Monday, February 25, 2013

Looking Like a Hound



Nose on the ground,
Nose on the ground,
Looking like a hound 
with your nose on the ground.

While we're pretty sure that Annie is a foxhound beagle mix (both from the hound family), we have no clue what Paul is.  Technically, his paperwork says "All American Mixed Breed."  We've had friends and strangers tell us he's part pit or part boxer.  But I have to admit, there is some part of me that looks at Paul and says "part hound" as well.  Especially when he goes into a nose on the ground tail in the air stance.  

Friday, February 22, 2013

Cleaning after the stomach bug: washing the kongs

     Like I said on Monday, Paul had the stomach bug last week.  Plenty of fresh water, bland diet, and cleaning of everything to within an inch of it's life seemed to be the tune of my week (kill the germs!)  The first thing to get washed well were the kongs.  Many different blogs have lots of different ideas on how to fill a kong, but I've never seen a post on how to clean them.  So here goes:

Step 1: Collect all of the kongs in your house and scrape out any left over peanut butter or other things from the bottom of the kong.  Then put them into a large bowl with a mixture of hot water, bleach, and dish soap.  We have 2 standard Kongs, 2 little ones that look like squires, and 2 from West Paw called Tux.  (They float though)












Step 2: Let them soak over night in said solution.  (Notice the bleck stuff that's starting to come off of them).









Take a look at the water the next day:

Step 3: Take all of the kongs and put them on the top rack of the dishwasher.  I set mine to Sanitize setting for this occasion.  The down side: depending on how old your kongs are, they can get gewy in the dishwasher (I've had to pitch 2 kongs in 5 years with this method).  

The colors are a bit off when you pull them out, but I've noticed after a week of peanut butter in them, the color seems to come back no problem.  





Monday, February 18, 2013

We've been a bit quiet

     I know we've been a bit quiet the last 2 weeks.  Paul started out with a stomach bug, and then I caught a cold from a kiddo at school.  But we're both on the road to recovery.

     Today, I'm off from work for Presidents' Day.  So Paul and I have spent it just chilling together.  We're making sure we're both feeling better (and misery loves company, right?)

Monday, February 11, 2013

Things Annie and Paul Love: Best Bully Sticks

     Somewhere along the line, someone clued us in to the fact that Best Bully Sticks exhists and that they're based out of Richmond, VA.  (We live just south of Richmond).  I was plesently surprised to find that they were much cheeper than what we were paying ($7 for a foot long bully stick).  We sat down a placed an order that night for 50 bully sticks with the thought that they'd last a while.  A month later, we were buying more.

     Since then, we've loved ordering from Best Bully Sticks.  We tend to order in packs of 50 and between the hubbs military discount and the auto reorder discount, it's not badly priced for us (it's about 2.35 for a foot long bully stick.)  Also, since we live just south of Richmond, our order tends to get here in 3 days!

     For us, a 12 inch bully stick tends to last about 20 minutes.  Long enough to knit a few rows in a rug, make dinner, write a few blog entries, or anything else I need 20 minutes of peace and quiet to do.