The Lifter And The Dipper!

This morning at nine-fifteen I went outside after walking six miles with Leslie. Tony and Ben had already fed the dogs so I helped them clean the pens. Then we started getting things ready so we could dip our dogs for fleas and ticks.

Tony suggested that we move the horse trough under a tree so we would be in the shade so Ben picked up the heavy trough and moved it over by Ruth Buzzi and Chuck's pen. After deciding how high we wanted to fill the trough Ben appointed me to keep count of how many buckets it took to reach the height we had agreed on. Ten minutes later when we reached our mark I said, "We're talking fiftteen buckets, Ben." Then we did the math on how much dip to add to the water.

"Okay," I said. "It says it takes five cc's per gallon. It took fifteen buckets at five gallons per bucket. How much is that?"

"Seventy-five gallons," Tony and Ben said in unison. Then the men calculated how much dip we needed to use. "It says this stuff is pretty toxic and if we get it on our skin we need to wash it off immediately," Ben said and then he started laughing. "You know that we're going to be soaked in this stuff by the time that we are through dipping all of the dogs." Then we discussed wearing the plastic gloves that we had bought, but Ben pointed out that they wouldn't work because he had used them the last time we dipped our dogs and his hands stayed wet inside the gloves so we chose to not wear them and just take our chances.

Then we made a plan. Bless Ben, because he volunteered to be "The Lifter and The Dipper" and Tony and I would be "The Fetchers." Then Tony and I took off to fetch Rocky and Lucy. After Ben lifted and dipped twice Tone and I returned them to their pen and then we fetched Ruth Buzzi and Chuck and so on and so on.

Three hours later all of our dogs had been dipped and we had set a new dog dipping record for the fastest time ever. Our dog-dipping event basically went real smooth with the exceptions of Daisy, Rufus and Roxanne getting loose.

When Daisy got out of her pen Tony had his hands full bringing Ben Stiller and Gracie over to be dipped so I jumped into Kermit and headed towards our trailer where Daisy was running around teasing Mama and Abbie in our backyard. Thankfully she was easy to catch, but when I put her on the floor in Kermit and took off, she tried to kill me twice by trying to steer Kermit while sitting against the accelerator. By the time we reached Ben and T. by the trough they were laughing at me and I told them it wasn't funny. "Y'all, she hi-jacked Kermit and tried to kill me!" Then we started laughing as Ben dipped Daisy and Tony teasingly mocked me.

When Rufus and Roxanne escaped from the front yard of my writing cabin "all heck" broke loose as they happily raced all around the rescue ranch exciting all of our dogs. While Tony chased Rufus down by our trailer I grabbed a leash out of the back of Kermit and took off on foot to catch Roxanne. When I saw her running full-speed-ahead towards Ben who had Dr. John and Maggie on leashes, I skipped as fast as I could towards Ben and the dogs. Fortunately, when Ben told Roxanne to back off from Dr. John and Maggie— she did and that's when I quickly leashed her and returned her back to her pen.

After lunch Ben, Tony and I went to Kerrville to run some errands and I stopped by the Post Office and mailed my friend Lorri in California, a complimentary free book since she had mistakingly bought ten copies of my first book. And I signed the book and included a sweet thank you note to her. When we got back to the ranch T., Ben and I did yard work.

A little after six o'clock tonight the three of us decided to call it a day because we were 'bushed.' After Ben left I came inside and returned numerous phone calls and then answered e-mails while Tony worked outside in his garden. I'm pooped and now I am calling it a night. Good night, y'all.

Y'all have a great evening!