Porcupines

                   We are fortunate enough to be able to own horses. We live two miles out of town and have 8 acres. At the moment we have 3 horses and my friend boards her horse here. Above is one of our girls, Twilight. She was 3 in this picture.
                    Last week when we went out to spend some time with them we noticed something on Twilights foot.

                                       Turns out she must have gotten in a tussle with a porcupine.

Okay so don't think I'm clueless or anything but I had no idea we had porcupines in North Dakota! So this was a big discovery for me! Anyway I grew up in Minnesota with my mom and spent summers in Fargo Nd with my dad. I knew there were porcupines in Minnesota although I have never seen one or come across anything to do with one but there are heavily wooded areas there and I thought that was where porcupines were known to live. Well there aren't many trees here and where there are trees the definitely aren't thickly wooded. So I was surprised to find out they lived here.

Pin Tzu (Miniature Pinscher Shih Tzu Cross)

This is Annie, she is a Shih Tzu. We let her hair grow in the winter and shave her in the summer. She isn't very pretty when I shave her but it makes her feel great!

This is Dookie Doo, he is a miniature Pinscher. He is a spoiled little cuddle bug. His ears and tail were never cropped.

                             Above is a picture of them together. Here are some pictures of their puppies.

This is Seven he is one of the puppies we kept. (I wanted to keep them all lol)

This little guy didnt make it. He lived almost 2 months. The last 2 and a half weeks of his life he had to be force fed a bottle and wet puppy food. At 3 weeks old, which would be 1 week after this photo was taken, Annie would have nothing to do with him anymore. I'm sure she knew something was wrong with him. We took him to the vet and the had him on a IV for 2 days. (They couldnt find any reason for him to be sick)When he came home he was more active but still just skin and bones. He never grew or gained weight after that. He would not eat and I had to force him to live. He eventually passed away...Failure to thrive.

These are two pictures of the shy guy.
He is the only one out
of the four that we sold.

This is the only girl. We also decided to keep her. We named her Liberty. She is absolutely adorable!














So I have a lot more recent pictures of Libby and Seven since they are staying with us its going to be fun watching them grow. Its going to be interesting to see what a pin tzu looks like when it grows up. Its also neat to see these two dogs from the same litter who look and act so different grow and change.

                          Liberty

Brother and sister together. I realized I need to get more pictures of Seven to add on here. I will and will add them later.

Black Smoke Himalayan or Persian

     

         Last year in late May one of my husband Facebook friends was giving away what they said was a Himalayan. They said they bought her from a breeder but couldn't keep her anymore. I had always wanted a Himalayan so I agreed to take her sight unseen and drove to pick her up in Valley City, N.D. I thought I would be getting a Sassy from Homeward Bound look alike so imagine my surprise when he plopped a little black ball of fluff into my arms. Still shes such a beauty and has that gorgeous smashy face and I am so glad she came into my family. We named her Sassy...yeah we are really original. Here's a picture of her when she first came home.

                 She has big beautiful orange eyes that always show yellowish in pictures for some reason. Everyone always asks me what breed she is so I tell them what I was told Himalayan. Most people argue because Himalayans are white with dark points. They say she has to be Persian I think I'll have to agree because of her solid color but I guess I will never know. Many people consider Himalayan a color breed of a Persian and having the pointed pattern is required. The past owners insist she came from a Himalayan cattery. I would love to hear what other people think about this subject.

                  Her adaption into our family is quite a story as you can tell in the picture she was quite skiddish when she first came to live with us in fact I think it was at least a month before she even came out while we were home from wherever it was she hid. To tell you the truth I was never very fond of her for the longest time and thought adopting her was a mistake. She never seemed to fit in and when she did get used to us she was rather intrusive and wouldn't lay down or sit in your lap. We simply didn't connect.

                 As the story goes on it turns out she was pregnant when we got her because she gave birth just over a month after we brought her home. Her Kittens were born on the fourth of July. Foolishly we didn't get her fixed and she became pregnant again with a second litter. We live in the country and I had introduced her to the great out of doors after her 1st litter of kittens were given to their new homes. She became less of a scaredy cat and more pleasant to be around since being able to go out when she wanted made her more outgoing. Here are some pictures of her kittens.

 There was 2 black Males shown on the left.

She had this tiger striped Female stayed with us the longest her face was the closest to being smashed in and she has her moms huge eyes.

 The girl to the left only made it to a couple weeks old. She was the runt and her body never did grow.

This girl on the right was the fluffiest and the first to find a new home.

              

                                She was set to give birth to her second litter in April.  Everything was normal until she went into labor, of course it was a Friday night. On Saturday there were no kittens and by the time the evening rolled around we were calling all the vets around town. The vet we managed to get a hold of said it didn't seem like she was in full labor and we should keep waiting. At this time the kittens were still kicking inside her. By Sunday evening we were panic stricken and even though we kept calling, the vet still insisted she would be fine. She never seemed to be in distress... even though she should have. We live in a relatively small town and there is only one vet in town that takes emergency visits on weekends and we decided to get a second opinion from him. The nurse on call agreed with the previous vet and didn't think it was urgent. My husband has experience with birthing livestock and asked the nurse if he would reach into her if it would help them decide on what was happening. He used a finger and felt a kitten. The nurse decided it was urgent and by now of course its 2 in the morning. She hangs up with us to call the vet meanwhile we are getting ready to head out. She calls back and says the vet wants 1000 dollars for an emergency c-section and that the cat probably isn't worth that much and to call tomrrow. We told the nurse shes worth that to us and we will be there with the money. (Thats when it hit me hey I must really love this cat!) So the nurse calls the vet back to tell him its on, then calls us back to inform us the vet didn't want to come in because we weren't previous clients and it wouldn't benefit him to come in, he would see us in the morning. (Yeah Right!) So through the night my husband managed to help turn the stuck kitten and pull it out. It was already decomposing and it was one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. We left a message at our newest vet in town Dr. Dawn expalining everything that was going on, hoping maybe she would check her messages. Sassy didn't pass any more kittens before morning and come 7:30 a.m. the phone was ringing it was Dr. Dawn telling us to get her in there asap.  They gave her a complete Hysterectomy, which means they took out the kittens and uterus all together. The kittens of course were dead. This wonderful vet saved her life and to top it off she only charged us for a spay and antibiotics. Wow! We were expecting to spend a thousand dollars to save our cat but she said the procedure was the same as a spay so that's what she would charge us for. 

She is very talkative

                    Today Sassy is happy and healthy, sweet and outgoing. She really is sassy and spunky, completely opposite of the cat she was when she was brought here. When I watch her outside I can see she thinks she's wild. Shes a good cat and I think she is really happy.

                                                                                                   

                                                                                   

She gets annoyed by the camera flash can you tell                                                                            

                                       

                                 Don't ask me how this is comfy

                                        She's always at peace, a go with the flow kinda cat.

Planted our Hat Trick Apple and Crimson Pointe Plum

I live in Jamestown North Dakota. We are plant hardiness zone 4a. My husband and I adore plants and love gardening. We are by no means experts at growing things and are therefore learning as we go. Today we planted a Hat Trick apple tree. I haven't come across much in the way of information on the internet about this tree so I guess we will have to see how it goes. What I do know about this tree is it grows 3 different types of apples on one tree. It grows Honey Crisp, Zestar, and Sweet 16. The tree is also self pollinating and is trained to grow up a wall. Here is a picture of my tree so you can see how they have shaped it.

Now as you can see we have chosen not to place it against a wall. I don't have the heart to force a tree into such an unnatural position and I also tend to feel guilty when I have to prune branches off of trees. (lol) So I try to do as little pruning as I can get away with. My husband thought training it would take a toll on his apple crop. As I stated previously we don't have expert experience in gardening and there is little info available about this tree so for all I know it could get out of control or revert or whatever else is possible, I don't know. Only time will tell and that's if it even survives our crazy weather here in Nd.

Today we also planted a Crimson Pointe Plum. It was the tallest tree left in the nursery and it just seems so pretty. We moved to this particular home in February of 2010. It had no landscaping of any kind and the yard is so plain and gets so hot without any shade so we've been adding trees and bushes and flowerbeds. Although this ornamental plum tree is nice and tall it grows straight up and doesn't bush out. I'm looking forward to see how it does over the years. The strange part of this particular tree is it looks like it has thorns on its trunk. It may just be branches that have broken of  but its odd that they are so sharply pointed. 

What is going on with my fish

           

My beautiful Betta was pearly white when I bought him. Over the next couple weeks he developed a black spot on his side and a small streak on his tail. Above is a picture of him then. He is a beauty! With in a week he gained more color. It looks blackish in person until you turn on his light it then turns to a dirty turquoise color.

The color is darker in person than what shows up on my camera. From what I understand this may mean he has a marbling gene? He is healthy and very happy. He is very sociable and quite a character. I really loved the way he looked before but I guess it will be neat to see what he turns into. I plan to keep posting on his progress. Below is two more before and after pictures. 

         

8/14/12 So its been two weeks and he has gotten darker. It a little hard to tell exactly what he looks like because the camera doesn't quite pick it up right.

This color is what he looks like.

















This shows the coverage on his right side. The color is distorted from the flash on my camera.