Animal Insting

I am very happy to be back to normal life again and to have Mom home with us, where she belongs.  It is very stressful being at Pooches' Paradise, even though it's supposed to be like paradise, but I think that anything different from our regular routine in our own house with our own mom is not very much like paradise.  My brothers would probably agree with me on this, but they are busy taking naps, so I can't ask them.

Okay, I guess I will tell you a little bit about the cactus conference that Mom went to because she took some photos and told me all about what she did while she was there.  It seems like the main thing people do at these conferences is buy plants.  There are these growers who come from places like New Mexico and Oklahoma and Florida, and these growers mostly grow cacti and other succulent plants.  And then they charge big, fancy prices for the plants because they are special plants that you can't buy just any old place.  So it's easy to spend a bunch of money buying plants.  At least it was for Mom.

Here's a picture of the sales room, but Mom took it after a bunch of plants already got bought, and you can tell this because there are empty spaces on the table which weren't there when the sale started.

Mom only bought 8 plants, which is not really very many, and all 8 plants fit into one box.  Plus she also bought 3 pots, and none of the pots is very big.  Here's a picture of Mom's box of plants.  Except some of the littler plants are behind the big plants, so you can't see them very well.


Anyway, Mom spent more money on plants than she should have, and this is not just my opinion, because she says the same thing.  All together, she spent about $270 for only 8 plants, and the most expensive one was $65, and the cheapest one was $8.  The money that Mom spent for plants was even more than she spent for us dogs to go to Pooches' Paradise for two nights, which was only $200.  This makes me think that Mom loves her plants more than she loves her dogs, but she says this is not true.

Most of Mom's plants are not what are called "true cacti."  Instead, they are other types of succulent plants.  And in case you don't remember what you learned in science class, I will just tell you that a succulent plant is one that stores up water in its leaves or stem or roots.  Mom doesn't grow very many real cacti because they mostly die.  And the reason they do that is because it is too shady in our yard, and also sometimes the plants get too wet from all the rain, so they turn into mush.  Or another thing that happens is that Mom waters them in the winter when she shouldn't, and that also makes them turn into mush.


Oh, and Mom said I should mention that the other thing people do at a cactus conference is they listen to people tell about exotic places where they went to look at cacti and succulents.  For example, this one man showed pictures from Madagascar and talked about what he saw there, and a few of the pictures were of lemurs, which you may remember I talked about in a previous blog entry.

So anyway, Mom left St. Louis  on Saturday morning, even though the conference wasn't over with, and she started driving back to Kansas City.  And when she got partway across the state, she ran into a huge rainstorm that had already visited us in Kansas City and turned our yard into a swamp, and now it was going east along I-70, just when Mom was going west.  So Mom did not enjoy driving through the storm, but she got home about 1:30, and then she came to Pooches' Paradise to get us because she thought Barry and Mel were probably scared of the storm, even though by then it was mostly over.

We were all very glad to get home, and we slept a whole bunch to get rested up after being in paradise for two nights.  Also Mom went to her 40-year high school reunion, and she stayed out late, which she almost never does, so it was after midnight when we went to bed.  And yesterday morning, Mom decided we didn't have to go to Dog-n-Jog because it might rain, which it did a little bit.  And also Mom wanted to do the laundry, so she did.

Mom took me out for a little walk, and I peed and I also pooped, and it was very nice poop.  But later I had diarrhea all over the kitchen floor, so Mom had to clean that up.  And we don't know why I had diarrhea, since I had nice poop before that.  But Mom gave me Imodium, and all I had for supper and for breakfast today was some rice.  So maybe I will get cured pretty soon.  At least I hope so!