Having well-groomed feet is important to dogs. Little Beethoven here was grooming his hind paw on the top of the love seat today when, as a final touch, he inserted the entire paw in his mouth. Both of our little dogs make me laugh every day. Click on the image to enlarge.

We have seen cell phone transmission that have been disguised as conifers, palm trees and who knows what else, but this is the first time we have seen a church steeple (or whatever) with cell elements strewn on it. Seen on I-57 near Fullerton, CA. Click on the image to enlarge.

Cabela and Beethoven often climb onto the back of the loveseat to keep watch over the local activity through the window in the great room. This is a photo of them sitting up there that I took yesterday. Click on the image to enlarge.

The Mama and the Daddy took me, Bear and Cabela to the dog park today. I have been there before, but today I sniffed and ran all over the park. It was fun. This is me running over to the Daddy who was calling for me to come to him. I love my new home and hoomins. Click on our picture to make us big.

We made our monthly trip to the Phoenix metro area today to shop in Surprise, Peoria and Glendale, AZ. We had to get some supplies for the yard and garden at Lowe’s and to shop for some hard-to-find-in-Wickenburg food and kitchen items at Smart and Final. I snapped this photo of some newly-trimmed palm trees with puffy clouds as we drove through Peoria on our way home. Click on the image to enlarge.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas at home; we enjoyed preparing and eating our Christmas dinner and a pretty good NFL football game in the evening.

One of my (Christmas Eve) birthday presents is pictured in the left half of the image; it’s a nautilus necklace and earring set made from southwestern fossil materials, a little corral and Globe (Arizona) turquoise. I also received some colorful “candy” bracelets made up of Blue Turquoise, Mojave Green Turquoise, Purple Turquoise, Apple Coral and Spiny Oyster with Sterling Silver fittings, handcrafted by southwestern Native Americans.

For Christmas I got an Arizona Cardinals hooded fleece (image right) with the Cardinal emblem on the back and on the left breast. I also got a new cookbook, “Cook Like a Rock Star” by Anne Burrell of Food Channel fame. It has over a hundred fancy recipes that I’m anxious to try.

You may recall that our two Min-Pins got into some rat poison on November 16th during our visit to the California House. We immediately took them to the California vet for treatment. The vet gave us a regimen to follow and sent treatment history and recommendations for our Arizona vet. Since then, we have been following the dosage of vitamin K-1 until last week when the medication stopped.

Today, we took them to the Arizona vet for their last visit and blood tests (we hope). After the exams, the vet told us that everything looked good and she would call us with the results from this last coagulation test. I’m sure that the little dogs will be much happier with fewer visits to the vet.

UPDATE: The coagulation panel blood test results for both dogs were OK. (WHEW!)