coyoterun

This is an article written by one of our buddies, Trisha, she knew I was a dog lover so she sent it to me.  I think everyone should read it.  What a great bunch of caring people we have on this site.                Great job Trisha,  hope you don’t mind I shared. 

A few months ago my friend Yvonne and I noticed a very skinny mixed sharpei dog running the street near a small grocery store on a very busy street.  We pulled over to give her some dog food, which we always carry to feed many of the dogs that are abandoned in this community and left to fend for themselves. As we pulled over she watched us with distrust in her eyes.  When we pulled out the bag, her desperation and the smell of the food bought her over to us, but at arms length, we poured the food out and she began to devour it still keeping an eye on us.  We made some calls to try and get some information found out her previous owner had moved out six months before and left her to fend for herself, typical story for this place.  Over the next few weeks we continued to feed her, sometimes she would not show up leaving us to wonder if something happened to her but later we would see her again.  She started to get closer to us and would allow us to touch her head, but no closer. 
A few days before Christmas, we stopped to feed her, when the store owner came out to inform us that she had pups somewhere.  We drove to her abandoned home, when a neighbor came out to show us where the pups were.  There in the middle of very high sticker weeds were five very fat pups.  We crawled around in the weeds, getting many a sticker but were able to get all five. She followed us all the way to the truck.  The neighbor also showed us five puppies, which were obviously not hers, the neighbor said they just showed up one day and she had started feeding them.  After loading all pups into the car, we tried to entice her in but she would not follow.  The next say was a hectic day for us after getting the puppies comfortable, they were able to eat on their own, doing my own kennels and running errands all I wanted was to get home, but an inner voice (I call St. Francis) kept pushing me to go check her.  As I drove up she greeted me with such joy.  I was finally able to get her in the truck and home. 
You see Chata, was just waiting for her puppies to be safe before she left them.Chata’s love for her own babies and orphans brought tears to my eyes. In a world where she had been abandoned, chased off and ate out of garbage can, she gave all she had to her family and her orphans. 
“MERRY CHRISTMAS” 
PLEASE SPAY OR NEUTER YOUR PETS

I wish each and everyone of you the best new year you can imagine. 

I am so thankful I found this site and all you guys. 

  You give inspiration and motivation when I need it most. 

Sending lots of love and good wishes your way.

Have a  safe and Happy New Year.

WELCOME   2009

This is my daughter, Rachel, and me at the Quarter Horse museum in Amarillo, TX.  That was the first stop on our trip.   I enjoyed spending time with her.  We used to do so much together, but life has kind of interfered.  She has a 12 year old son that is into to a lot of activities and she has a live in “partner” that like to do the horse thing with her.   Not being able to barrel race anymore has cut out a big part of the time we shared.  But, she is happy and settled into a great job she loves and if Josh doesn’t drive her crazy, thing will be ok. 

We are  sort of lost, Josh has always been such a good kid, happy and nice, well mannered,ect–his Mom stays on him and it showed.  but in the last 3-4 months, he has really started to change.  Really bad attitude, mouthy and can’t remember  if his his head is on his shoulders.   I don’t know if it is just that he’s getting older, if it’s being in the 6th grade,or what.   His parents are divorced and his Dad lives close enough that Josh gets to see him often.  The Dad isn’t a very good influence, doesn’t make Josh follow the rules and has a tendency to put Rachel down.  Nothing nasty, but sly remarks that Josh is now old enough to get.  Anyway, Rachel is about ready to pull Josh’s head off and even his doting grandparents are worried.  We only had one child and boys are sort of a mystery to me.  So if any of you all have boys, tell me is this typical behavior for a 12 year old 6th grader .                                                                                                  The weather has been really weird here, it was 80 yesterday and 70 this morning at 5:30 when I got up.  We’ve been under a tornado watch all morning.  The rain finally came and it has already blown through and now it’s in the low 40s.  I’m glad we got the rain and no bad storm, but I wish it would get somewhere and stay.  This hot and cold is the pits.   I have to tell you that the hot is better than the cold as far as I’m  concerned, I don’t do cold very well.                                                                                              I have to confess I have not been very good about exercising, just can’t seem to get motivated, but I have been watching what I eat.  Tony is gone, last deer hunt of the year, so I’m really having to be careful to eat meals and not just snack all day.   I’m going to get back at the walking and get that 1 lb off, then I’ll have 10 down!  Hope you all have a good weekend.  Stay warm.

First off I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  I hope all your Christmas wishes come true.

I’ve been doing some thinking, at times that is something I try hard not to do too much of.  This time I’ve done some good thinking, maybe.  This time of year is especially hard for me, I miss my Dad,  who has been gone for 34 years now.  I miss my grandparents, and I really miss my Mom, she is suffering from mild Alzheimer’s, and is just not the Mom I remember.   But, instead of letting this get me down, I’ve decided to count my blessing and remember all the good things that I have in my life.

I am fortunate to have a good husband of 41 years, my daughter has finally got her life on track and is doing well, our grandson, Josh is a really good kid, and a joy to be around.  We have our health and by a huge stroke of luck, we decided to move our 401K money into CD’s just about 4 months before all this mess with the stock market  hit, so we are still financially secure.  At our age it is VERY comforting to know that neither one of us will have to go back into the work force to make ends meet.  So I can sleep well at night and  we have enough to enjoy our retirement.  Seeing so many people in such dire straights, suffering sometimes through no fault of their own, makes me thankful for our  situation.  We may not have much, but what we have is ours!

I’m thankful for the new friends I have found here.  You all have been such an inspiration and help to me with my struggles with my weight.  I find myself not wanting to let you all down by backsliding into my old ways.  Your support and encouragement has meant so much to me.  I read your blogs and say to my self, see your not the only one that feels this way and you need to get up and go exercise!   I have realized that this is not a sprint, it’s more like a journey,  and it is so nice to have people that understand how many little steps you have to take to get where you need to be.    So thanks everyone.

My Christmas wish for you all it that you find peace, solutions to your problems, and contentment.  Keep up the hard work and we’ll get to the end of the journey together.   Have a very Merry Christmas and  a great New Year .    Love to you all, Rebecca

   Guys I have to tell you we had a blast in Vegas!  As a matter of fact the  whole trip was great.  It had been a long time since my daughter, Rachel, and I had gone off  just the two of us.  We left Wednesday after she got off work and drove to Amarillo and stayed the night, then we went to the Quarter Horse Museum.  We had planned to get to Flagstaff by evening and drive in to Vegas Friday morning.  We saw a billboard for Mesalands Dinosaur Museum and decided to make a stop there. I had never seen bones that big before, we both wished for Josh, my grandson, he would have gone nuts over some of that stuff.  After the dinos we took a quick drive by the Petrified Forest, unfortunately, they were closed for the day and we didn’t get to take a look there. We made it to Flagstaff with no problems and spent the night there, got up early and started on to Vegas.  Of course we had to stop and take a look at Boulder Dam, another place we were wishing for Josh!  Then it was on to Vegas.  We liked to have never found the right way into the hotel, thank goodness Rachel has a great sense of direction.  The construction there has the streets a little messed up.  That was the only time we had bad traffic!  We were staying at the New York New York and it is a little hard to miss.  After finding the entrance  and leaving the car in good hands, we got checked in a were off to our rooms.  We grabbed a bite to eat at Gonzales y Gonzales and then went off to check out the sights.  The strip was amazing and we spent the rest of the night walking in the hotels/casinos just looking at everything.  We went by the Bellagio and watched the fountain show twice, once was a Christmas song and the other was a classical one.  That was beautiful, the lights and the water dancing was great.  We went through Caesars Place and found all kinds of stuff that we couldn’t afford, but it was fun looking.  I found the most beautiful full length fur coat, it was $10,500 on sale for $ 5,000.  Never say I don’t have good taste!  Rachel found a tobacco, full quill ostrich jacket that was only $8500.00.  I won’t even tell you about the Australian opals that we looked at.  I could have had a pair of earrings for “just $700.00″. Needless to say we didn’t bring any of that lovely stuff back to Oklahoma with us.  Too Bad.  After the exhausting evening of looking–we went back to the hotel and hit the casino, high rollers that we are, we each had a 10 spot to stuff down the slots.  Oh yeah, Rachel had a friend that sent an extra 20 along so Rachel could play for her.  We won a little, but wound up like everyone else and left a little of our money in Vegas!   Then it was off to the room, it was only after we had gotten into our sweats and settled down that we realized that we were thirsty and a soft drink sounded good.  Now I’m going to let you all know how country I really am, I have never stayed at a hotel that didn’t have a drink vending machine some where on your floor.  They don’t in Vegas, so we thought we’d get room service since we didn’t want to dress again and go down to the casino floor.  Well let me tell you, Dr. Peppers are 3 bucks, so is a bottle of water, if that wasn’t bad enough, they wanted $4.50 to bring it up.  We drank the tap water!   We watched the 9th round of the NFR on the TV, and went to bed.  We were still on Oklahoma time so we were up early enough to watch the sun rise over the mountains, and get an early start on the day.  We ate breakfast at the American Cafe there in the NYNY and then we hit the Cowboy Christmas at the   convention center and spent most of the morning drooling over the  western clothes, art, furnishing, tack and anything else you might imagine.  We had an adventure with the taxi driver on the way to the center, he tried to over charge us, which didn’t go over well with Rachel, especially when he ask for a tip!  She told him that his tip was on the meter at the beginning of the ride and that was all he was getting from us.  That’s my girl, you gotta love her.  She made a point to tell the next driver all about it as soon as we got in the cab.  He tried to get rid of us ASAP–it was probably the fastest cab ride made that afternoon!   After we got back from the convention center we went to Mandalay Bay, where there was more Cowboy shopping.  We ran into some friends from home, and Rachel bought a saddle.  She has been looking for a year for one that she liked.  Will you believe that the people she  bought it from were just about an hour from her house down in Texas, in a town that she goes to pretty often.  Had to go all the way to Vegas to find something that was just down the road.  I will tell you that we got quite a few strange looks as she was carrying that saddle through the casino.  The security guard even stopped and questioned us, quite politely.  Everyone wanted to know where her horse was and was she part of the rodeo.  We made it back to NYNY and fell down for a while, then we had to get ready for the rodeo. We decided to eat before we caught the shuttle over to Thomas and Mack.  So we went to the MGM Grand and ate an early dinner at the Rain forest Cafe.  It was neat.  They have a lion exhibit right near the cafe, with real lioness I might add.   We caught the shuttle and got to T&M right on time.  We got to see the laser/fireworks and some C&W dude sing and they had a neat thing about the NFR history and bam off the rodeo went.  Every event but barrel racing had the championship still on the line, so it was fun watching to see who would finally win.  We knew some of the contestants from when Rachel used to youth rodeo, it was so neat to see kids that you knew when they were starting out doing their thing at the NFR.  We ran into a lot of folks from Oklahoma, so it was a good thing that we didn’t do anything that we wanted to stay in Vegas, I think it would have followed us home!  The sights were amazing and the rodeo was great, everyone was really nice, friendly and helpful.  The only bad thing of the whole trip was that we had to worry about our rodeo tickets.  Seems like I ordered them from a “scalper” site and even though they guaranteed delivery within 48 hours of your event, they didn’t get the tickets to us until 2:30 the day of the rodeo.  So if you ever what to go to the NFR, be sure you get your tickets from pro rodeo.com or UNLV.  We found out that those two are are the only “legit” places to get tickets.  You pay a lot less too.   But, it’s like I told Rachel, I was happy to get the tickets and we got to see the rodeo and it was worth every penny I over paid.  

There were lots of cowboy hats and boots on the streets and most of the cowboys were cute.  Being as I am an old married woman and Rachel is in a “committed” relationship, we just admired those cute Wrangler butts!  Let me tell you if you are single and interested you could get into a lot of trouble out there. 

We got up early Sunday morning,(still on Oklahoma time) and checked out, filled up and got under way home.  We were on the east side of Boulder Dam before we started seeing snow.  Not much, mostly just on the roadside.  The roads were bad in a couple of places and we were glad that we decided to take the SUV it has 4 WD.  We saw several bad wrecks, semi’s mostly, but we were there well after the fact.  Poor Rachel did most of the driving, and we were both ragged out by the time we hit Texas.   We did find the Cowboy game on the radio and listen in, that game helped keep us awake.  We drove straight through, stopping for gas when we had to.  We made it to Rachel’s at about 3AM Monday and I made it home about 35 minutes later.  Tony was waiting up for me.  I think he missed me, he even washed the dishes! 

It was a great trip and I’d love to go again, just to see the hotels that we didn’t have time to get to.

Hope I haven’t bored you all to death with this long rambling  thing.    Family is coming for Christmas this Saturday, so I’m cleaning and cooking tomorrow.  Hope you all are well and everything is going good.  Merry Christmas. 

Hi everyone, wanted to let you all know that I’m home and survived Vegas.  We had such a good time.  We made it thorough the passes before the bad weather and made it to Oklahoma just in time to get iced in.  I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on around here, but I’ll sit down and tell you about my adventure later.  Good news is I must have walked at least 15 miles over the two days we were in town and didn’t gain but 2 pounds from all the sitting and driving.  Good to be back home, talk to you all later. 

Well maybe not these boots! But I’ve got some that are. Had to share with you all, I noticed today as I was out walking, I’m not huffing and puffing, my legs don’t ache. I think I could actually carry on a conversation, if I had someone to talk to. This is a great improvement for me. I may not be dropping pounds right now, but I am getting fitter.  I really needed to see some improvement, it gets so hard to carry on when the pounds aren’t coming off like you’d like and you don’t see anything getting better.  My husband and daughter say they can tell I’ve lost some weight, but I can’t really see it yet.  I know from past experience that it will be several months before all the weight comes off.  Last time I lost 50 pounds it took 9 months.   I  swear that  when I get it off this time, I will not go back to my old bad ways and have to do it over.  I know you all that live up north will laugh, but today we had a “northerner” blow in just about the time I usually get out for my walk.  I finished up a little faster today, but I got in my miles.  I’d still rather get outside and walk that do it on the treadmill.  Danny, my rat terrier, was my walking buddy for today, even he thought we should hurry along.  I hesitate to tell you that it wasn’t in the low 40’s yet when we got home!  Can I help if I a wimp when it comes to winter.  My husband has always wanted to live in Montana or Wyoming, I tell him I am not living where it  snows more feet that I am tall.  As a girl that grew up in East Texas, where snow is a reason to let out school, I just never learned to deal with it.  Southern Oklahoma is just about as far north as I am going.  Anyway I wanted to let you all know that I am getting better, not letting those reasons to not do it get the better of me.  It’s getting easier, and one day I hope it will be a matter a habit, something I don’t even  have to think about to get it done.  Till then, I’ll keep on working and you all keep pushing me to do better.  Thanks.

Do you think they will let me have a computer in jail?  I’d hate not to be able to keep up with all my friends here on BS.  I think I may murder my husband!  This morning ,over coffee, I’m telling him how excited Rachel and I are about our Vegas trip, the one that has been planned since January.  He looks at me and says, what are you talking about, what trip to Vegas?  Then he swore that he knew nothing about it, when I told him he had been present and commented on us driving out instead of flying, he said oh yeah, I remember something about that.  But I didn’t know you were going.   I’m going to kill him.   This is the man that for 10years has drove to South TX 4 times a year to hunt (8 hours both ways) has been to Utah,  New Mexico and British Columbia on hunting trips.   Did I ever say anything but honey have a good time and be careful? No was I the one that stayed home and took care of the    ranch and the animals? Yes.   Let me tell you about my husband of 41 years, first off so you know, he’s a Mechanical Engineer, almost a genius with that kind of stuff, he can design and build anything.  His  interpersonal skills leave something to be desired, but he is a good guy that has always worked hard  and still does.  But sometimes he drives me nuts.  My first impulse was to go get something to eat, (after I jumped up and down on him with my work boots), then I took a deep breath and said  as sweetly as I could manage, well I’m sorry that you have forgotten about the conversation, but Rachel and I ARE leaving Wednesday the 10.  Then I came in here and I’m venting to you all so I won’t go to the kitchen and eat everything in sight.  Ahhhhhhh!!! How have I managed to stay married to this man forever!  

Ok, now that I have that out of my system, thanks for letting me get it out, I will tell you that this week end was pretty good, got in a lot of walking,it was really pretty here until Sunday.  I got rid of all the left over deserts that my Mother-in-law sent home–just threw them out.  I’m like Debbi, it’s a sin to throw food away!  So that was an achievement for me.   I’m really going to try to ramp up my exercise this week–I know I won’t be getting as much next week with the travelling and all.  I know you can’t save it up, but maybe it will do me some good.  I’m planning on what to carry in the car for the trip, already thought about not buying soda on the road, going to carry my favorite flavored water instead.  Now if I can come up with a few low cal. snacks I’ll be good.