to ignore. And being stoic in nature, he never “complained” about being stung until the hot spot developed and we started treating him.

My plan was to spray the planting beds/flowers this weekend to decrease the bee population somewhat and then this morning… I see a hummingbird and worry if the spray will be detrimental to these tiny gems of nature? The flowering bushes I have right now WERE planted to attract hummingbirds. Every summer, we get a few hummingbirds who decide to NOT continue their migration to the mountains where it is cooler and stay and raise a family in our yard! And now, the hummingbirds are back!

Back to dogs… the puppies will be going outside soon. There is no way I want them stung by those bees! I KNOW the puppies will dive under those flowering bushes into the shade disrupting the bees in our flowerbeds! What to do? What to do? And Rooster isn’t the first of our dogs to be “attacked” by these bees… Every summer, at least one of the dogs have been stung badly enough to require vet attention and medical treatment! It is a real problem!

I can laugh at myself for making that blunder! I probably came across as “ditzy” to that family. To those that don’t “live in the country”, it can seem a totally different world? Having lived both in the city and in the country, I wouldn’t trade where I live but it does bring certain problems that I suppose folks living in the suburbs can also have… If their neighbors decide to “keep bees”!