Hehe! Rule breaker! I waited until the afternoon to reply so as not to encourage such behavior. :)~
How many cats do you have? I have four dogs of my own and then another dog (the property guard dog) that I tend to. She is a bit of a beast but thankfully is not what we call 'gun shy' (meaning noise does not bother her much) and my own dogs have definitely grown less 'jumpy' over the noises now that they are getting older.
I totally understand scheduling your day around the sun and tend to do the same. The cold snap here at the moment has my schedule where I am beginning my outdoor activities around noon. During the warmer months I do the same with spending mid-day on the computer so that I can maximize my efforts during the early and later hours of the day.
I have three cats that are all three years old, they are two brothers and a sister - during my childhood we always had cats who were not related and now I see that farm cats do best when they are family. I think dogs are different in this way and are more open to adopt others. It is so cute to see two or three of them walking around the land together, and I once observed them take on the biggest snake I have ever seen (here at least) the snake backed down because they were all together. I was afraid to intervene and scare the snake so it was quite nerve-racking to watch because their sister was killed by a snake bite when she was a kitten - at least that is what we think happened.
Yes, it is best to go with the schedule that nature has set out for us. In winter I tend to sleep in, or work on sewing in the morning, and then try to soak up the sun when it is out.
Thank you so much for the HP by the way! Truly appreciated!
Again. This deserves more time than I can give it (because I am writing my daily entry at the moment) but I have to say:
I have a momma dog that I kept three of her pups from. Two sisters and a boy. One of the sisters survived not one but two snake bites as a pup. In my experience (and this may just be my experience) I think dog packs do way better when they are a family unit... but mine are work dogs and not truly domestic pets so I dunno!
Okay, back to the writing! Also yeah you are quite welcome on the delegation! I hope it helps.
Wow that is great that you have a family of animals too! And amazing that your girl dog survived two snake bite!! My cats were meant to be farm cats, and stayed out all night when they were old enough to. But once the kitten was killed we couldn't bear to loose another and now they are quite domestic though they do a great job of keeping rodents and even cockroaches out of the house and chasing birds out of the garden. And they are just so cute!!
Indeed! I thought the coincidence of a family of pets merited pausing the writing long enough to reply. I often call the dogs 'wilderness dogs' and what I meant by 'domestic' is just that they do not have much experience being in or around the hustle and bustle of either the suburbs, a city, town etcetera.
Yeah, dogs can handle snake bites rather well as long as they are not on the 'trunk' of their body and the dog is not old. She got bit twice in the face. As a side note, she became super skilled at finding/noticing snakes so go figure.
All the dogs are trained on hunting rodents and in fact it is the only thing they are allowed to hunt. Although they are mostly retired now they spent much of their lives driving off large predators like bears, big cats (like bobcats) and some rather large coyote packs. They never 'close' with those kinds of animals (or the more problematic two-legged critters) but they do a fantastic job of driving them off a property... or just keeping them away altogether.
What kind of snake was it that got that cat? The dog had gotten bit by a copperhead on the two occasions she was bit.