Cute story, and very typical. My daughter worked for a vet for years. Believe me, they've heard everything. My worst/best dog stories involved Snickers. A wooly Jack Russell mix I rescued from the dog pound. He was decently behaved food wise, but was into Christmas big time. Literally. Nobody imagined he'd want to open presents under the tree and one of them involved a cannister of bright blue chalk-line powder my daughter had bought for her step dad. Did I mention brand new gold carpeting? I had gotten the man a rather expensive watch, because it had just gone on super sale and he needed one. That present made it to his wrist, but he laid it on an end table Christmas night and the next morning it was gone. The kids and I found the remnants of the watch strewn on the floor of the bedroom behind the door. Nothing was left of it but the stem and part of the case. My son says "We have a REAL watchdog. He even has ticks. Bringing that dog home wasn't the most popular thing I ever did where my ex was concerned, and I am normally an honest and open person. But, I felt very sorry for the dog, so spent the entire next day calling around to stores looking for an exact duplicate. Well, I found out why it was on sale. It was a discontinued model. The fates smiled on me that day and I was able to locate one more and I beat it to the store on my way home from work and shelled out another hunk of my hard earned cash. I carefully placed the new watch under the same end table he remembered putting it on and then the ex "found" it that night. I chided him about being more careful with his belongings and nobody ever ratted on the dog or me. I looked in the mirror that night fully expecting my nose to have grown an inch or two.

Picturetrail has a feature that I wish Photobucket had -- it allows you to click on a thumbnail to see a larger picture. I could do that with my 35mm scanned-in photos, but I can't even load my digital images into Picturetrail.

Here they are with Annie's comments: I recently made a couple of batches of honey wheat bread that I really liked. My "white bread" family chose the honey wheat dinner rolls over the white ones at Christmas and it's wonderful warm with some honey or jam. HONEY WHOLE WHEAT BREAD 3-1/2 to 4 cups all purpose flour 2-1/2 cups whole wheat flour 2 pkg. active dry yeast 2 tsp. salt 1 cup milk 1 cup water 1/2 cup honey 3 Tbsp. oil 1 egg In large bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, the yeast, and salt and mix well. In saucepan, heat milk, water, honey, and oil until a thermometer reads 120-130 degrees F (warm) Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine. Beat this batter for 3 minutes. Then, gradually stir in rest of whole wheat flour and enough remaining all-purpose four to form a firm dough. Sprinkle work surface with flour and knead dough, adding more flour if necessary, for 5-8 minutes until smooth and satiny. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough in the bowl to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour, until double in bulk. Punch down dough and divide into 2 pieces. On lightly floured surface, roll or press each piece of dough to a 14x7" rectangle. Starting with shorter side, roll up tightly, pressing dough into roll with each turn. Pinch edges and ends to seal and place dough, seam-side down, into greased 9x5" bread pans, making sure short ends of bread are snugly fitted against the sides of the pans. Cover and let rise in warm place until the dough fills the corners of the pans and is double in bulk, 30-40 minutes. Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until bread is golden brown. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks. I like to brush the bread with butter when it's still hot from the oven for a softer crust. Well, now I'm going to have to bake some more bread, maybe that Onion Braid....or some Maple Oatmeal....or Honey Wheat. Annie Sybil, here is that bread recipe, our family holidays wouldn't be the same without these rich and slighly sweet rolls. Grandma made cinnamon rolls out of the same dough. I do use bread flour, or add vital wheat gluten to the regular flour for a better rise. I usually double the recipe, sometimes triple it. I also make a single batch in my breadmaker on the "dough" cycle, then just form it into rolls and bake them. BREAD (GRANDMAS RECIPE) 1/3 cup sugar 1 cup milk 1/3 cup butter 2 eggs 1 pkg yeast 1 tsp salt 4  4 ½ cups flour vital wheat gluten (optional) Mix milk, butter and sugar, heat until butter melts and liquid is very warm. Add eggs, then beat in flour, salt and yeast until stiff dough forms. Turn onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, 7  8 minutes. Turn dough into greased bowl and let rise in warm place until double. Punch down dough, shape into loaves or dinner rolls and let rise again. Bake at 350 until done (25 - 30 minutes for loaves, 12-15 minutes for dinner rolls) Makes 1 large or two small loaves or 18 dinner rolls Annie (posted by Carol)

i lost my senior great dane girl 5 weeks ago to bone cancer. it was sudden and shocking and i still look for her. my remaining dane girl and eden were joined at the hip, pip took the loss very hard and had been grieving so much, it broke my heart. i contacted pip's breeder and one of her former co-owners and asked that they keep an eye out for any adults that any breeder friends might be considering a new home for (retired show dogs, etc.). the co-owner gave me the contact information for one of her people who had a dane boy she had been looking for just the right home for and the rest is history. meet "flighty foto my way", call name "frank". frank will be 4 years old on 5/31. he is a very sweet boy and he and pippin hit it off immediately at our meet 'n' greet friday. they do zoomies numerous times a day, sleep curled up together and are just a perfect pair. pippin is so much happier and that makes me happier. even though i miss eden terribly, i am beginning to heal now that pip is feeling better. frank is a bit on the thin side because he lived the last 4 weeks with a female dane who was going through a heat cycle and when that's going on, intact males ignore food, do a lot of pacing and fretting and routinely lose weight. he's eating like a horse so i'm confident he will gain and be back to his normal weight soon. i'm giving him a few weeks to settle in and then i'll make an appointment to have him neutered.