WOW....

it is hot out there...it literally feels like an oven. the tarps are up, i don't know how much good they have done as it is still killer hot in the dog rooms. greg said he would install the air conditioner on friday so soon hopefully they will be cooler.

i did buy a portable air conditioner today, ( thank you income tax refund!) we set it up in the little dog/cat room cuz they can't get outside to the shade under the trees. and deb and chris, if your offer is still open on the little one you have for us, i would like to install that one in the rabbit room before the bunnies expire from heat stroke. if you tell me where it is, i can pick it up sometime tomorrow on my way home from work.

ellie has been sleeping in her pool most of today. the barn is a bit cooler and tunie has been ok on all her checks.

ben is a problem. while it appeared he was innocently involved in the jazz biting lynne incident...i am thinking he wasn't so innocent. at six this morning when i let the dogs out, i watched ben. bend down to sniff sweet pea as she wandered past and then saw a miniscule lip lift...he was thinking something bad...i just told him, "do it and you won't live to see breakfast".....he decided to go pee instead. at 7:45, both he and michael were saying hello to greg and pouff ben jumped michael. he didn't hurt him, i was right there and pissed but michael was just upset. at lunchtime ben jumped jazz, and the fight was on. i barely got them apart, and i barely stopped jazz from killing every other dog who came over to see if she was ok (she thought they were all ben)....this tells me something, like i bet ben jumped jazz once before, like before lynne got bit, and jazz knows now for sure that she hates ben and is going to get him.

ben is a toad. he will jump the weak ones, tally, michael, sweetpea and seemingly disabled jazz ( he is too stupid to know that just cuz she is blind does not mean that if she does luck out and find him, he will walk away with all of his body parts)...he does not bother tyra, or lexie or maude or phoebe or wesley or cole or even copper or dex (who is no push over either)...just the ones he thinks he can get away with it. ben has always been a bully and he has always gone for the weak.

so what to do with ben? he is currently walled off in the yard under a couple of big umbrellas for shade. i think i will have little choice in this. i won't kill him, he is a mean, cowardly bully but he is a doorknob rotti/beagle cross with both breeds worst traits. he is a sweet, gentle heart with people, esp kids. but what to do with a bullying doorknob who likes to jump smaller and weaker animals?? i think i will do what i said i would never do here...permanently segregate him. we will build him his own area for when i am not here. and when i am here, he can wear his cage muzzle and join us as we go about the day. ben is too old to change now, and until he deteriorates to old and crippled, (like michael, the troll), he is too much of a troublemaker to be with the others and i am not making everyone else suffer so he can have a whole dog room to himself anymore either. he knows how to fight way too good, but whatever, he has lost any hope of intergrating fully here.

ben is a pain. and for the record, today? i do not give a ratz ass that he is hot and bored out there under his umbrellas, i will figure out something better for him on my next day off (saturday)....maybe tunies rejected playhouse, maybe the some-day-will-be-a-grooming room that is currently not anything except an open room without a door which will be easy to fence around...both will hold a bed and his toys and bowls.

never trust ben's smiling face tho, that is the beagle in him, sneaky little fat bastards, they always try to slip under the wire.