On the brighter side, our Boxer is growing more beautiful every day. We finally settled on the name Miley (My Boy is a huge Hannah Montana fan, can you tell?). She is up to forty pounds now. Still skinny, I like my girls to have a little reserve on them, if you know what I mean. Don't worry, though. We'll fatten her up. Just takes a little more time to build up those muscles that had wasted away. So far she is great on a leash and has learned to sit on command. She's a quiet girl, too. Sweet and loving, with no rough-housing, which will make her a good pet for a family with kids. It's so funny to see her play bow, and wag her tail. She doesn't just wag her tail, she shakes her booty. Just cracks me up every time she does it!
We've been busy here on the farm, what with pigs having babies and the fall show season starting. My Boy took his cow Ruby Tuesday to the fair and won a blue ribbon. She seems to love My Boy almost as much as I do. Well, you just keep head-bumping him Ruby, but you'll never fit on his lap.
Dad picked up another rescue pup. She's an adult Boxer but only weighs thirty-three pounds. She's very thin and had some parasites, but nothing a little TLC won't cure, the vet said. She is eating well, and should gain a lot of weight over the next few weeks. 
Just look at those beautiful eyes! And her tail wags almost as much as mine. She's such a sweetheart. We've yet to come up with a good name for her. A name's got to be perfect, you know. Gotta put some thought into it. A bit of class for this lady, because I know behind the neglect and thinness is a gorgeous gal!
Not only did my hole get filled in with a tractor-bucket full of fireplace rocks, but somebody actually build a rock wall along the fence. And planted flowers!
I'm here to tell you, I'm mighty miffed. This is going to put me behind schedule, cleaning this mess up. This is not at all what I had planned for landscaping. Not one bit. Wasn't on the blueprint. Not in the budget. I wasn't consulted.
At least Glynn seems to like the sweetpea blossoms. 
All my hard work, for naught. What's a dog to do? I believe I will have to sit and ponder...
~Tell
As for me, my day started out pretty well. I finished the hole I was excavating ahead of schedule, so I started on a new hole in the corner of the yard. Things were going well, and I was just thinking how much faster I could dig with a little Kubota backhoe. I believe I could do some serious damage with one of those. I will talk to My Boy about our budget and see if we can get one. Anyway, my hole was coming along quite well when suddenly I found myself on the other side of the backyard fence! Well, it was time for lunch break anyhow, so I decided to put in a little time exploring. Never turn down an opportunity to sniff out new things.
I hadn't been out long when The Family came home and discovered me loafing about my job. They weren't too happy about the shape I was in, either. I went into some pretty rough brush, and brought a few burrs home with me. These are very tiny burrs called hitchhikers, beggar-lice, beggar-ticks, sticktights, tick clover, or as I sometimes call them, ohshucks stickum tightus. They were thickly embedded, thousands of them, all over me. 
There was no getting out of it. I got put straight on the grooming table. This was going to take a lot of brushing to set things right.
You might say I led with the nose.
It took over an hour of brushing to get them all out. Yeah, I lost some hair over this adventure. Then I had to endure a bath, more brushing and fluffing and buffing before I was pronouced clean. Mom says I'm an exasperating pup to live with. What can I say? It's a gift.
Man, I can't wait to get back to work!
First, though, he made us sit and listen to him. He said we had to be on our best behavior and not do anything silly. As if.
Here we are trucking along across the green grass. This is a very good view of us, though from this angle Mom sometimes has touble telling Who's Who in the Zoo without her glasses. 
We stopped for our mail...
When we finally reached the barn, we saw a red Shorthorn cow! This is My Boy's new FFA project and her name is Ruby. Mom calls her Ruby Tuesday because that's probably where she'll end up someday (for those of you across the pond, Ruby Tuesday is the name of a fine restaurant chain here in the States). 
