Waiting...

Well, Dad and Mom are just hanging out right now, because there's a cold front blowing through right now (although it's still 80 degrees outside!) and they're on alert for the Fire Dept in case the winds, which are really starting to kick up, blow up the Kootenai Creek fire worse than it is now. A couple of our trucks and some of the other firefighters are already working the fire or are pre-staged for structure protection. Here's a link to the Inciweb site in case you're curious: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1733/

This fire started way back in July, but it's been pretty much a non-event until last week, when a cold front blew through and it really started moving quickly. Folks in the area are not happy with the Forest Service right now! Interesting enough, we (without Schultz!) actually looked at some houses in that area, and decided the roads were too windy and narrow for good, easy access. Hmmm - the Lord works in mysterious ways.

But there's other stuff to tell you about too! First, Dad went to the Reno Air Races last week, where he met up with Dave (who calls Schultz the psycho-dog, and I agree!), his son, and some of Dave's siblings and Uncle Jerome for a little while. Dad said it was fun, but was really happy to come home.

Dad and Mom have been doing quite a bit around the house too. First, they finally finished building steps from the back deck to the hot tub - no more jumping down 4.5' to reach the tub. Dad has been cutting up firewood - we're going to install a Kuma wood stove in the main room of the house for auxillary heating. We've got lots of wood, so we may as well use it! Mom has also started a new project - she's building a raised-bed garden behind the house - it's going to be 4x8 feet, and have 2 ft high dry stone walls. There's lots of rocks here, so she may as well use them for something too!

And of course, they continue to train with the Fire Dept. Last week's training was low-angle rescue with the Ravalli County Search and Rescue folks. They learned how to get a stretcher with a person in it safely up and down steep slopes. It can be pretty challenging!

And last, but not least, Mom actually saw a mountain lion last week! We've seen the tracks before, but they're usually pretty good at hiding - this one ran right across the road in front of the car about a mile from our house. Fortunately, there's lots of food for them here - there are turkeys and deer everywhere - besides, no stupid cat would ever try to take on me and Blockhead - we'd show that dumb cat who's in charge!

Mom was hoping our new internet connection (a USB cell phone antenna, with an external booster antenna from Verizon) would let us post pictures, but you'll just have to wait until they go downtown - images are just too much for the connection I guess. But it's still better than dial up!

Hope you're having a great fall!

More Hiking, Less Working

Well, Dad and Mom aren't working anymore - the Farmer's Market cut back their hours, and their are a lot of single moms there, so Dad and Mom are just on call in case someone gets sick. Which is great for us, and Mom's OK with it, but Dad's going to get bored soon.

So, we've been doing more hiking, and Dad and Mom have been doing more fire training too. See all our pictures on our Picassa Web album at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Daphne.ItchyDog/SeptemberHiking?feat=directlink

And Mom added some more pictures to the August Web Album as well; the link for that album is in the last post.

Hope everyone's Labor Day was great!

Little Stuff

Well, no new pictures, but lots of little updates. First, we sold the car I never get to ride in - yep, the Mazda is gone. So, Dad and Mom got a shell for the pickup truck, so Blockhead, I mean Schultz and I, can ride in the back with lots of room to move around in.

Dad and Mom are home a lot more now too - the Farmer's Market cut down on their hours, so they're working a lot less. That's good for me! Dad's applied for a new part-time job with a local non-profit, and Mom's applied to be an adjunct faculty member for the University of Montana. We'll let you know if they get the jobs!

It's really hot now too, so sometimes we go to the Bitterroot river to go swimming. I don't like to swim, and neither does Schultz, but it's nice to walk in the water and cool off. Sometimes Mom and Dad dive under the water and that makes Schultz really nervous - he whines really loud!

Dad and Mom got to cut up cars for the Fire Dept again last week - which is really hard when it's 90 degrees, the "Jaws of Life" weigh 70 lbs, and you're wearing full firefighter gear! But it's important to know how to do this. Since we had a lot of rain this summer, they haven't had to fight many fires, which is good, but there have been a lot of medical calls which keep them busy. I hate the pager!

We'll post more pictures and another update soon! Hope everyone's having as good a summer as we are!

More Hiking finally!

Sorry it's been so long since I posted anything - the weather here has been kind of crazy and Mom and Dad's jobs have been eating up more time than they'd like. The weather has been either miserably hot (upper 90s) or unseasonably cool and rainy, which makes it really hard to go hiking and do other fun stuff. On the other hand, all the rain has meant Dad and Mom don't have to fight fire very much, which is a really good thing!

Mom has finally caught up with technology to some extent, and has started a web album. See our latest hiking pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Daphne.ItchyDog/AugustHiking?feat=directlink

We went to Canyon Lake with part-time pack member Bob - he goes to Church and sings with Mom. It was a really long and hard hike! 9 miles, and 2200 feet of elevation gain, with over half of the elevation gain in the last half mile - it was really steep. But the lake was cool and windy so we recovered well.

We went up Bear Creek yesterday - at the 2.6 mile point you have to ford Bear Creek - there's no bridge - so we finally went across yesterday. Dad brought his Crocs, but Mom forgot and went barefoot! It was pretty cold water, but it was in the mid 70s, so we were fine. We went another mile and half up the canyon, which was OK, but nothing spectacular. On the way back, Mom thought she found a way to cross the creek without getting her paws wet, which worked fine, but there was no trail on the other side of the creek, so we had to do about an hour of bushwacking through really thick brush and downed trees. I also had to endure a lot of screaming from Schultz - he can't seem to walk on the top side of downed trees, so he panics, then screeches like a little baby, then bashes his way through, around, under or over the trees and other obstacles in his way. Mom keeps trying to teach him how to walk on trees, but I think he's afraid of heights - I know he's a really big baby! The things I have to put up with - it just isn't fair!

Hiking with a bigger pack

We finally got to go hiking again - yay, my favorite thing to do in the whole world! And we had a little bigger pack this time - one of Mom's friends from Church came along. Mom nicknamed him the Energizer Bunny because he moves down the trail so fast. This was a really Loooong hike though - we did 9 miles! And it was really, really hot on the way home - that's why we're laying down on the trail in the first picture. It's been getting really hot for a couple of weeks now - fortunately, it cools down at night, and then Dad and Mom shut all the windows and the house stays at the perfect temperature for sleeping the afternoon away.

Let's see, what else has been going on? Mom finished her half marathon - she had to walk the last 3 miles because her left IT band was acting up, but she said it was really beautiful with lots of wild flowers all around Lolo Pass.

Dad and Mom continue to respond to small "wildland" fires - usually someone letting a brush pile get out of hand - fortunately only about one every few weeks. Still can't find the fire pictures on the computers, so no cool firefighter pictures yet.

And we're trying to get a better internet service at the house so we can update this more often, but that continues to be challenging. Hope everyone out there is having a great summer!

Oh, and Dad and Mom have put the car that I never get to ride in up for sale. Why we have a car I don't get to ride in, I just don't know! Of course, hopefully we won't have it too much longer. Maybe we'll get a big truck! That would be cool. So, if anyone needs a 2002 Mazda Protege 5, let us know!

Chief Victor Days!

Well, the big excitement around here has been Chief Victor Days, held 12-13 Jun. On Friday night, Dad and Mom dressed up in "official" Victor Fire Dept "dress blues" (a little different from the Air Force - it's a blue shirt and your jeans with the most blue in them) for the big Spagetti Dinner fundraiser. They did pretty good - lots of very generous folks in Victor!

Then on Saturday, Dad got to drive one of the big fire trucks in the parade - Mom had to work - and boy, was he excited about that. Mom told him he should bring us along for the ride, but he thought we might bark too much. He's probably right.

Mom and Dad have been doing a lot with the fire department for training too. They got to practice on a fake propane fire simulator, and a simulated house fire using the State of Montana "Smoke Shack". The Smoke Shack is a series of three metal rooms built into a semi-trailer that you put excelsior into and light it on fire - it's pretty hot! We should get some pictures of that next time I post.

Dad's been experimenting with reloading ammunition for his .357s - so far, he's been successful in not blowing the house up, or blowing up a gun, so it seems to be going pretty good. Mom continues to train for her half marathon - it's next week - and she's really not ready, but she's planning on walking a lot, so it should be OK. I continue to hate Schultz, and Schultz continues to get fatter, no matter what Mom and Dad do - he'll eat ANYTHING, including spent primers Dad carved out of the old fired brass he uses for reloading. He's such an idiot - I don't understand why they don't send him baaaaccck!

Long Time No Type!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated my blog - Mom has been really busy with two jobs and Dad has been working way too much too! And the fire department is taking a lot of their time as well - which makes me very unhappy, because then I'm stuck all day with Blockhead, I mean Schultz, and he tries to push me out of my favorite place to sleep right by the door.

Dad has been working at the Meat and Fish counter at lot more than he wanted to - the owners are nice folks, but they're having a hard time finding good people, so Dad ends up working a lot. Mom has been working in the Produce department, which she likes because she is not only busy, but also gets her workout in - canteloupes and corn are heavy! She's also been working for the Census Bureau doing address canvassing, which means she drives or walks around and checks every house address in her assigned area. She enjoyed doing this until last week, when a little blue cattle dog bit her on the back of the calf! Don't worry - the dog had its shots, and it's healing nicely, although she may have a scar for a while. Needless to say, Mom is very glad this part of the Census is over, and she has absolutely no desire to work any further phases. Produce is safer - it doesn't bite!

Mom and Dad have done a lot of training with the Fire Dept - they spent a whole day learning how to extricate people from wrecked cars, using all kinds of tools, including the tools commonly referred to as the "jaws of life" and they went to a whole weekend of wildland fire training put on by the state. Don't worry, Dad and Mom have no intention of being on the front lines of any major wildfires, but they need to have the basic qualifications to be safe.

They've gone on quite a few calls with the fire dept - a lot of them are medical calls and their early military training as cadets is coming in handy, since getting to the patients and then getting the patient out of their house and to the ambulance can be very challenging sometimes - it's very much like Project X/Leadership Reaction Course for those of you who know what that is. "OK, we've got a 300lb patient in a bathtub with a broken leg - we've got to get them on to a backboard, then go down a narrow hallway with three 90 degree turns, then down an outside stairway and a narrow, icy driveway, all while keeping the patient secure and level." Like I said, challenging!

We have gone hiking a couple of times since I last wrote. Once just up Bear Creek, which is near our house, and once in the Lost Horse area. We were going to hike to a lake in Lost Horse, but they haven't opened the road all the way yet, so we just hiked up the road. Here's some pictures from those hikes.

We've also been running a lot with Mom - she's training for the Lolo Pass half marathon on 27 Jun. Her training got delayed a little by the dog bite, but we're up to 8.5 miles now! Mom plans on walking a lot since she really hasn't had the time to train as much as she should.

Well, that's all the news for now - I'll try to update this more often now that Mom isn't working two jobs. I need opposable thumbs - of course, then Schultz would be bugging me to use the can opener, so maybe it's just as well - he's too fat!