Just A Touch Spoiled

Emmi has always suffered from separation anxiety and it seems to have gotten worse since her three night stay in the veterinarian emergency clinic this past winter.  Our friend Nina and her husband Paul love and carefully care for their three four legged family members–if Nina recommends something you can be assured that product works.  Nina and Paul recently moved to France to be with Nina’s father.  As you can imagine the plane ride was stressful for everyone–Polly is a medium sized dog and had to travel in the hold.  Among other products Nina recommended Licks-DogZen.  It’s an all natural ingredient calming liquid–smells awful–but it worked!  Even though the directions said I could give Emmi a whole packet I only gave her half to see how she would react.  She gobbled up the nasty stuff, got in her chair and went to sleep–not zonked kind of sleeping but calm and comfortable.  We went to dinner that night and I gave her the other half of the packet before we left.  When we came home she seemed much, much calmer than her usual manic–“you left me, you left me” howling.  It worked–thank you Nina!

And on another Emmi note–we approached our friend Kathy about dog sitting and she was happy to do it.  She only lives about six miles from us and wanted to come to our house.  Kathy and Emmi spent the day together on Tuesday when we went to Billings and it was a success!  We have another long day away from home coming up. We knew we couldn’t leave Emmi home alone for that long and it wasn’t possible to take her with us.  We are so glad Kathy is willing to dog sit for us!

As I said, Tuesday we made a run to Billings–haircut for me, lunch, Costco and Walmart.  Our favorite Walmart in Laurel just outside Billings started offering grocery pickup–yea!  That service is such a time saver for us!

Wednesday the Cowboy installed our new to us evaporative cooler–what a difference it makes in the temperature inside our house when it’s dang hot outside–88 degrees yesterday–yep, summer has arrived.  And the best part–you leave the windows open.  I sprayed weeds, vacuum packed the bulk meats we purchased on Tuesday and puttered.  Today I sprayed weeds again, did some laundry and this afternoon I even quilted for a bit–one of mine–

This is just one of the blocks and not a very good photo.  The pattern is called It’s a Dog’s Life and it’s been years in the making.  I used wool for the applique and cotton and homespun for the borders.  Much of the hand stitching was done while sitting by the ICU bedside of Chuck–my Mom’s husband–in summer of 2016.

Almost every evening we have a thunderstorm and it rains a bit–last night it rained about two tenths.  Parts of Montana haven’t received near the rainfall we have and fire season has started–just small, lightening caused fires and most are under control.  The wind blew today and our humidity dropped–fire season has definitely started.  We are grateful to have had so mild a summer so far.

One of those thunderstorms brewing over the mountains.

Up the Boulder near Blue Lake.