Illy and Aise (Eye Sha) Update

Look at the legs on that girl!

Illy's front legs need to catch up with the growth of the back ones!

Aise's growth has been fairly even

Illy and Aise

I thought I would include the phonetic pronunciation of Aise's (Eye Sha's) name this time around because the person who named her (me) thought it would be clever to spell it in a cryptic fashion which tends to leave folks confused. Yes, it does look like "Icey" and, well, this is becoming her nickname. So really, either one works.

Aise and Illy are now 7 1/2 mos old. Illy has sprouted some legs but now the front legs need to catch up with the back ones. They are undeniably in the gangly teenager stage, however Aise seems to be growing more evenly than Illy at the moment. Aise is still taller by an inch. She's at 26" at the shoulder while Illy is at 25". Illy still appears to weigh more. They are both very happy, happy girls that are always busy. Tried to separate them at one stage because you'd like them not to get overly attached to each other. Too late. They're way too codependent and it just isn't worth it to separate them now. They do each have a special individual bond with me which is what I was hoping for so if they need to stay together to be happiest, then they will. 

 Despite the heat and humidity yet again, I got an awful lot done in the dog yard today! Since the incident where we thought Klaus ate an entire copper scrubby while we were away and we spent a fortune on an x-ray that told us he did only to find out when we returned and he relieved himself, that it was merely a wad of grass, we no longer use copper scrubbies. We bleach all of the water buckets and wading tubs instead. I did this today. It is really amazing how long the buckets stay free of algae after a bleaching compared with the scrubbie method. What happened to the copper scrubbie, you ask? We believe that it got shredded bit by bit and strewn all over the kennel floor because that is where we found what we believe to be all of the original scrubbie later that night. Thank goodness!

So, bleached the buckets. Then each dog got brushed (all 17 of them!) while they were out in play groups together. Imagine being sweaty from the thick humid air and caked in dog hair! Poop was picked up in the play areas which has needed to be done for days! And finally, fly gunk was installed on the tips of all ears. Those nasty little flies just won't stop. Some dogs seem to have a chemistry that attracts them worse than others. I can put fly gunk on Phoenix and his brother Ari's ears every day and they still seem to get eaten alive by the little buggars!

It seems that we may get a respite from the mosquitoes soon. I called our Metropolitan Mosquito Control (yes, there is such a thing) to report our overabundance and they came out the very next day to take a sample back to the lab for testing. They indicated that if we were over threshold then they would come out and treat for them! Can't believe we wouldn't be over threshold. I can barely go outside without a bug shirt these days.

So, despite our state government shut down where thousands of middle class folks who where probably struggling to stay afloat in the current economy in the first place, have been laid off while the law makers are paying themselves to debate less than an hour every couple of days whether or not anyone making over a million dollars a year deserves to be taxed a little bit more, (don't get me started) the Metro Mosquito Control is in full force. THAT is just how serious these darn mosquitoes are!