Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Puppy is driving me nuts!

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My puppy is making me so mad today!

It’s warmed up here in Toronto and all the snow has melted away. At this time it’s 14 Celsius or 57 F outside. Believe me that’s nice for early January!

Unfortunately our puppy is fascinated by the grass and dead leaves, and the plants in my front garden that she’s been walking over when we take her out for a “quick pee”. Every time I’ve taken her out today she’s spent more time trying to eat the leaves and grass than attempting to do her business.

We got our puppy in late November and she only really saw grass and leaves for a week or so before we got our first, very early this season, snow. So I guess she’s just exploring, but she’s driving me nuts!

It only took us three weeks to house train her and when she needs to go outside she just goes to the door. Unfortunately or fortunately she doesn’t bark, whine or scratch the door when she goes to it she just stands there and hopes we get the message. I kind of wish she’d give a small bark or whine.

Today she’s going to the door every 15 minutes or so though! The first time she really did have to go outside but all the rest of her pleas to go out have just ended up in her sniffing around, and grabbing mouthfuls of leaves or grass! Of course I end up with my hand in her mouth pulling all the stuff she’s gobbling up out! Ewww.

Midnight is getting better as far as her health goes though. We went to the vet yesterday for her third and final set of shots which included a rabies vaccination. We also brought in a stool sample to have it tested for worms and she’s finally clear of her round worms. Yeahhhh! The doctor also checked her eyes and ears and the infections she had in them are gone now too.

All we need is for her stool to become normal. Remember she had diarrhea for most of the time we’ve had her? It’s getting better but we’re still giving her Pepto Bismol to help her out.

Oh and she’s gained weight! I think our last vet visit was about the 18th of December and at that time she weighed 6.8 kg or 15 lb. Now just two and a half weeks later she weighs 9.4 kg or almost 21 lb. Yes that’s kind of small for a five and a half month old lab puppy but she’s not skinny. She’s muscular and lean. I guess she’s going to be on the small side for a female Labrador Retriever, but that’s ok with us.





Melting old snow sure is messy!

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This weeks theme is Messy

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Remember that storm that I said we had two weeks ago? Well I took this photo two weeks ago Sunday in the evening once most of the snow had finished falling. Pretty messy huh?

That’s our car in the foreground on the right in the driveway, and our neighbors car on the street surrounded by a mountain of snow.

We’ve had temperatures around freezing or just above freezing mostly since that time so the snow’s been melting slowly. We’ve even had some rain and a thunder storm or two as well. Imagine, thunder in December! Weird. Very weird.

Since we haven’t had much new snow, only a dusting, the melting piles of snow are kind of dirty from car exhaust and look quite yucky. Midnight, our puppy tends to do some of her business on our front lawn so our snow is starting to have a bit of a yellow tinge to it as well. Do you know how hard it is to keep a puppy from eating dirty snow that’s on the lawn or in the snow banks we pass on our walks!

My secret garden admirers

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Now that we’re out several times each day walking the puppy we’re meeting all kinds of neighbors. Not too many with dogs yet though … I guess we don’t walk our pup at the same time as our dog owning neighbors.

Of course, Chris is a talkative friendly guy so he already knows quite a few of our neighbors – way more than I do! But I’m getting to know more of them these days.

I find our puppy needs to go out around 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon … of course that’s when all the kids are walking home from the schools down the street so we often get mobbed by puppy loving kids and teens. Midnight just goes nuts doing her excited little puppy jumps when a new person crouches down to pet her and tell her she’s adorable.

One of the neighbors that I ended up talking to the other day knew me by my garden when she saw where I was coming from. “Oh you’re the person with the fantastic garden and all the roses!” she said.

We’ve found that a lot of our neighbors are secret and sometimes not so secret admirers of our garden. Some even walk down our driveway in the summer to have a look at the backyard. That’s a little startling if I’m busy digging in the garden or if I’m inside the house and I see the security light in the drive way go on and hear the sounds of human foot steps walking down the drive. You never know who it might be right?

Anyway, this one garden admirer got talking about my garden and told me her daughter is getting married in the summer. Then she astonished me by asking if maybe I’d like to supply the wedding flowers? I don’t know about that … it depends on when the wedding is and what’s blooming of course.

We agreed to talk more about it sometime in the Spring. I’m not sure if I’ll do it or not. I guess it depends what the bride has in mind, but you never know this might turn into something interesting for me.

Our neighbors home is still up for sale

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Our neighbors house hasn’t sold yet. I’m not all that surprised though. They haven’t done anything to improve it. Remember that ugly rock wall I told you about? If I was interested in buying the house that’d be the first thing I’d take out! Well of course I’d do that as I know that’s part of the reason sound from their house travels so easily into ours.

They keep having open houses. I think the house has been for sale for about a month now and they’ve had at least five open houses. That’s a lot for this area – especially when homes often sell in a week here! They’ve even still got an Open house sign on their lawn. It says it’s for Sunday but it’s still there! They might as well have a sign that says denver homes for sale for all the good the open houses are doing. I think they have to lower the price if they’re going to get any bites.

My biggest fear is that their house will get sold sometime in the next few days while we’re away. Perhaps to one of the really noisy families that I’ve heard go through their house. Honest, if really really noisy people end up moving in there Chris and I will end up having to sell our house.

I’m a bad bad person

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The house next door to use is for sale. The semi-detached … really attached house I mean.

Am I a bad person to make noise in my house when I hear a really noisy crowd of people go through the house next door? Am I?

Seriously. The other day when I wasn’t feeling well I was asleep on the couch and I was rudely awoken when the realtor or the people he/she was showing the house next door to started talking loudly at the top of his voice. I mean – he was so loud he woke me up out of a deep sleep!

In fear of the loud talker being a potential home buyer, I got up off the couch and started walking around my home – loudly. You know, walking on my heels. Thump, thump thump up and down the stairs. I also closed a few doors noisily, coughed a bit and turned the TV up a bit.

Nothing too terrible or was it?

All I was doing was trying to show the potential home buyer that if someone makes really loud noises in either home it can be heard.

You know, as much as I complain about our current karaoke neighbors they aren’t that bad. Unless their son is jumping on the couch or playing a really loud video game (sound up high, probably when parents aren’t home) we don’t hear them that much. I mean, we can’t hear normal conversations or anything. It’s just when they start playing their musical instruments – tuba? electric guitar, start singing gawd awful karaoke or have a party (with fellow karaoke buddies) that we really hear them.

But if a loud talker moves in … someone that we’ll be able to hear all the time, every day? Ahhhh! I swear we’ll have to move.

The person that was either showing or viewing the house the other day was sooooo loud!

So. Am I bad for making some noise of my own?

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