Who is Black-Eyed Pea you might be wondering? Why, Hailey of course! Bernergarden’s Black-Eyed Pea is her official AKC registered name. Ms. Hailey with the blackest of eyes. The most perfectly shaped almond-shaped black eyes per the Bernese Mountain Dog Standard.

Hailey came to us from Minnesota. Instead of taking the money from a breeding with my beloved Sailor I opted to take a stud puppy back.

Hailey is nine years old today! A pretty darned good age for a Bernese, and she’s still going strong.

Hailey is a silly dog. We don’t really have all that many photos of her because it seems she’s always in motion. She’s “lurping” as we call it, all the time. Her tail wags the rest of her body while she “slurps” you with her tongue. Hailey loves to give kisses, therefore that makes her a lurper. Here she is lurping Rick.

Here are some photos of puppy Hailey.

 

 

Hailey’s favorite things are:

Food. Any kind of food. Dog food. People food. I can’t grab any kind of food without Hailey magically showing up at my side, looking at me soulfully with those black eyes.

Bones. She will also take everyone else’s bones when they aren’t looking and I always end up re-distributing them so everyone has a bone instead of Hailey having three.

Barking. She’s our alarm clark in the morning. When Bella and Alex are tugging on toys her job is to be cheerleader and encourage them by barking. Her staccato little barks come out at perfectly timed intervals. Rah! Rah! Rah!

Riding in the truck with her head out the window.

Her dog couch. Wouldn’t you know she’d pick a vintage loveseat as her dog bed?

She was a great nanny when Bella was a puppy. Very patient and a good playmate.

 

She’s a sweet dog and tends to stay in the background (unless she’s barking).

 

In honor of her birthday Hailey will be going to McDonald’s for a hamburger for lunch and tonight she’ll dine on steak.

Happy Happy Birthday to Hailey the Black-Eyed Pea! We love you, silly girl!

 

(Photos from Top:)
Hailey with her mom Diva @ 8 weeks old; March 2004
Hailey kissing Rick; Cabin June 2012

Puppy Hailey:
Hailey (sitting up on left) with litter mates @ 8 weeks old; March 2004
Hailey @ 9 weeks old; April 2004
Hailey at White Sands (New Mexico) 3 months old; April 2004
Hailey @ 4.5 months old; May 2004

Hailey on her bed; January 2013
Hailey with puppy Bella; November 2008 (both pics)
Hailey at the cabin; June 2012
Hailey (left) Alex (right) with me at the Snowy Range, WY; June 2012

 

 

7 Degrees F, that is. That was the temperature when I got up this morning. Now it’s a big 16 degrees out there. BRRRRR.

When I took the dogs for a ride to the grocery and library this morning I noticed some interesting freezing going on in the little stream that runs alongside the main road. I got the hare-brained idea to try and get some photos.

I am determined, if not crazy.

So, when I got home I suited up in my warm parka, thermal gloves, boots and camera. I added in a pair of fingerless gloves for switching to when I wanted to manipulate the camera. I shrugged into my parka and zipped it up as far as it would go so that it covered my chin. As I stepped outside I flipped up the hood of the parka. I had flashbacks to when I was a child and my mom would put me in my snowsuit, my little legs so padded by layers they could barely move.

At first I was warm enough and the exercise felt good. I’m sure the people passing by me in cars thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t see their expressions because my field of vision was hampered by the faux fur of my hood, which is all I could really see as I trudged along.

My first stop was a spot where I had seen ice globes previously, but there weren’t really any to be seen and the ice was nothing special.

Further down there were some interesting frozen areas of the stream but I soon realized that it was too cold for the fingerless gloves, even for a few short minutes. For me this is not a good thing since I do suffer at times from Raynaud’s syndrome and the tips of my fingers were indeed white and painful. Time to head back and put on heavier gloves.

I got a few photos but all in all, photographically speaking, it was a bust.

Thankfully I had stoked the fire in the wood stove before I left so I could come home and warm my hands up over its cozy warmth. I don’t think I will be venturing back out again today.

(photos: Icy Stream)

I feel like I should be blogging about something. Anything. But I can’t come up with anything anyone (including myself) would care to read. My mind is pretty much blank.

I could tell you I saw a huge hawk in the tree this morning, just waiting to make a snack out of the birds feeding below him. At first I thought it was an owl because it was so big, so white, and so round. But it was just a cold hawk with his feathers all fluffed out. He spooked when I saw him and flew to another tree. I got the camera out but for whatever reason the photos were all out of focus. You’ll just have to envision him for yourself, or you can look at the out-of-focus shot. (It’s a Broad-Winged. They nest in our woods.) He’s beautiful even if he does like to eat little birds.

I could tell you it’s below freezing out there today and spitting fitful little snowflakes. Pfffftttt.

I could tell you that the dogs have had their second treatment for their scabies and are greatly improved. Good news for sure. The itching and scratching had pretty much come to a halt until we treated them on Friday whereupon they immediately started scratching again. The vet told us that as the little mites were dying off they would cause bouts of scratching, and so they do. No more ugly hot spots though.

Did I tell you that my neighbor Kim and I got to talking and I found out that she’s been treating her dog for the same condition? Yup, Finn has scabies too and she went through the same round of vet appointments and treatments (on non-treatments) that I did. No coincidence there since she has had to chase the fox away from their back deck too.

Hmmm … let’s see what else …

I could tell you we made a great Beef and Guinness Pie last night for dinner. Yummy.

I could tell you the lakes are finally freezing over. The ice fishermen will be happy about that.

I could tell you that over the weekend most of our last snow melted away. The snow squirrel has been reduced to a blob of white. Alex will have to resort to bushes and trees again.

I could tell you that it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I’ve already started a fire in the wood stove because it’s cold in the house.

That being said, what the heck am I doing sitting here telling you uninteresting things that you could care less about when I could be sitting by the warm fire reading?

I’m off …

(photos: top & bottom: Blank Windows @ Long Pond : Mr. Not-In-Focus Broad-Winged)

Have you ever seen a Bufflehead? I’ve only seen them a couple of times and once was many years ago in Colorado. I think they are beautiful ducks and I was excited to see them on my freezing cold walk in Long Pond Ironworks the other day.

They were on the other side of the lake from me and very uncooperative in letting me photograph them, so most of these photos are cropped and zoomed.

At first when I saw the smaller brownish duck I assumed it was a juvenile. Not so! According to my bird book this is the female, which I have never seen. It looks like there are two females in the top photo. Here is a cropped look at a pair that ventured a little closer to me.

And up a little closer for detail.

A good look at the markings on the back of the male as the female spooks.

Ducks away!

(photos: A Bevy of Buffleheads on Monksville Reservoir)

High atop a snow bank in the grocery store parking lot, there sits a lonely little grocery cart. It’s been stuck in the snow since the Christmas storms when it got swept up by the snow plows. It almost made a break for freedom during our recent thaw, but got caught once again in the plow’s path in our storm earlier this week.

I feel kind of sorry for it. Left out of the daily cart round-ups. No one to push it through the heated, well-lit aisles. It’s spacious basket not filled up with goodies that it was meant to hold.

With our expected below-freezing daytime temperatures this coming week I think it might be there for a while.