INTERNET PROBLEMS

Hey Pals,
We are still struggling with the internet connections here in Iowa since the floods. It's very frustrating. We get all logged on to things & we're on about 30 seconds & get knocked off again. We have been working for 3 hours just to get this post on here. Sorry we haven't been able to leave comments on all of your blogs in the last few weeks. We have been getting most of them read though. We haven't been doing much the last few days. Mama has been watching Snickers like a hawk & she still is doing just fine. So we're hoping no more seizures.
Here we are walking on a trail on our land.
Of course Snickers is hogging the screen. Below are some pictures of a bambi eating the ash in our firepit. We've never seen them eat actual ash before. Seems very strange.

They have also been eating ALL of Mama's flowers this year, hostas, daylilies, daisies, bushes, trees, you name it, they've eaten eat. We think the floods have something to do with it. Usually they don't eat that much stuff in our yard, but this year they have been eating everything in sight. The Mama deer that comes here daily only had one baby this year. We see it all of the time in the yard running around, but haven't been able to get a good picture of it yet. With all of the flooding this year, many animals have lost their eggs & young. We did see one mama pheasant with her little baby chicks running in the road yesterday. She had at least 8 babies which is good. Turkeys have been in the yard, but with no babies at all. Wildlife numbers will surely be down a lot this year.

We do have some more Japanese Iris blooming, so here are some photos:




We'll try to post some waterlily photos tomorrow. Also, we're almost done making our Koi photo bubbleshare filmstrip to put up on our blog. The koi's name will be on the photos too so you'll know which one was named after you! We hope everyone has a great week.
Wirey Hugs!
Butchy & Snickers

WHEELY WEDNESDAY No 13

Hey Pals,
It's Max here woofing today. First of all, we wanted to let you know that Snickers seems to be doing fine now. No more seizures. Here she is to talk a bit:
Hi to all of my wonderful pals! I wanted to thank you down to the bottom of my wirey tail for all of the well wishes, paws crossed, kissies, prayers & doggie-zen. It sure worked. I have only had that one seizure & I sure hope I never have any more of those. Whew, I was scared. I knew something was wrong with me, but didn't know what was happening. After I starting coming out of the seizure I glued my head to Mama's arm & hung on for dear life. She made me go outside though cause she told me I would soon be losing my cookies, if ya know what I mean. I sure did too, from both ends, grossssss! Several of my pals also have seizures & I sure do feel sorry for you. I hope & pray you never have any of those again! Mama told me that the seizure could be from my Hypothyroidism. But we're not quite sure why, cause I take my daily thyroid hormones & I just had my blood work done last month & everything was just fine. Our vet told us that we don't need to check anything at this point yet, unless I would happen to have more seizures. So, 'JUST SAY NO TO SEIZURES!!!' Ok, now Max can update you on Bentley.
Muwahhhhh! from Snickers

Ok pals, back to the subject of the day. As most of you know, Bentley is going to be having many surgeries in the next few weeks & months. So Dr. Snitchybug's assistant, Dr. Pierre, decided that Bentley should have some acupuncture treatments before the surgeries to help calm his chi, hehehehe! First Dr. Pierre needed to do a physical on Bentley to make sure he is fit for the surgeries:
Hmmmmm, heart sounds good.
I think he is ready for the acupuncture treatments. Now pals, if needles bother you, please don't look at the photos below. We wouldn't want anyone fainting or getting sick to their tummies.




As you can see here, we have the special blue acupuncture needles in place.
Bentley is feeling no pain whatsoever. So no need to worry. We have only one side of his body done right now. We will do the other side tomorrow.
This is Dr. Pierre from inside the treatment room, signing off now.
Ok pals, we'll update you again next week on Bentley's progress.
Wheely Hugs!
Max

Snickers had a seizure!

Hey Pals,
Just wanted to let you know that little Miss Snickers had a seizure tonight about 9PM. It lasted about 2 minutes, but at least it was fairly mild. Mama is all upset though. Makes her very sad to see her baby girl sick. This is how happy Snickers was today outside by the ponds:

Here Snickers is on the bridge doing her Koi Guard Duty:
Please cross your paws that Snickers doesn't have anymore seizures.
Wirey Hugs!
Nurse Butchy

Nurses Wanted For Stuffie Stan!

Hey Pals,
This morning we got a message from Lacie. She needs nurses to help out with Stuffie Stan's 24 hour round the clock care. So Snickers headed out on the pink 4 wheeler early this morning to go help out Lacie.
Sure hope she can get across the Mississippi River on a bridge. The waters are much too deep to ride the 4 wheeler through them. Snickers has been having lots of fun riding the 4 wheeler since we got it repaired from our crash this winter. I sure hope she doesn't get too wild on that thing.

Mama told Snickers she could go help out Lacie since Dr. Snitchybug has only just begun to work on Bentley's many surgeries. And yes, thanks to all of our pals who voted, we named him Bentley!!! We'll be saving the other names voted for to use on some of our other wirey kids. Mama has so many to name yet, hehehehe. As you can see below, Dr. Snitchybug is just getting Bentley prepped for some smaller surgeries first.
Sounds like he'll be in non-stop surgeries for quite some time. He also needs cataract removal surgery on his eyes. So maybe after Stuffie Stan is all healed up, the nurses can come help out Dr. Snitchybug. They will surely get lots of hands on experience here.

We had 2 more kinds of iris open this week. This first one is another Siberian Iris:
This is a water iris:
We're noticing that our trees are majorly stressed from all of the rainfall from the many storms this year. Many are losing newly formed leaves, the green coloring is turning pale green to brown on others. We have heard in the past that trees that get too wet can even die up to 3 years later. That's not good. Our flowering plants are doing ok, but many were slow to start this year & are smaller & pale green. We sure hope we don't have any trees die.

Oh and this morning, you should have heard Mama cussing those bambi deer out. Yep, they got into one of her apple trees. They ate branches off, leaves, and even stole a ton of the baby apples. They better steer clear of Mama for a long time.

Hey, I got to go to McDonald's today for ice cream! It sure was tasty, but not quite as tasty as Dairy Queen ice cream. Would you believe our Dairy Queen store was flooded out?? Yep, and they are still closed for business. What a major bummer. The flood waters are finally going down around here but are now going up in many other states down river. Snickers was especially worried about Gussie & his family since they just moved from sunny Arizona to Memphis, TN. But thank dogness they made it safely across the big Mississip to their new home!

Wirey Hugs!
Butchy & Snickers

WHEELY WEDNESDAY No 12

Hey Pals,

It's Roxy here today. I have some very important breaking news. I'm so excited, I just have to tell you. As you know, Inspector Butcho is always up to some kind of detective work & lately he's been searching for some of my long lost relatives that live over in England. All of his sniffing paid off, cause look who he found & brought here:
Isn't he so handsome?? He is much taller than I am. He's one of my cousins on my Chiltern side of the family. Here is proud Inspector Butcho unwrapping the new boy:
We decided to take him outside to meet Miss Snickers & get him some fresh air. He had an awfully long ride in that bubblewrap stuff. Hmmmm, wonder what she is whispering into his ear???
Here Snickers is giving him the Miss Snickers beauty inspection:
Snickers: Mama, I think he needs a pedicure & a bath!
Snickers is right. He does need some cleaning up. Mama (um, err, Dr. Snitchybug) has already cleaned his wheels & frame & boy was he dirty. Lots of rust & gunk. He feels so much better already. Now the next step is seeing what Dr. Snitchybug can do for him. Did you notice that he is ALMOST COMPLETELY BALD???
His ears aren't sewed down anymore either. Mama did find some original hair left under his ears:
He must have been kept chained outside cause look at the water stain on his hip???
Here his seams are coming undone & it looks like he has already had some surgery:
Please Dr. Snitchybug, can you help me???
Dr. Snitchybug has agreed to do surgery on him & she is even going to restore his mohair. She said that living in Iowa would be hard on him without any hair, especially during our long cold winters. His many surgeries will begin soon.

We also have another dilema, he doesnt' have a name! He said he was so happy that Inspector Butcho rescued him & he didn't care about finding his original name. So now we need to pick a name for him. Here are a few names we came up with. Let us know which one to pick in your comments. If you can come up with a better name, please list it also. We'll pick his new name in time for Wheely Wednesday next week.

Bentley
Brocc
Foxmeister
Desmond
Devon
Edgar
Roscoe

This is Roxy signing off!
Wheely Hugs!
Roxy

WE HAVEN'T FLOATED AWAY & VISITOR

Hey Pals,
Well our internet service is back on here in Iowa, but it goes off & on still. We're trying to catch up on everyone's blogs. Thanks to everyone for thinking of us during these awful storms, floods & tornadoes. Today it's nice & sunny outside & no forecast of rain for a few days. We hope it holds true. Our poor land is never going to dry out. We've had a lot of deer in our yard lately during the day time hours. We think it's due to the flooding in the camp behind us pushing the deer out of the deep woods areas. Many of the doe deer haven't even given birth yet to their babies. A few have, but many have not. One mama deer keeps hanging out in the branches we have packed around some bushes for the wildlife. There are several birds nesting in there and the deer keep laying down in the center. We're wondering if she is going to give birth in there or bring her new born babies in there to hide. We're very anxious to see her babies. We also had a new critter visit our yard late yesterday. Mama took us out the back door to go potty & while we were walking on the sidewalk, Snickers & I started sniffing something on it. Hmmmm, Mama thought maybe it was bird doo or something, so she yanked us away from it and boy was she surprised! It's a baby Snapping Turtle:


He is only a few days old. He's very small. Now we wonder how he got here! Did his egg get washed down the river or creeks by us & hatch near here?? Hmmmmm, we'll never know. Mama sure hopes he finds his way back to the river at the dead end of our road. We don't want him in our ponds. He'll eat the fishies & waterlilies. Adult Snapping Turtles can actually snap your fingers right off! We can't believe that some people actually keep them as pets. Guess you need to keep your fingers far away from them at feeding time. Snapping Turtles are also trapped for their meat. We've never tried turtle meat. Don't think Mama ever will either.

Some of our flowers aren't doing so well with all of this rain we've had in Iowa. The Water Iris & Siberian Iris are doing well though. We've been trying to get a few pictures of them blooming in between storms. Sometimes the blooms are all fizzled out from the rain & hail though. Anyway, here are a few photos:
These are Siberian Iris, some are doubles:




These are Water Iris:



We have lots of waterlilies blooming now, but only the darker pinks & light pinks. Still waiting for the white, yellow, peach & dark reds to bloom.
Stay safe!
Wirey Hugs!
Butchy & Snickers

WE'RE STILL HERE & F5 TORNADO PICTURES

Hey Pals,
Just a quick post to let you know we are still ok here in Iowa. Yesterday the Qwest building in Cedar Rapids flooded so most Iowans that are on the Qwest Internet service were down til this morning. Our service still keeps going off & on today yet so we thought we'd try to post this while it's still on for now. Most of you have probably heard about the horrible floods now in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City & surrounding areas. It's so unreal how high the waters are flowing at such record breaking levels. So far today we haven't had any rain thank goodness. Wednesday night through early Thursday morning we received just about 3 inches of new rain here. Last night Cedar Rapids & farther south had really bad storms with some tornadoes showing on radar. We're supposed to stay dry for tomorrow too, but by tomorrow night more storms are on the way. Most of the rivers near us are going back up again & expected to crest again in a few days. Hmmmmm, is this ever going to stop? We think we should start building that ark with the down trees that we have.

Here is the big highway interchange just south of us that was closed for several days:

We thought since most people never ever see a real F5 tornado first hand, we'd post a few pictures that people had taken of the F5 tornado that hit Parkersburg on May 25th this year.



We have our paws crossed that no one ever sees a tornado again like this in their town.
Wirey Hugs!
Butchy & Snickers