A varied Saturday



Gypsy Jr.'s new kennel from the inside,
looking from the back to the front.

 My only hard and fast committment for today was meeting a dog transport in Charlottesville to pick up an incoming shepherd. So it was one of those mixed purpose days, lots of things to be accomplished, none of them related to the others.  I did the usual morning feeding routine and finished up some work on the Lexi kennel.  That's the kennel next to Sparky that I had gutted and started anew.  I put on a canopy for shade, and hung a fan for cooling.  I need to get a water tank big enough for her to get into.



New kennel, looking from the front to the rear



I moved in an igloo, and A-frame, a climbing platform, and Gypsy Jr.  She is going to be Sparky-adjacent for a few days and then I'm going to introduce them.  She is food aggressive and it needs to stop.  That's why she failed the temp test at CASPCA and ended up at my house.  She's not food aggressive with me, but she sure is with other dogs.  She won't try it with Sparky more than once and she needs that experience.  Once they straighten out her manners, I think he will enjoy her as company.

 

I got halfway cleaned up and headed into Charlottesville late morning.  The transport wasn't due until noon but I wanted to hit the farmer's market in town to buy tomatoes and other veggies to make gazpacho.  I had never been to that market.  It was crowded, and leaned heavily toward the organic, nuts and berries set.  That's fine, but I bought veggies that made no such promises and were considerably less expensive than those that did.  I had lunch at this little creperie, operated out of a walk up window in a small brick building on the back side of the downtown mall.  It's really pretty good.

I got to the transport meeting place a little early and visited with some other rescue folks who had transported three dogs up from Floyd County.  One was this handsome boxer named Zeus.  He was going on up to northern Virginia to a boxer rescue group.  Their other two passengers were two very cute mutts being taken in by CASPCA.  They take in adoptable dogs from other shelters when they have space, which I think is very nice, it saves more dogs and helps other localities reduce unnecessary euthanization.

 

We had a nice visit, dog people don't always have the best people skills, but we are pretty good at talking to each other about our common passion (obsession, whatever).  It wasn't long before my transport arrived with Cheyenne, shown here after I got her back home.  I'm just keeping her overnight and am transporting her on to another foster home with VGSR tomorrow at the adoption event in Front Royal.

 

I got back home and got Cheyenne settled and then "planted" my other acquisition from the market this morning, a lotus plant.  There was a man there selling water plants and had several of these growing in shallow plastic containers about 15" in diameter.  I brought it home and put it into this half barrel that I had been planning to do up with some sort of fountain and water plant.  The lotus filled it up nicely and he said it would love all the sun that it will get in that location.  He also said it would bloom all summer.  We will see.

 

Next I put a piece of beef and some veggies on the smoker. I had never done veggies like this and they would have been fine, but I left them on too long.  I think they would have cooked in an hour rather than the three hours or so that I had the beef on.  The onions and smaller carrots were rather desiccated, but the squash was fine. 

I had a couple hours worth of work to finish up and then finally managed to get a mower started (one of three that I have), and did a couple hours with the walk-behind mower.  The household dogs had a pasture romp as I finished up with the mowing.  Sufficiently hot and dirty, I tried out my new outdoor shower that I had rigged up earlier this week.  It's a cold water shower, but it felt great.