Four Legged Views

A MOMENTOUS DAY

Wednesday started out like any other day. Up at 5, feed all my friends who stayed overnight. Of course us guys in the house have to wait until last to eat, well except for Allred. If Vickie doesn’t feed Allred first then everyone else pays the price. He is very moody on an empty stomach.

Then at 10 Vickie and I piled into the truck and headed to Brigham City where I got to do my “Other Job” . It was fun and I did a really good job. I am very impressive when I am working.

We stopped on the way home to check out our river walk and found that spring run-off has now turned to a flood zone and even though it is a beautiful thing, it is very very dangerous. My swimming hole has become part of the whole park now, unfortunately Vickie wont let me off lead in most of the areas because she fears I’ll get too close to the swift waters and that they will grab me and drown me. I am an excellent swimmer but I’ll admit, it scares me just a bit too. It was still really cool cause as we were walking along the over flowing river banks, we were hammered with the aroma of the campfire from the transient camp.

It was a kind of a cool feeling, the air was thick with the smell of something cooking as the snow/rain fell around us. I was pretty grateful that I wasn’t going to have to spend the day sitting around a campfire in this muck but it still reminded me of some of the times on a search where that was just what you had to do to survive the night. Back at home again, Vickie decides to do something she rarely, If Ever, does. She cooked. Yep, The Leshmeisters in Moab were kind enough to share the recipe for their incredible spaghetti sauce. (Don’t waist your time asking Vickie to share the recipe cause she promised she never would) (however, I bet she would invite you over for a big spaghetti meal if you asked.)

Anyway, Vickie decided that it didn’t look that hard so she went to the store yesterday and got all the things she needed. Of course the tomatoes will be much better when they are taken fresh from our garden this summer but for now, canned will have to do. Then she had to find someone in the vegetable part of the store to ask them to show her what a hot pepper looks like.

Yep, she is that good of a cook. The girl doesn’t even know how, or what a good hot pepper looks like. She does now, however know, that you do not. I repeat….DO NOT….. cut or handle a hot pepper with your bare hands. And DO NOT thereafter lick your fingers or rub your eyes after handling a hot pepper with your bare hands.

It would seem to be a very easy and predictable thing to understand. Hot Pepper does not mean, mmm tasty, it means Hot Hot Really painfully hot. I am pretty sure Vickie now knows this and will never forget this bit of knowledge. She always one who had to learn things the hard way.

After hours of slicing, dicing, mincing, running things through that loud machine that mushes it all up, simmering and stirring, it was finished. We all stood around the kitchen waiting for a taste of it, our mouths watering and our noses working the air. Vickie boiled some noodles and cooked a bit of hamburger then mixed it all together and we all sat down for a taste.

Excitement was thick in the air. Vickie had talked about this for weeks now. Told us how wonderful it was and how excited she had been that Trish had sent her the recipe. Her first bite……. There was an odd look on her face. A look of surprise and pain. She cautiously took a second bite. Moved it around in her mouth, then started sticking her tounge out and running to the kitchen sink for water. Eeeeewwww She was sputtering out the word. Eeeeewwwww.

BAD Spaghetti Sauce….It taste nothing like Trish’s sauce. Se kept trying little bits of it hoping that time will fix it. But no matter how hard she tried, it was just horrible. Horrible.

Somebody told Vickie that if she waits long enough that the spaghetti sauce will taste better with age. The question I have is, will it age enough to be edible in MY LIFETIME. Maybe Vickie shouldn’t cook after all. I mean, she can scoop poop like a pro, she can mend fences and plant a fairly good garden. But cooking, this might not be for her.

I heard from my other pals that years ago when Vickie was married, she tried really hard to be a good cook then too. Vickie was married to a really nice man who looked a lot like Arnold Schwartzenager (Thus her obsession with Arnold Schwartzenager movies). Being a big man, she felt it was good idea to study nutrition and quickly came across the values of raw bran.

She then reasoned that since her husband was such a big man that she should start sneaking bran into his food so he would get healthier. Problem is, Vickie didn’t’ keep studying she just figured she would guess at how much bran she should add to his diet.

Her husband could eat a bag of oreo cookies in a setting so Vickie started taking the cookies, opening them, scooping out part of the center and replacing it with bits of bran. Well, long story short, after putting the bran inside every cookie, mixing it in salads, and soups ect……Well, she almost killed the man. He pretty much never trusted her in the kitchen again.

Which makes me start to wonder and worry just a bit. Oh yeah, I might add at this point that Vickie, being the incredible cook that she is, wasn’t able to find any garlic in her cupboards and she knew she should wait and go to the store and get fresh garlic (like family and friends had told her to) but instead, thinking that spaghetti is an Italian dish found some old Italian spice up in the cupboard and figured because it said Italian that it would work just as well as garlic so that’s what she used.

Oh, and when you take a recipe and divide it in half, make sure you divide all the ingredients. Like if the original recipe asks for ½ cup of salt and ½ cup of oil, you need to remember to that half of that is ¼ cup of salt and ¼ cup of oil. So if you changed all the other ingredients to half of what the original recipe is and you forget to change the oil and salt, well, it can be, and does make a catastrophic difference in the taste of your spaghetti sauce.

Need I say any more……. I used to eat anything. I mean I can’t tell you how many times I had to go to the vet and have things taken out, or flushed out. Vickie tried everything to stop me from eating things. Like she used bitter apple, hot sauce, anything she could think of to make me not want to eat stuff. Well, she has finally found something that will work. Her spaghetti sauce We have decided this week that the only use for cooking pans in this house will be to catch the leaks in the ceiling until we get the new roof put on. Which hopefully will be really soon cause if it keeps raining like it has been, I am not going to need a swimming pool outside, I’ll have one indoors. That could be kinda cool….. A bunch of us had to go see Dr. Doughty this week. I am fine, just a little bump but Vickie gets all nervous. Skeeter got his blood tested so he can have his heartworm pills Sweet Tristy has been a little off lately and that is the big reason Vickie called Dr. Doughty. After some x-rays and a good check up, we got the sad news that Tristy has a problem with her liver and lots of bone spurs on her back. So now she gets more pills which is a cool thing because the dogs who get pills get squeeze cheese to surround the pill and it taste so good. I don’t’ get squeeze cheesse. This is my new friend Toby and he lives in South Africa. We have been emailing and reading each others blog and I thought you guys might want to meet him. He is the star in a local play. He gets to play Annies dog in the play "Annie" He is pretty good lookin, don't ya think? I recon I think that cause he looks a lot like me. Anyway I asked Vickie to put some of the links to his show pictures and maybe you will want to follow along with us as he learns his part.

http://africanwhitechild.blogspot.com/2011/03/annie-rehearsal-sandy-annie-and-cast.html

http://africanwhitechild.blogspot.com/2011/03/lights-cameras-and-lots-of-action.html

http://africanwhitechild.blogspot.com/2011/01/countdown-towards-annie-begins.html I got to go shoping with Vickie the other day. It was kind of fun at first, but then it just got boring. All she does is walk up and down the isles and stop here and there to look at stuff. WE needed some orange cones to go out in front so people won't ruin our new parking area and then we walked over to the dog doors, through the kitchen section, ect. ect. BORING....... UNTIL we are walking down this one isle and I hear kids calling my name. I can find kids where ever I go. These guys come running up and all of a sudden shopping stopped being boring. I wanna go more often. WE had a bunch of Older dogs staying with us this weekend. And cause the rain and slop (rain/snow) we had to keep a special eye on them so they came in the house with us. Man there were dogs laying down everywhere. It was so crowded, I just stayed out in the rain most of the time. THis one big white dog named Isha, he is a pyranees and he kinda made Jamie and Vickie a little melencholy cause they felt like Syra had come back to visit. Syra was the most beautiful dog ever, but I never got to meet her cause she died a few months before I came to visit. Isn't she the most pretty thing ever. Jimmy Dean spent much of the week with us too. He is such a funny dog. You just have to take pictures of him all the time. He always has a new and special face

Little Cosmo only opened his eyes once this week and we caught it on film.

We also get to have some really fun kids come and do volunteer work over the next two weeks.

Vickie is going to make them work really hard. Their job is to do anything us dogs want them to do. If we want to be petted, held, brushed, walked, bathed.....whatever. These kids are at our mercy.

I already have tons of plans for them. What a great idea.....Volunteers.....

Since a lot of you liked the story I told you about Jamie last week, I asked my buddy Murhpy if I could tell you a funny thing that happened to him a few weeks ago while we were all looking for this teenage boy who had been missing for three days. They didn’t have a place to look for him at first.

He was, I think about 15 years old, but they said he was really like a small child in his brain. Everyone was very worried cause he was last seen at the foothills above North Ogden. And even though we use the word foot hills…….It is a tough area, with lots of falling rocks and shale and steep hillsides that lead to high cliff areas. Lots of bushes and sage to work around and well, just not gentle like, when you think of the word “Foothills”

Our assignment, Me, Vickie, Paulette, & Murphy, was to cover the lower area in the foothills. When we happily took this assignment we were secretly hoping that lower meant less steep and rocky. That was not the case.

As Paulette and Murphy worked their way along, Murphy ran ahead and Paulette called, “Lee”, “Lee”, thinking he must be hungry and cold and might be happy to respond. They had been searching for a little over an hour when Paulette, after hollering “lee” again and again thought she heard a quiet response of “What?”

She stopped to listen and called out, “Is your name Lee”. She received a reply of “Yes, and I need my medication”. We didn’t know if Lee was on medication or not but knew it had to be checked out. Paulette and Murhpy worked her way over the rocks toward a tall wooden fence that bordered the property where the response was coming from.

Murphy wasn’t showing any indication he had picked up a scent, but they had to check it out. Paulette again hollered out “Is your name Lee” to the voice coming from behind the fenced area. “Yes” came a quiet week response. When they got close enough to see, Paulette glimpsed an elderly woman with her head poking out of a house who said, in her best Lee voice, “I like dogs”

AUGHHHHHH!! Yes, this was our “Lee”. Disappointedly and a little perturbed Paulette made a little polite chit chat with her to which she found out that her name wasn’t even Lee. Was she making fun of them, or was she just a confused little lady with nothing to do.

Turning and facing the big mountain (haha foothills) again, Paulette and Murhpy started their climb back up the steep incline.

THE REST OF THE STORY:

Our young victim who lived in a home for special youth in North Ogden Utah was found at a bus stop in Arizona a few hours after the above incident.

Two days earlier he had walked barefoot (temps in the 30’s) several miles to downtown Ogden. Talked several people into giving him money where he bought some boots and a bus ticket to Arizona. No matter how you look at it. It was one of those searches with a good ending.

More often than we like, the endings are not so good. Vickie most generally likes to write stories about real search experiences and has decided that she will share some of those stories with my friends as she writes them.

However, I asked her to start her own web site cause This one is all about me. She agreed and from this time forward I will let you know when she has written another one and refer you to her page.

Of course if they area stories about me and my searches, they will be on my web page. Her first story is take from several real life experiences and compiled into one fictional story. She wrote it during a really hard search a few years ago when she and Jamie and thousands of others were looking for Gage Wayment in the Uintah mountains.

It was such a heartbreaking search that she wanted to write something that showed how all involved felt but that ended good.

Here is the link if you want to read it.

http://searchdogstories.blogspot.com

It is a long one so it will take some time to read. Hope you like it…….

Love

Bert

Two Short Videos for your pleasure