We had Rosie's BFF neighbor dog Beanie overnight, and in the morning we had pancakes. So beanie got to take part in our weekly ritual. She was pretty good at it, but it's definitely much more work to get three dogs to cooperate for photos than it is one or two.
Goldie socked out in the hallway because it was too hot.
This is the look Rosie gives me when I call her name while she's in the middle of stomping on some plant.
I've been really down since realizing on Monday that the kitty was in a downward spiral and we needed to make that vet appointment. So instead of being all sad and weepy here, here are some pictures of the chicks enjoying a little outside time and stuff.
Here we have them in the first few days, playing with a piece of the shipping crate they came in. I used it to test whether they were ready to have wood chips down as bedding (which you have to be careful about, since they might eat them to the point of illness).
Then we went outside.
I think we will be keeping this chick, and I am provisionally calling her Dolly (for Dolly Parton).
We tried some experiments with the dog and chicks (apparently it's very hard to focus a camera with one hand while trying to make sure the chick doesn't fall off the dog's head). This chick is the Silver-Laced Wyandotte, and we will be calling her Janis (for Janis Joplin, because she spent her first few days stumbling around the habitat and falling over her feet).
I've given pet names to the two Barred Rocks who will go to the neighbors. They are Spot and Dot. This is Spot, who has a big white spot on her head.
Here's Rosie admiring the little chicky butts.
This is one of the easter-eggers, which the neighbor's kid calls Stripes. I think this will also be our chick, and I'm not sure what her name will be.
The little outdoor excursions are to give them something to think about that is new and interesting. They had a pretty good time easting weed seeds.
I'm pretty sure that this chick will be going to the neighbors. The neighbor-kid calls her Cornpuff and seems to love her best. She really liked sheltering under Rosie; I think the chicks have decided the dogs are their mommies.
We tried out putting Dolly on Rosie's back to see how she would do:
Given that the chicks hardly ever sit still even without being on fur, she did a decent job of holding still, and Rosie did even better.
This is how I took the chicks out for their first exercise hour: a big canning pot. Lots of jokes about chickens in the stewpot.
Here they are in their habitat with fancy wood chip bedding and their feeder and waterer up on bricks for their convenience.
Another exercise hour, Dot poking around in the dirt:
And Dolly growing out some butt feathers:
You can really see Dot's smaller head dot (smaller than Spot's, of course) here:
I thought the canning pot might be uncomfortable, so we tried out the shipping box they came in for the next visit outside:
Clockwise from top left: Janis (Silver-Laced Wyandotte), unnamed easter-egger, Dot (Barred Rock), Dolly (easter-egger), Spot (Barred Rock), Cornpuff (easter-egger).
So there's really only one name we need to come up with, and in part that has to wait until we're sure which easter-egger is going to the neighbors.
She can't go somewhere else to sleep, because she has to be near her people.
Noel went to the hardware store, and left the poor, abandoned dogs behind.
Rosie had a friend over to play today, and she got so worked up that she had to take a swim to cool down.
Then an after-swim roll in the straw I'm using to mulch the new garden plot.
On Wednesday we said goodbye to our dear buddy Ted, who was only five years old and had lymphoma. That morning he didn't want to get up, and could hardly be enticed to move, even with the offer of one of his favourite things: a visit to our yard to play with Rosie.
Ted was a good boy, an enormous sweetheart of a dog who could be a pain in the butt, but was very dear to us. He loved to come over and look at the chickens, who fascinated him.
And he felt very at home in our house, from numerous daylong play sessions on weekends to the occasional overnight stay (when his people had a baby, and when they went on vacation).
At the very end he was sad and sick and miserable, and we're all glad that at least he didn't have to suffer.
We've agreed that Ted will be buried in our yard, once his ashes are returned. I chose the spot by the gate where he always peed as he arrived. The gate meant good things for Ted: coming into the yard to play at the beginning of the day, and leaving to go home and eat and lie down after a long day of fun.
Goldie has a birthday apple!
Several people have asked how the dogs and chickens are getting along, and the news is very very good.
A few weeks ago, Goldie had a bout of Kennel Cough, which is basically a dog chest infection. She was very under the weather and spent one afternoon outside with me in the garden, while the chickens were out and about. They all did very well together, and after that, dogs and chickens seemed to reach a certain detente. In part because the dogs realized that chickens produce chicken poop out of their butts, and chicken poop is much better than feathers.
So we get a lot of this:
OK, it's gross. But it's also much less worrying than the dog lunging at the chickens as if to kill them all the time.
Also, the chickens are larger and more able to defend themselves (including the occasional peck on the nose), so the dogs are less inclined to get too close to the pointy end of things.
