Wrapping Presents

If you have a pet, you know how impossible it is to wrap presents with them around. Cherry and Woody are no exception to this. Today, I set out to wrap presents for my cousins' kids. Woody, like always, was glued to my side, but I easily got him out of the way by having him sit off to the side. And within minutes of rolling out the wrapping paper, Cherry was lying on top of it. She was not happy to be moved from that. She spent the rest of the time messing with paper scraps and the ribbons.

So for presents, we got a few Fur Real Friends. I loved them as a kid, so we figured they would like them too. One of them was a kitten that paws at you. I made the mistake of pressing the "Try Me!" button and that set off hours of 'MEOW MEOW PURRR PURRR BRRRROW'. It's bad enough when it's a real cat doing that to you, but this thing would not shut up. Eventually, I found the off switch, but before that Woody spent his time investigating. "What is this thing?" You could almost hear him thinking. Cherry was equally freaked out. It was pretty comical.

For most of the wrapping, the toy was in the box and Woody kept going over and moving the flaps so it would start meowing again. We had to run some errands and when we came back, I let him out of the car and he burst through the front door and straight to the box to turn the toy back on.

Fish Tank Updates

The fish tanks have been doing well the past few weeks.The 10 gallon also seems to have cycled. It's been months since I started it and I'm so glad it's finally safe for the fish. The 29 gallon is still working on cycling. Last I checked (Wednesday), the ammonia was high, nitrites 0, and nitrates high.

So for right now the tank occupants are:
10 gallon:
-1 male guppy
-1 otocinclus
-3-4 baby pond snails

I finally found a new home for Houdini the mystery snail and now I'm able to use my tap water in the 10 gallon again! So much easier than lugging around 5 gallon jugs of water.I'm not exactly sure what happened to all of the baby snails. I've only found one dead  body and that's from one that I accidentally dropped while transferring them and didn't notice until I found the dried out shell. :(

The plants in the 29 gallon are doing well. The plants I got from Petco are really taking off with the proper care. My plan is to keep all the leafy plants in the 29 gallon and eventually move all the stem plants into the 10 gallon.

Now for some pictures! I only have good pictures of the 29 gallon tank. I'll have to get some new pictures of the 10 gallon when I get home.

Puff the dragon, our newest addition to the tank.

Moonlight setting

Puff is supposed to have an air stone in his mouth and I did have it going for a while until I cut the tubing on the tank hood. Next time I clean the tank up, I'll be replacing that. Right now I don't want to deal with replanting the stem plants. They are a huge pain.

A Trip to Petsmart

Woody is really not a friendly dog. He's really nervous around strangers, especially when they're in our house. But recently he has improved a lot. We've had a lot of people in and out of the house for the past few months and I think he's just gotten more used to it (and Cherry has too and has now started to investigate people who come to do work on the house).

So yesterday, I had to run down to the mall to pick up a blanket I ordered from JCPenney (the blanket is awesome, but ordering online from them is a huge pain in the ass). I decided to stop over at Petsmart to get some stuff for Cherry. Woody normally goes with me in the car if I'm running in to a store quickly and it's not hot out. I figured since we were heading to Petsmart an hour after it opened on a week day, I could try bringing Woody in if it wasn't crowded. He did well at the vet's office, so I figured he'd be fine in the store as long as we avoided the majority of the people.

He did amazing in the store. I had him on a short leash and he pulled quite a bit, but I expected that. New place, new smells. He's never been in a store before. He actually behaved way better than I expected though. He really was only interested in sniffing the treat bags and people. He even went up to people on his own and let them pet him. I was so surprised. Of course, I was watching him very carefully and was ready to pull him away if I had to.

I'm so proud of him. I bought him a cute toy for being a good boy. I'll have to get some pictures of him when I get home. We're currently in Maine for the weekend and couldn't bring Woody.

Black and White Sunday

 

 

A New Style

Hello everyone! The fish tanks have been going well. The 29 gallon is halfway through cycling and I think the 10 gallon is now cycled. Not much other news with those.

Woody also went to the vet two days ago and Cherry goes Monday. The lump on Woody's leg is nothing to worry about right now. They want us to just watch it and bring him in when it's bigger so they can stick a needle in it and see what comes out. Cherry is just going in for a check up.

But today Woody's new collar came. I ordered it from Hilltop Leather. It is beautiful!

He thought I was asking him to do his 'stand' trick.

 

 Now in other news we've had some more kittens around. Yesterday I was looking out the window and saw a black thing at the bottom of the field. I figured I'd go check it out and turns out it was a kitten! That one ran off a little ways and a little tabby one came out. They were older kittens, but still kittens. I got within two feet of the tabby before it started walking off. I (stupidly) decided to run back inside to get some treats and the cat carrier and when I got back they were both gone. We searched until it got dark, but we couldn't find them. The area they were in is full of tangled trees, vines, and prickers. It was not fun looking in that. I'm hoping they'll be back around so I can catch them. I don't think they're anyone's pets and I think they were dumped. There's been quite a few older kittens roaming around, but these are the first to not bolt when they saw me (the black one ran initially, but stayed and watched).

Adventures and Tricks

Well, Woody and I have been off exploring quite a bit, but I only got pictures one of the days. I meant to get more pictures Saturday, but I was half way down the road when I realized I left the SD card in my laptop.

This is my favorite. I was trying to get a picture of the bridge and he had other ideas.

There have been some other new things though. I've been working on clicker training Woody for maybe a year or two now. It hasn't been regular training by any means, but he has picked up some new tricks. So far his list of tricks is:

• Sit (which he was learning before we got him)
• Down (I taught this)
• Stay 
• Come
• Back Up (he picked this up on his own)
• Stand (one of our employees has been teaching it for a while, so he picked up the hand signal quickly)
• Go inside/Go in the house (I drop the leash and he'll run up the steps and wait at the door)

A lot of these aren't totally foolproof. We've got a lot of work to do with training outside, but I'm really happy with this for now.

He was a bit excited about the cheese I was using for treats, so this isn't his best performance.

Right now we've started working on 'crawl'. He's also picking that up quickly. We also plan on teaching 'spin' and 'target'.

And last bit of news with him is that I ordered him a new collar. This one is a leather one from Hilltop Leather. It's going to have red padding. I can't wait till it comes!

I also figure I should update you on the fish situation. Bloo and Orange have died. I really don't know what happened, but I'm assuming the cycling process finally got to them. Yellow seems to be doing alright and I think the tank is just about cycled. Some days it seems perfect and other days it's not. I also had baby snails in my 29 gallon. They were in the plants and hatched a little while ago. So far I have moved 17 to the 10 gallon and I think there's a few more in the 29. At this point I am sick of transferring them, so those ones are on their own.

And I finally got pure ammonia for cycling the 29 gallon. I started that yesterday. Hopefully it goes well!

New Arrivals and Some Updates

Well, it's been awhile since I updated. Quite a bit has happened since then. School has just been a train wreck for me. I ended up dropping 3 classes and I'm still stressed with the work load (probably because my motivation is at like -20). But this is a pet blog and you probably don't care much about my school rants. :P

Cherry's been her normal self. Not much new with her. She's been having a blast with our new arrivals and she's becoming a lot more outgoing with strangers in the house. In the past few months we've had a few new employees and also some construction going on. With all that, both her and Woody are being more social. Well in Woody's case becoming less noisy about it.

Ah yes, so normal.

"You can't see me!"

This is seriously how she sleeps during the day.

That's cool. I didn't want to study anyway.

We made her a new scratching post. So far this was the only day she sat on it.

"Get me a tuna sandwich. Hold the bread."

"What do you mean this isn't a new bed?"

Woody's been good too. He's been helping me out with the wood stacking. I am a little worried about him though. I found a lump under his front leg last week. He's not acting weird and it doesn't seem to hurt him. The lump is also movable. I'm thinking it's a cyst. Hopefully we can get him to the vet this week to get it checked out.

So helpful with the gardening.

"PLEASE LET ME BE NEXT TO YOU!"

So helpful...

Oh look there was a mouse nest.

Now I've been mentioning some new arrivals. As much as I'd love to say it's a bunch of kittens, I just can't. They're fish. I'm a little ashamed at how this whole fish thing started, but I've learned from it so I'll share what happened. I decided I wanted a fish again. I did some research and discovered the nitrogen cycle. I'd had fish before, but no one ever told me about cycling tanks. This is probably because my dad believes it to be BS, but that's another story. So I set my tank up and tried doing a fishless cycle. I really didn't have any sort of grasp on how to cycle. I tried the adding fish food thing and definitely did it wrong. After a month, I decided to get a snail and an otocinclus.

Meet Houdini..

...and Frederick.

These guys are still alive. Houdini had some issues with the water I was originally using, but that's been resolved now.

And after 2 weeks of having these guys I decided to get some guppies. I bought 4 male guppies. Their names were Dominic, Francis, Charles, and Frankenstein. One died the next day and within 2 days, they all were dead. Houdini and Frederick were still alive though (this was still before the water source change). I was sure it was because of the cycling. My dad ended up taking the dead fish back and getting me four more. I really didn't want any more, but he doesn't believe in cycling, so he went and got them. One died that night, but the other three are still alive now. These guys are way more alert and fun. They explore and they like to come up to you. Their names are Bloo, Yellow, and Orange. I originally wasn't going to name them until they lived a week and was just calling them by their colors, but the names stuck. Orange is my favorite. Bloo and Yellow like to hang out together.

We ended having a bought of ich with them. Bloo had it first and then Yellow. Orange didn't have it until the very end of treatment. Everybody's healthy now.

So the tank is almost done cycling. I now have someone helping me with that. I also have a better grasp of cycling and other fish care. I feel really bad about the five fish dying, but I promise I'm not going to let any more die like that.

Currently, I'm working on setting up a new tank. They are in a 10 gallon right now and I wanted to switch the gravel to sand. I had my dad order 10 lbs of sand using his Amazon Prime. Turns out it didn't count for free shipping, so he canceled it and went to Petco and bought me 20lbs of sand. Then they still shipped the other 10lbs. So I decided to use the 30lbs of sand and set up our 30 gallon tank. We already had a filter for one, so right now I'm waiting on the heater and the hood. I also order 25 plants which should be here this week. I'm doing a fishless cycle with this tank and then once it is cycled, I'm moving all fish into it. Once the 10 gallon is cycled I plan to get two more otos. I recently found out that they like to live in groups. After the fish are moved to the 30 gallon, I'm going to get 6 more guppies and quarantine them in the 10 gallon. After that's done I'm going to move them to the 30 gallon and get 6 more and repeat. My plan is end up with 15 male guppies, 3 otos, and a snail. I may leave the 10g set up and get something else, or I may just take it down and use it another time. Setting up this 30 gallon is using up a lot of my money.

Her favorite place to sit before I bought the hood. (No fish in it)

She likes to stick her paws in the water I leave out for heating up. One day she decided she would drop a bunch of things in it.

The 30 gallon in its current set up. The heater is an old one in there just to see what it'd do. There's also one lonely amazon sword in there.