DIYnot

I can see why needle felting is gaining popularity.  It’s easy to get started, it’s fun to do, and the possibilities are just about endless.  I wasn’t going to start another craft, but my pal Sarah had another one of her awesome crafting parties and I just couldn’t say no.  I managed to stay under a budget of $20 for tools and supplies, which was worth it to have some fun with friends and make a couple of small gifts.  I got this starter kit including a set of the special barbed needles and a foam block for $10, plus some loose wool and yarn.  I also tried using a little bit of woven wool that I had gotten via freecycle a while back.

At the party, I made this little sheep (with string to be a Christmas tree ornament), and later at home I made the hedgehog. 

Not fantastic by any means, but decent first tries I think.  The picture is not very good; sorry about that.  When I gave them to my parents and my sister as gifts, they asked how I made them.  I told them you take a blob of loose wool and stab it with a barbed needle over and over until the wool fibers are so tangled that it becomes a solid object.  What about the eyes?  Same thing, but with a tiny blob of wool, and then when it’s formed, place it onto the larger blob and stab repeatedly to attach.  This site gives a good introduction and demo of how to do it.  Other than that, you can just play around with it to figure out good technique, and try not to stab yourself with the sharp needle.

Check out these gnomes and veggies Sarah made!  Aren’t they amazing?  I love them.

Quite a few people are selling their needle felted creations online, and some of them are very impressive.  I recently came across Bossy’s Feltworks through a friend (ooh, their sheep are leaps above mine), Bear Creek, and so many others on Etsy.  In addition to making wool sculptures, you can use this technique to create hats, bags, you name it.  And that’s just with loose wool, not even getting into what can be done with knitted wool, recycled wool sweaters, and similar materials.

-Kelly

In the fall, we were in Costco when I spotted a 3-pack of good quality accordion air filters.  We were out of air filters, so I bought them.  They seemed like the right size.  I got home, opened the packaging (proud of myself for remembering to replace the filter), and attempted to place one of the filters in the air intake of our 1952 oil furnace.   And that’s when I noticed it didn’t fit.  I bought 16”x25”x1” filters, but our furnace takes 20”x25”x1”.  Whah-whah.  But I had already opened all the packaging, so I couldn’t return them.  I could have freecycled them, which means at least they wouldn’t be wasted, but good filters are not cheap, and I was kind of bummed to think I’ll lose that money.  Plus the furnace was still in desperate need of a new filter, and now I would have to make a trip to the store to get the right ones.

Then I noticed something else: these filters have two dimensions in common with the ones I need.  It shouldn’t be too hard to get that third dimension.  I used the old filter as a guide (see it in the back, its pleats gray from a filtering job well done?) and started cutting.  A utility knife was no match for the metal grid, but my trusty tin snips worked great.  I just had to be careful of the sharp edges.

I put the pieces together with blue painters tape (making sure the air flow direction marked on the side matched), and voila, three 16” wide filters had become two 20” wide filters. 

So yeah, it would have been best if I hadn’t bought the wrong size, or if I had checked the size before opening the package.  This solution made me feel a little bit better about my mistakes.  The modified filters are getting us through the winter until that happy day arrives when we get rid of the huge, noisy, 60-year-old furnace that currently resides in our hallway.  I have news about that, which I will share soon…

-Kelly

Yellow flowers of parsnips going to seed in late June with raspberry canes, leek seed pod, and rosemary in the background.  The flowers look like dill but develop pencil diameter sized flat seeds.

This variety is open-pollinated (OP) so the seed is good to keep or to let volunteer wherever it wants in your garden.

Parsnips I just cleaned up Friday afternoon.  I grow parsnips like they’re going out of style. They’re super hardy, very productive, and unique.  I might let them go a little long before harvesting them or maybe the soil-clay horizon (or depth to hard pan) is too shallow in my garden so the parsnips grow to that depth and then rather than elongating/growing deeper they swell to the size of my calf in diameter.

Read More →

You can probably surmise from my use of quotes in the title and the fact that there is more than one part to this story that the ceiling fans did not take five minutes to install.  Not even close.  Yet we feel good about this project.

To replace the tired 1950’s ceiling fixtures in our two bedrooms, we decided to install ceiling fan / light fixture combos.  First we bought two of this fan (pictured below) from Lowes.  It was pretty spur of the moment.  I don’t think we were even shopping for fans at the time, though we knew we wanted to have them in the bedrooms.  We paid $116 each.  Don’t worry, there is some surprise money saving in Part 2.

We really liked the look of these and we were enticed by the “five minute” installation promised on the box.  We took them home and started unpacking and making sure all the pieces were there. 

We read all the installation instructions.  Maybe you could install this thing in 15 minutes (5 no way, you can barely do a parts inventory and get out your tool box in that time!) IF you were either replacing an existing fan/light combo or you did not want to be able to control the fan and light using separate wall switches.  Neither of which applied to us.  Typical circumstances never seem to apply when we’re doing house projects.  Plus we figured it would be a good time to put these fans on a new dedicated bedroom circuit that is AFCI protected.  All the old circuits in the house are in fine shape, but they’re not grounded let alone protected from faults and arcs that could cause a fire.  Not only were we going to run new wire, but the wiring for this project was a step up from the simple outlets I’d done in the past, so I wanted to draw it all out and triple-check to make sure it was right.  As you can see in the photo, I had several drafts with a final draft color coded.  This may seem unnecessary, but when you are making connections in the attic or anywhere for that matter, it really helps to have a guide that is crystal clear so you don’t have to spend extra time thinking about whether all the connections are right.  I don’t want to have any doubts that the wiring we’ve done is 100% correct.

Of course I used my trusty Creative Homeowner’s Ultimate Guide to Wiring (I seriously love this book) as a guide, along with the instructions from the fan.  All of the wiring had to happen before we could even get to the fan installation. 

BUT Before we could even do the new wiring, we had to decommission the old wiring.  And before we did that, we had to uninstall our old light fixtures.

That particular circuit supports much of the lighting throughout our house, so we couldn’t simply remove those wires.  We needed to keep the circuit intact minus the two light fixtures.  That is pretty easy in theory: just connect black to black and white to white inside an appropriate junction box, such as this:

When you have to do that in the attic, rooting around in insulation, breathing through a dust mask, your safety glasses getting fogged up, and without enough headroom, it’s a bit easier said than done.  We turned off the electricity and Matt was sent into the attic to do his first wiring job in the house (other than running wire).  To prepare for this task, he read some parts of the wiring book, we discussed various aspects of wiring, and at my suggestion Matt made some practice connections with scraps of wire.  It might seem like overkill, but if you are working with something dangerous like electricity, there is no such thing as being too prepared.  Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the attic is not a fun workspace, so it’s much better if you know what you’re doing before you get up there.  One of the reasons this project was fun, even though it took about 100 times longer than the fan packaging claimed, is that we got to work together and learn together.  At our house, Matt is the lead plumber and I am the lead electrician, but we like to have all-around knowledge and be able to back each other up.  We got that stage of the project finished up just after dark.  When the electricity is off and it’s questionable whether we’ll be finished before dark, it always makes me appreciate having electricity and lights when we turn it back on. 

Another thing we needed to do before we could get to the fans was to install proper supports to hold the weight of the fans.  While Matt was in the attic, he measured the distance between joists so he could later cut 2x6s to which the fans’ electrical boxes would be attached and so would the fan housing.

Once the supports were installed, we were ready to run the wiring.  We estimated lengths of wire, discussed exactly where each wire needed to be run, and Matt was again sent into the attic with a box of supplies. Here he is running wire from the garage, which houses our circuit breaker box, to the appropriate locations. 

We have a pretty good system for running wire.  We plan it all out ahead of time and pre-cut the lengths of wire.  Then Matt ventures into the attic or crawlspace while I am in the house or garage indicating the locations where he should drill holes, and then we feed the wire to each other through those holes.

We needed to run wire:

1. through the attic from the circuit breaker in the garage to a junction box near the guest bedroom’s ceiling fan
2. from that junction box in the attic down into the guest bedroom wall to the light switch
3. through the attic from the first junction box to a junction box near the ceiling fan in our bedroom
4. from the second junction box in the attic down into our bedroom wall to the light switch

Steps 1-3 went smoothly, and just as we started feeling like we were home free, we discovered that we couldn’t run the wires to the location of the light switch in our bedroom.  Matt tried to feed the wire into the existing hole from the attic, but it wouldn’t go.  When he tried to drill a new hole from above, he could not get through what seemed to be a ridiculous thickness of wood.  What was going on?  Sometimes a really handy way to see what’s going on in the wall is to stick my camera into a hole in the wall and take a picture with the flash.  This is the view looking up from inside the hole where the light switch box used to be.

You can see that at the top there is some wood blocking, and the wire goes through the 2x4 stud into the adjacent stud bay.  Ay ay ay.  The only thing we could think of was to cut off a piece of drywall where we estimated the wire goes through.  As if we don’t already have enough random holes in our walls.  Oh well.  We did it and it looked like this:

Imagine our surprise to find that the wire didn’t just go through one stud, but two studs.  Why is that second stud even right there, just two inches from the first stud?  Probably because the doorway between the hall and the bathroom butts up against the other side of this wall.  And that’s probably also why there seems to be extra wood at the top of these stud bays, preventing us from drilling a new hole to feed the wire through.  From my limited understanding of framing, I know that doorways and windows require quite a bit of extra framing with large headers above the door and king and jack studs along the sides, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that the bathroom door was right there and that this extra framing would be in our way. 

Now that we had this extra hole in the drywall, we were able to pull out the old wire and fish the new wire from the attic all the way to the location of the light switch through the existing holes.  Of course we were left with a wall that looks like Swiss cheese, but what are you gonna do.  There is no way we could have gotten the wire from the attic to the switch without the extra hole in the drywall.

And finally, we had all the wire run.  Mind you, it’s not connected to any source of electricity (the end that goes to the circuit breaker is just near the breaker box, not hooked up to it), so it’s all perfectly safe to leave sticking out of the walls.  Unless you scratch yourself on it while walking by.  Which has happened to me.  Not with these wires, but with other wires that are sticking out of various holes around our house.

This is all I can handle for Part 1.  I’m exhausted just remembering this project.  Whew!  More later.

-Kelly

“The name Hosta is in honor of the Austrian botanist Nicholas Thomas Host.” (Wikipedia)  They are perennial, shade-tolerant, chosen as a ground cover, grow through rhizomes (roots), some are variegated, and some are even edible.  I have planted Halcyon, First Frost, and Catherine varieties which should grow to as high as 30” and as wide as 36”.  During the winter they “die” back to the point of being invisible.  The other day I accidentally dug one up and was surprised that without the foliage they look very much like asparagus starts having a crown and several millimeter in diamter roots that are about six inches long and abundant. 

Wikipedia — most that I’ve seen like these have a long stem with lavender colored flowers.

Click on photo for link to source.  These look very happy in the shade of a tree.

—Matt

Yesterday was a beautiful day again (spring is here!), and I managed to take the dogs on their afternoon/evening walk before it got dark.  Thus, we encountered many people and several dogs.  Five different groups of people asked about the dogs.  The first three conversations were with other dog walkers and all the conversations went like this:

People: What nice looking dogs.  Are they friendly?

Me: Yes.  [Dogs meet and sniff each other.]

People: What kind of dogs are they?  [Not always but frequently:] Springer spaniels?

Me: Brittanys.  [Yada yada, small talk, what breed is your dog, etc.]

Then we walked through a park where lots of little kids were playing on a playground with their parents.

Two year old kid: Cows!

Kid’s mom: No honey, those are dogs, but they do have spots like some cows.

After being mistaken for cows, the boys and I walked about 15 feet and I heard kids shouting.

Kids: Can we meet your Brittanys?

Me: Yes, come on over.

Kids: [Running over with their mom in tow]  We have a Brittany and a Golden Retriever… [yada yada, more talk about dogs.]

Me: [Thinking: the only people who recognize Brits are people who have one of their own.  And dog experts.]

-Kelly

Cow picture from wikimedia commons.

Spring is finally here!  Saturday was gorgeous.  After stopping by the Bone-a-fide Dog Ranch (to have the dogs approved in case we can’t find dogsitters at some point down the road) and grabbing some tacos, we took the dogs to Magnuson Park for a family walk through the park and then a romp through the off-leash area.  On a sunny day, you can’t beat a walk by the lake.

As we drove up the hill, I made Matt pull over so I could take another picture.  I just love this view from the aptly named View Ridge neighborhood.  We used to live right next to Magnuson Park and I loved taking walks up the hill just to look out at Lake Washington and the Cascades.

On the way home we stopped at Top Pot doughnuts.  That hit the spot.

On Sunday, I took the dogs over to our friend Aly’s house for a play date.  The dogs got along really well and everyone had fun.  Aly is very knowledgeable and passionate about dog behavior and training (check out her blog!), and whenever we get together I’m inspired to renew my own training efforts.  Sometimes I’m lazy in that department, but I really do enjoy the challenge and rewards of teaching my dogs behaviors.  It’s fun and practical.  I think Matt was skeptical about clicker training up until he saw the amazing things Aly’s dog Ioda can do and how much fun it is for both dog and trainer.  Maybe Aly will send me a picture of the four dogs together, hint hint?  And to boot, they fed me more doughnuts plus Aly’s sister baked chocolate Guinness cupcakes which was - no exaggeration - the best cupcake I’ve ever had. 

And as if I hadn’t spent the entire weekend obsessing about my dogs (and apparently eating more sugar than I realized - I failed to mention Friday night’s beer tasting party hosted by our friends Lauren & BJ, who always make crazy good food and desserts), the whole family spent Sunday evening snuggled on the couch.  Imagine inserting yourself between these two, and it is even more snugglicious than you expect.

It was a fabulous weekend, and our activities were all virtually cost-free.  My favorite!

-Kelly

Each spring I feel like my eyes have just opened after a long good snooze.  It’s a nice feeling.  In tribute to the feeling plants give me during the growing season (and especially when winter’s grasp loosens), I’ve decided to post, almost daily, about a plant or plants in my garden.  So here we go…

Threadleaf Coreopsis Zagreb — Coreopsis verticillata

This is a great perennial.  It has really delicate foliage and numerous bright yellow little flowers.  Just today I moved and divided up a clump and after a year and a half there was a nice clump to be divided.

—Matt

PS.  I added the tag propagation to this post because I originally purchased one plant and was able to divide it into two (or more).  In future posts, I want to talk more about how awesome it is that plants can be divided or cuttings can be rooted to grow many more.  Darn good return on investment!  Also, I’m getting going on this “Plant of the Day” or PoD thread without many of my own photos.  As the season goes on I hope to snap some of my own and will probably post them in batches with cross-references back to the original posting.

Parting thoughts:

Today and yesterday in the yard I spent a lot of time pondering “what’s next?”  If you could have seen me you’d probably have thought I snapped as I would walk to one spot in my yard, stare, nod my head, do some hand waving.  Fortunately I hadn’t snapped.  Rather, I was absorbed in the challenge of how to proceed on creating my little landscape in light of all the previous decisions I’d made.  As a corollary of this, in a future post I want to share some thoughts on hitting the reset button.  It’s not the easy button, but it sure does make moving forward much easier. 

Today was a good day— I fed worms, potato bugs, and slugs to my neighbors’ chickens.  Before that I thought of chickens as a great way to get eggs; now I see them as some really cool animals that could totally make a great pet.

When we moved into this house, we lived with the horrible bathroom floor for a few months.  The only reason we didn’t change it sooner is that doing so required removing the toilet (our only one) and we needed to do some planning ahead so we wouldn’t end up in a pickle.  Seriously, have you seen a floor more atrocious than this?  I don’t even know how or why anyone would create let alone purchase a floor like this:

I think it was once light pink and light yellow with dark pink and yellow sparkly things in it, and maybe that was in style at some point?  And check out the nice crack down the middle.  We wanted a new floor and we wanted it to be inexpensive, DIY friendly, quick to install (remember the toilet issue) and the kicker was the floor was already slightly higher than the hall floor and we didn’t want it to get much higher.  There is an even older floor under the one pictured above, and we thought there was some chance of the oldest floor or maybe both layers having asbestos.  We could have had them tested, but that’s yet more work and expense, and it just didn’t seem worth it at the time, so we decided to leave both layers intact and lay new flooring over them.  With the height constraint, ceramic tile (plus cement board) was not going to work.  Sheet vinyl is not that easy to install.  Vinyl self-stick tile seemed like the best solution.  It’s not too difficult to install and it’s so cheap that if we decided to replace it later, no problem.  Especially considering how tiny the bathroom is.  We got Armstrong vinyl peel-and-stick tiles from Lowes.  I am positive the color was called River Slate or something very close to that, but I can’t find it online so maybe they no longer make it.  This color is close in case you’re looking for something similar.  Fortunately I did keep several extra tiles “just in case.”  Just in case of what?  I don’t know.  And could I even find the extras in the garage?  No.  Why am I asking myself questions?

In addition to looking horrible, the existing floor was not perfectly flat, so we had to use some self-leveling concrete.  We mixed it up thicker (probably too thick in retrospect), so it didn’t level itself, but we worked it with plastic putty knives and got it pretty flat.  Once it was dry, I applied some primer to help the tiles stick.

Oh yeah, we removed the sink along with the toilet and decided to get new ones of both while we were at it.  I’ll tell you about that later. 

After that, it was smooth sailing.  I followed the directions that came with the vinyl tiles, laying them out ahead of time to make sure we wouldn’t end up with any weird slivers of tile at the edges.  Then I started in the middle, laying one row and working out from there.  You can cut it with regular scissors, how easy is that!?

And yes, we installed the new toilet as soon as the tile under it was done.  ‘Cause having no toilet in the house is kind of a bummer.  The sink could and did wait.  There was always the kitchen sink, and I even used the tub spout to wash my face and hands for several weeks until we installed the sink.  I’m trying to remember back why that was.  I think we needed to do some work on the plumbing serving the sink first, and at the time, we really only had weekends to do stuff like that. 

I liked the look of the faux slate vinyl tile.  The one thing I did not like about it was that it wasn’t a waterproof layer.  For some reason that freaked me out - I feel very strongly that a bathroom floor should be impervious to moisture.  Probably nothing terrible happens, and lots of people use this tile, but I was just not happy.  Also, the faux grout lines that came with the tile looked good from afar, but up close you could see the crack between the tiles, especially at the corners.  I didn’t like that either.

I was pretty sure that you can’t grout these tiles because unlike ceramic, vinyl is flexible, and as I learned in a free Home Depot workshop on tiling, grout will crack if there is any movement whatsoever in the tile.  Maybe you can grout it though - if anyone has info on this, please let me know.  Anyway, I had decided that grout was a no-go, but I thought caulk might work.  It’s flexible and waterproof.  I bought some gray silicone caulk, did a couple of tests using tile scraps on a piece of cardboard, and decided the best method was to use blue painters tape along the edges of the tile (as the silicone caulk will leave a very shiny spot if you get some on the tile and then wipe it up), put in a small bead of caulk, smooth it with the pointier end of a pot scraper (similar to these - and they do make tools to smooth caulk but I had this around the house already plus it’s cheaper), and then pull up the tape before the caulk sets.  It actually looked pretty good.  For a few months, it stayed perfectly intact.  Then in one spot it got pulled up.  A while later, in another spot the same thing happened.  It always seemed to happen when we had guests over, and I’m thinking maybe it’s because we wear slippers in the house and our guests may have had shoes on.  I’m not at all blaming the guests.  If flooring gets damaged by people walking on it with shoes, that’s a fault of the flooring, not of the people. 

Actually, I’m amazed the damage to the caulk has been minor for over a year.  We have a couple of spots like in the picture, but I’m probably the only one that notices them.  And I guess I got over my impenetrable surface obsession, considering I haven’t fixed it for over a year.  One reason I haven’t fixed it yet is that I’m thinking siliconized acrylic would a better choice than 100% silicone caulk.  Silicone doesn’t stick to things as well as acrylic, and it won’t even stick to itself, making this kind of repair difficult.  I originally went with silicone because a tile guy told me that acrylic isn’t as flexible (could eventually crack), doesn’t last as long, and isn’t as good in general.  Since then I’ve heard from other people that that used to be true, but the new blends are quite good. 

Over the last year I’ve learned of some new products I would choose over self-stick tiles if I had it to do over again.  There are some vinyl tiles and planks that click together to become a virtually seamless layer that is installed as a floating floor (not glued to the layer below).  That would resolve all of my issues.  I’d also look into low-VOC or VOC-free options if I went with vinyl.  And I would research this Durock tile membrane as a possible substitute for hardy board to use under ceramic tile, which is what I’d like to have if it wouldn’t make the floor too much higher than adjacent flooring.

Maybe I’ll change it one of these days.  I really like this fancy heating duct cover we got.  That will stay.  And I’d probably go with a similar style.  After living with it for over a year, I’m still loving the slate look.

We put in a new vanity/sink and a wall cabinet over the toilet too.  And a new toilet made sense since we already had to remove the old one and install one.

That’s about 70% of the work we’ve done in the bathroom so far.  More on that later.

-Kelly

Every day, Matt walks the dogs in the morning and I walk them in the evening.  This is a real conversation that happened after the morning walk.

Matt: I think a crow tried to poop on us.

Kelly: On purpose?

Matt: Ok, we try to respect the crows when we’re walking.

Kelly: How?

Matt: We walk slowly past them.  We look away. 

Kelly: [Silence. What can be said?]

Matt: One crow hopped away, but the other flew up and landed on a wire.  Then as we walked underneath, poop land 3 feet away.  I think he tried to hit us.

We have been eating some divine pickled green beans Matt canned in the fall.  So good! 

I am getting excited for spring.  Fresh veggies galore, playing outside, long days, change of scenery…

-Kelly

Don’t you love it when you see something beautiful unexpectedly?  There are so many of those little moments, and most of them can’t be captured - and maybe shouldn’t be, maybe part of what’s great about them is that they’re unique and fleeting.  Occasionally if it lasts long enough, I manage to take a photo to save away.  I just found some of those and thought they were worth sharing. 

Rain water on a piece of flashing in our yard mid-siding project:

This fungus we found on a log in Olympic National Park when we took a hike there with my mom back in October (Matt knew the name of it but it slips my mind at the moment):

A deer on the side of the road coming down from Hurricane Ridge (same trip):

Concentric circles of bubbles as a pot of water heats up (does this happen because the pot has tiny unseen concentric rings in its surface?):

A plane crossing back lit clouds as seen from I-5 on one of our many trips to Oregon:

Happy Monday, have a great week!

-Kelly

Last spring, I called our heating oil company to inquire about the date of the next refill, explaining that we were considering getting rid of our oil furnace and didn’t want any more oil until we decided.  The nice woman on the phone had said the next refill wasn’t scheduled until September.  Imagine my surprise to come home from work one day in the middle of the summer to find one of those oil company bills on the front door informing us that they had filled the tank that day and that we should send them several hundred dollars.  I called them again.  I was politely informed that despite my previous conversation with a representative of the company, not only is the scheduled refill date subject to change whenever the company feels like it, but our contract clearly states that the automatic refill program can only be canceled by sending in a written request, and therefore we were responsible to pay for the recently delivered oil. 

So what could we do with 300 gallons of oil that we didn’t particularly want or have plans to use?  Well the oil company would buy it back for 60% of its original value and charge a $400 pumping fee, leaving us with maybe $200 out of around $1,000 we paid for the stuff.  No thanks.  I looked around to see if anyone else would take it.  No luck.  I found a couple of people who would take it for free.  I researched donating the oil, but the couple of leads I found who could pump it turned into dead ends and I gave up. 

We hadn’t actually moved forward with our plan switch to natural gas yet, so we decided the best thing to do would be to just keep using oil to heat the house for the 2010-2011 winter.  I had two concerns:

1. Would 300 gallons of oil last the whole winter?  If yes, we could wait until summer 2011 to have the new gas fireplace installed.  If no, we would have to decide whether to move up the timeline on the fireplace or use some temporary heating device.

2. Would the 60 year old furnace make it through the winter?  Now that we had canceled our automatic refill plan with the oil company, we also lost the modest furnace insurance/maintenance program that came with it.  Since we were about to toss the whole thing anyway, if it did crap out midway through the winter, we would have to figure out what to do in a hurry.  That made me nervous because I don’t like to feel rushed when making financial decisions.

On question 1, I think we can make it.  After several weeks of nagging, I finally got Matt to check the oil level in the tank by dipping a random piece of wood into it.  I guess I could have done it, but the yard is his responsibility, it was raining, etc. (i.e., I didn’t want to).  But I did my part by repeatedly asking him to do it, looking out the window and taking this terrible picture:

On question 2, we are almost there.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the previous owner’s diligent yearly inspections and maintenance will pay off and get us through March and April.  I think if we can get to May we’ll be fine.  If needed, we could rely on these two portable heating units we just got:

Did you really think I could resist inserting a dog picture?  Get used to it.

You may have already guessed a third concern I should mention - our oil tank is buried in our front yard.  We have no reason to think it’s leaking, but if by chance it is, my understanding of the law is that basically the whole front yard would have to be dug up.  There is a state insurance program where they cover the costs associated with that (which can be quite hefty), and we signed up immediately upon purchasing our house.  A neighbor down the street had her entire front lawn dug up a few months ago due to a leaking tank.  That is really an understatement because the hole was at least 12 feet deep and went from the sidewalk to underneath the foundation and from the driveway to the edge of the property, and the house (including the foundation) was on stilts.  It was a sight to behold.  There’s really nothing else we can do about that issue right now, so we’ll just keep hoping that when it comes time to decommission the tank, its non-leaking status will be confirmed.

-Kelly

I started using a martingale collar with our first dog and I’ve been a fan ever since.  These collars offer the best of all worlds, at least in my (limited) experience.  They are easy to slip over a dog’s head, but cannot be slipped off by the dog when on leash.  The collar hangs loose around the dog’s neck when there is no tension on the leash, and then when the dog (or handler) pulls on the leash, the collar tightens but only a limited amount.  I always adjust the size carefully so that when the collar tightens it is snug but won’t hurt the dog’s neck.  This helps the dog feel when there is tension on the leash and when there is not.  And unlike many flat nylon collars, there is no plastic buckle that could break. 

We are using Wonder Walker body halters for walks, as mentioned in the last post.  The harnesses do close with the plastic buckles, which run a small yet potentially devastating risk of breaking.  Wonder Walker recommends clipping the leash to a martingale collar in addition to the front ring of the harness, providing some security just in case the harness somehow comes off.  The collars also have the dogs’ tags on them, which are good to have when out and about. 

I bought a Spindrift (made in Bend, Oregon - what can I say, I’m a sucker for local goods and our nearest pet supply store Mud Bay carries them) “cozy martingale collar” for Sonny.  Spindrift describes this collar as “a great training collar for ‘spirited’ short haired dogs” - ha ha!  I had a larger version of the same collar that I had gotten for Wilbur, who put pretty low mileage on it.  I was way too big for Max, but I hate to buy something new when I can modify something I already have at home.  Here is the ‘before’ (the brown one tightened all the way is still huge compared to the orange one which is let out most of the way):

It was easy to resize this collar - the only thing making it too big was the fleece padding.  I used my seam ripper to take out some stitches, cut the fleece to the right length, and sewed the end to the nylon.  It took about 15 minutes.

After:

Looking good, boys!

-Kelly