Yes friends, we are going to take another blogging break. I just started taking a new medication for my Schizoaffective Disorder that is sapping my energy at the moment, and I have a stomach ulcer and gastritis right now as well. So...I'm going to take a "recoup" break.

Riley is doing well and is looking skinnier to me already--yay! I'll leave you with her cute face until we start blogging again!!

I don't think I posted it on here yet, just on Facebook...but...Riley caught herself a bird a couple of weeks ago.  Yuck.  Forgive me if I've already told this story, but my memory isn't the greatest, so I'll just (not)enjoy telling it again.

I will say one good thing about my bird catcher here--she does listen to me.  I guess all those basic and advanced training classes were really worth it and have paid off!  I was outside with Riley in the backyard poop scooping and I had seen Riley running along the fence earlier chasing after birds (of course, I never thought she would actually catch herself one [actually, I should say "another one"]).  Anyway, I had my back to Riley and heard her run behind me, so I turned around and lo and behold, she had a bird in her mouth.  Disgusting.  I half yelled/half growled at her to "drop it" and then to "leave it" and she obeyed, so I was quite pleased.

I went over to where the bird was on the ground and saw that it was still breathing.  I was going to pick it up with our handy poop scooper and put it over on the "safe" side of the fence, but when I got near it with the poop scooper, it turned its head and looked up at me--thus, creeping me out!  I brought Riley inside and luckily my dad was just 5 minutes down the road, so I waited for him to come and deal with the bird.

When we went back out in the yard to get the bird, it was gone.  So I think it was just stunned and had flown off and we didn't have to take care of it--hooray!  (Birds creep me out--always have, don't know why).

This was on a Wednesday, so on the Friday right after that when I went out to poop scoop again I realized that the little birdie hadn't flown away like I thought...  I realized that before I even saw the bird because I could smell it--yuck!  It had I guess moved itself further down into the yard, right next to the fence and kind of blended in with the gray wood on the fence, so we hadn't seen it on our big bird search on Wednesday, and died.  RIP little birdie.  :(

The good thing though is that both dogs left it alone from the time I had told Riley to "leave it" to the time we found it Friday evening.  I can imagine Riley desperately wanted to bring it inside as a present or trophy for us, but thankfully, she demonstrated remarkable self control!

But......here's a picture I took of Riley this evening...apparently she's still on the lookout for another bird:

I took Riley by the vet today to weigh her as I was starting to think she was looking a little porky...  I was right!  She's hasn't just gotten a little porky--she's gained 6 pounds since we were there about 3 months ago!!  6!!!  Sheesh.  She's up to a whopping 58 pounds now, although she doesn't look all that fat, just a little rotund.

So now we're doing a big diet and exercise regimen with her!  We went to a local park this morning and walked around the lake there and Riley got to get a little wet.  Then, since it was hot, we came home and filled up the kiddie pool for the dogs in the backyard.  They had a blast with both things.  Chloe doesn't like to share the kiddie pool with Riley, so we had to hold Chloe outside of the pool every so often so Riley could get in and cool off some.

As promised last week, here are some pics from our road trip to Charlottesville (with a stop in Richmond) on the 25th and 26th of July.  Riley stayed home with Grandma and got tons of treats, I'm sure!