Sorry. I couldn’t come up with a better title! The new blog site is coming along albeit slowly. It’s harder to work on it with Rick and I trading chats throughout the day while he’s at work about the formatting, font style, etc. I can only hope that when we’re through I like it and most people reading like it as well. Hopefully the new look will be revealed next week. At least that is what we are aiming for. I don’t want to drag this out too long!

The little common redpolls have moved on as predicted. I still see one or two on the finch sock, but it’s been taken over by goldfinches and I’ve even seen a few sparrows on it pecking away. I am wishing now I had participated in Project Feeder Watch run by Cornell. I would have except for the fact that right now our main bird feeder hangs in such a way that I can’t actually see the birds when they are on it. Our hanger makes it too low and it’s hard to remedy that easily since the hanger attaches to the deck railing. I figured I couldn’t get a good enough bird count without actually seeing them on the feeder. I would love to do this, so maybe I should be thinking ahead for next year and plan out a feeder strategy.

Our weather is warming up and our frozen snowpack is slowly melting. Fifty degrees is the predicted temperature for this upcoming weekend! It’s not my preference as I like winter to be winter. Plus, I really like looking out the window and seeing the ground covered in white instead of all those brown fallen leaves. It makes it so easy to see things in the woods, like the deer roaming around. But, it seems there is always a January warm-up each year around the same time. Even in Colorado this was true.

But I’m a Winter Girl. Born in winter; raised in winter. See?

There is supposedly an arctic blast coming next week. Not sure if there is any moisture around for snow though.

We’ve been having issues for a couple of months now with itchy and scratchy dogs. Alex developed big oozing hot spots from chewing and Bella woke us up from sound sleeps scratching. We had multiple vet visits. First one said flea allergies but we had not seen any fleas on anyone. So, they put them on a steroidal allergy medication which seemed to do not much. Back again and they said well, they probably have a skin infection now since the skin was breached, so antibiotics. Again, not much happened to relieve the itchy and scratchy show.

I could never seem to get in to the vet I like best at the clinic because I wanted an appointment pronto and he is harder to get in to see. I wanted the vets to see the areas of concern on the dogs while they were looking fresh. The first vet had said well, it could be scabies but I doubt it since she said we would be scratching and presenting with a rash too.

Long story short: the dogs have now been diagnosed with canine scabies, more commonly known as mange. Ewwww. Mangy dogs! Mange is caused by mites that get underneath the skin. On our last visit to the vet (and the vet I wanted) he took a scraping from Alex’s skin and found a mite under the microscope. Hurrah! Finally. Why didn’t the other vets take a scraping??

The vet said mange is more common than you’d think since we live around so much wildlife here. He said they could have picked it up in the driveway or the yard. I suspect these two “mangy” foxes that come around. Ugly, eh? We also have some suspicious looking squirrels who are always scratching. Or it could have been at the last groomer’s since it started right after their last grooming.

It’s easy enough to treat with a product called Revolution which is like Frontline except that it treats different things (like mites and heart worm). Revolution is right. Let’s lead a revolt against those terrible mites! Be gone! After only one application the dogs are already showing improvement. Hallelujah!

So, that about catches you up on what’s been going around here. I hope to get away from the usual household routine today and spend a little time at Skylands. We’ll see if that works out.