Airplanes, Bunnies, Dogs Eating Hay is No Longer Funny, and Snuffles

The past week has been full of events.  Mel gave me a flying lesson for my birthday and last Monday we were finally able to collect.  The weather here in SD has been quite funny this year.  We kept re-scheduling trying to get a day with clear skies so we could fly over the coast.  Check the little slideshow to the right for some pics.

I kept trying to use the yoke as a steering wheel on the ground but it isn't meant to work like that.   You have to use the brakes and rudders to maneuver which are controlled by your feet.   Quite a difficult task for someone as uncoordinated as myself.  We took off from Montgomery Field by where I live and flew up to the coast over La Jolla.  Then down the coast to Pt Loma and up through the bay and over the Coronado Bridge.  We went to Brown Field and did 2 touch and go's.  Check out the video of me landing!  Then we headed home over the city and the SD airport.  Pretty neat to be above the commercial airplanes.



I talked Mel into getting rabbits!!  She said if I found someone to watch over them while we were in Italy then we could get them.  My co-worker Liz is such an enabler.  Last Monday, yes before we went flying, we became the proud owners of 2 Angora rabbits.  One is a white English and the other is a black Giant/German Hybrid.  The English will maybe get to be 5 lbs and the Giant/German's g-ma was 13 lbs!!  That's the size of Scout our Yorkie.  We named the white one Lele which is Hawaiian for hop and the other is named Kueka - Hawaiian for sweater.  I really wanted to name them sweater and socks but socks in Hawaiian is a mouthful.

Lele

Kueka

So the rabbits are actually inside.  It seems Angoras don't like the heat.  There goes my greenhouse heating up idea.  No biggie.  In an apartment its kind of inconvenient but once it cools off they'll be back outside.  A funny thing to watch is that our dogs, Bleu our blue tick hound in particular, is worrying herself to death over these rabbits.  Every slight move they make she has to be right at the cage to see and the shrill whining is ridiculous (she has stopped that by now).  But she picks up some of their kicked out hay and she takes it to her little bed and chews on it.  Kind of cute right?  It was even funnier on Thursday when she was passing the hay.  She was quite regular and it made us laugh.  It ceased to be funny Friday when she had the runs all over the house.  This lasted 2 days.  2 days I tell you.  Needless to say, dogs eating hay is no longer cute or funny.

Snuffles - A respiratory disease that can prove to be fatal if left untreated in rabbits.  It is characterized by yellowish, white discharge from the nose, constant sneezing, and a hacking cough.   Very contagious to rabbits.

Lele came down with the Snuffles so we took her back to the breeder on Saturday.  She offered us another one but we've started to bond with Lele.  The breeder is going to keep her for the next month and treat her and then we get her back.  That works with the Italy trip.

That was last week.  This week looks to be shaping up pretty well.  I'm trying to post more - daily in fact.  I also want to take this blog up a notch and give it some depth other than just rants and journal like entries.  I want it to be useful and inspiring.  Its all a journey!  Coop