A Sleepy Sheepdog and His Hippo

I really love my dog! Truthfully, he is just one of the cutest things to walk on four legs. This is him sleeping on 'his' couch with his most favorite toy: Hippo. Kenai is not one of those destructive dogs that chews and shreds his stuffed toys (thankfully). Instead, he sort of mouths them with an occasional lick or two. One of his draws to Hippo is the beans that fill his feet. My guess is that it is analogous to a a child's thumb. They both get gratification from sucking on them (or in Kenai's case, chewing). He has two other toys that run a close second and third to Hippo, and they are Kiwi and Pelican, which are both Beanie Babies. Kenai also has many other cute and useful traits: he gives me my socks when I get up in the morning (no seriously! check out the picture below)...

As a matter of fact, he picks up anything I drop. This really comes in handy when I'm knitting, sewing, or working on any other project around the house (don't worry, no needles folks); this includes handing me hangers when I'm hanging up clothes. He rings a bell in order to tell us that he needs to potty (and of course when he just wants to go outside and play); he brings you his towel after he drinks to wipe his face; slide down the sliding board at the playground (he loves that); dives off the dock like a labrador (he loves to swim!), and of course all the other basic dog commands. He's also great with the chickens and bunnies, which I'm grateful for. Occasionally, when the chickens are all in a group, he gets the fire in him to run through and scatter them (some sheepdog, huh?), but he never hurts them. I feel lucky to have a dog like him.

Fanny the sour crop hen is doing okay. Her crop finally seems to be emptying, and we've started to give her some baby food vegetables and fruits, which she happily ate. Her color is pretty poor, though. I'm hoping that it will return with some real nourishment. She must not mind her confinement to the front porch though. As soon as we set her down on the ground after flushing her crop, she waddles right for the cage door and waits for us to open it so she can return to perching on her nestbox. What a good girl! By no means are we out of the water yet, but I'm sure hoping to see her back to normal soon.

The Time Change and a Sour Crop

This time change has really been a hard one this year. I'm not sure why. Usually after the first night's sleep I've got it down, but every day I wake up, I still feel like I've lost an hour. Oh to be a chicken (or any other farm animal), not bound by these biannual constraints. They still get up at the same time and follow suit with their night time rituals. The extra hour of light (can't say 'sunlight' as we haven't seen much of that, though it IS sunny today) is nice, but I was really enjoying waking up with the dawn. Now it's dark. I realize that will change, I'm just extremely ready for spring. This winter has been holding on for so long.

On another note, one of our hens seems to have come down with some sort of sour or impacted crop. We've lost a hen to this before when we first started out. I'm hoping to save this girl. She's our only Jersey Giant and such a good hen. We did some research online to find some treatments; the information was varied. So we gave her olive oil a few times, and are now giving her saline; massaging her crop each time we treat her. She was taken off of solid food and is now eating some plain yogurt. Her crop is still full. Not as big as it was when we started but it just doesn't seem to want to empty. This concerns me. She is pooing a bit, which gives me some hope, but I'd feel better if that crop would empty. That's her pictured above.