Schultzy

Schultzy is my thirteen year old German Shepherd Dog (GSD)- I'm leaving the dog because on a lot of official sites discussing German Shepherds they add dog at the end and I think it's funny and wonder why the need to clarify . . .  in case we get confused with other German Shepherd species? I have never seen a Poodle called a Poodle Dog it always just seems to be assumed.

Anyway . . .  Last vet visit she was around 80 lbs. Which means thirteen short years ago I brought home a 10 lb wrecking ball and she has mutated to 8x that size. And by wrecking ball . .. . I mean WRECKING BALL!

Here she is as a young dog probably close to two years old. I know she is very young because she hadn't grown into her tail yet. For some reason though I don't have any baby baby pictures of her.

Schultzy at Montauk enjoying the ocean

Shortly after bringing her home Schultzy ate a brand new linoleum floor. A trainer we had hired for some behavior classes told us the unsurprising news that she had a very powerful jaw. We had already learned that several times. The dog can chew, bite, and eat through anything she wants. Add that on top of the fact that she is high anxiety (including separation anxiety) and literally too smart for her own good.

For the most part her destructiveness, we realize, was our fault. She was left alone too long and got bored. When she got bored she got anxious; when she got anxious floors got eaten. It's a circle. Besides the floor her greatest act of destruction was my laundry room door. The previous owners had a cat door into the laundry room which is where I assume they kept the litter box... that is the only reason I can think of for having a cat door there. At first she would stick her nose out of the cat door (that is all that would fit) and we thought it was adorable.

Hey I can't fit!

But then she realized with a little work she could fix her door.

All better!

Car trip!

That being said we call her the Baby and constantly tell her she is the best "bad dog" ever!  She knows her commands and follows them when she chooses- thankfully it is most the time. And there are definitely times where we want to kill her. But then you look at her loving face and brown eyes and realize all she wants is our attention and to be with us doing something. Well, now that she is thirteen she just wants to be with us at our feet sleeping but up until eleven she wanted to do something! Constantly! I remember when she was nine at one of her last vet visits in NY the vet said if not for the fact they had been seeing her since she was a puppy they wouldn't believe her age. She acted more like two than nine.  I feel like we have finally entered the good dog phase. Sometimes she gets up slowly and her face has much more white in it than she once did but other than that I don't think anyone meeting her would guess her age.

Schultzy loves water in any form! Her favorite treat is ice! She gets excited whenever she hears the fridge ice maker and I am probably lucky she hasn't figured out how to dispense the ice herself.

A bowl of ice with frozen toys!

She also loves snow. 

Happy Baby!

Evil Baby!

And playing in water!

Baby in her pool.

In the ocean.

She has a favorite toy that she loves to chew on and brings everywhere with her. It is the first thing she grabs when it is time to go to bed. We call it her pacifier. A long time ago it was a smart toy that we would put treats into and as she chewed it the treats would fall out. It has been a long time since we actually used treats in it but she doesn't seem to mind. She loves it so much that we have bought them in bulk so that we have easy replacements for when one gets too chewed.

Baby and her pacifier

Look closely how she holds her pacifier with her paw. I love how she does this! She also sometimes balances the middle of the pacifier over her leg.

Holding tight.

And that's the Baby!

Then

Now

Progression of a Fire Pit

Almost as soon as I bought my house I began planning different projects and how I wanted to use my .5 acre of space. One thing I knew I wanted to get done was a fire pit. At first I thought just about buying one from a store .. . and then I thought about one of the kits to build a stone fire pit. Then my neighbor who had built his own without a kit told me how he had done his and what he wished he had done differently. So taking his information and his tips for future fire pits I decided this was an easy enough DIY project that I didn't need a kit. I could buy my own landscape pavers and make the fire pit the size I wanted.

At first I was thinking I might want to make it small enough that I could put a grate over it and use it as a barbecue however seeing as how we have a charcoal grill, gas grill and two smokers- cooking was an unnecessary concern. All I needed to be able to do was roast the occasional marshmallows.

Side note: thanks to spell check this is the first time I have ever realized they are marshmAllows and not marshmEllows. . . . .Have I been saying it wrong my whole life? I'll blame dialect.

Back to the blog.

The first thing I had to do was pick the location of the fire pit. I wanted it away from the house enough that smoke wouldn't blow over but not so far that I couldn't watch it and easily get to it if I was doing a leaf/ lawn debris burn while multitasking inside.

I picked my spot towards the back corner of my house and set down some bush and tree clippings that my Uncle Greg and I had gathered from both our yards. And we lit them up.

This left us with the perfect spot for a fire pit. And no TN grass that refuses to die in our way.

The burn mark even came out somewhat round. Using that space I planned the height and width of my fire pit.

Then I went to my local Lowe's and looked for the wall blocks I thought would complement my brick house the best and settled on the Alleghany flagstone block.

Allegheny Flagstone

I used some landscape caulking on each block to hold them in place and let the weight of the blocks help set them. My neighbor had suggested leaving space between the blocks to allow for air flow since he felt his fire was restricted because his blocks were right against each other. So keeping that in mind I built mine layer by layer. (I actually built it twice since I laid it out to see the spacing and then re-did it with the caulking).

Two action shots of the fire :-)







While I don't know how much of a difference the spacing between the blocks makes I do know it allows for some nice shots.

When I had my first burn in my yard I was real worried because it is not something you would ever do in NY. But as I am adjusting to life in TN I have realized it is something you do all the time in TN. I have become very used to seeing smoke in the distance or a fire in a field.

Now we have had some nice nighttime burns and just hanging out by the fire pit watching the flames lick around the blocks. But there was some more work around the fire pit that I wanted to do.  I put down landscape fabric around the fire pit to help keep grass and weeds from growing up around it. Then I went back to Lowe's and got the matching Alleghany pavers and Meghan and I made a border around the fire pit. Finally we went to Bella's nursery in Springfield and got a half scoop of pink granite chips loaded into the back of my ford explorer sport trac.  Then with the help of my Uncle we spread them around the fire pit to give a finished landscape look.

The chips are gorgeous. I discovered them at Bella's last year while landscaping around the front of my driveway.

 I had extra pavers which is fine because I am going to use them to border around the three trees I have in my yard and also add more of the granite chips around those inside the border.


So that is one project done out of many more to come!