Big Trip Part 2… by Gimli

As BG told you last time, we got to a truck stop between San Antonio and Houston by Tuesday night. We had traveled 640 miles that day, even WITH the 5 hours we spent with them working on the truck, and were pretty tired! It’s a bit hard to sleep with the truck roaring and bouncing along!

We thought that it had been a hectic ride up to that point, but then came WEDNESDAY!!! We had a “long way to go and a short time to get there…” so Papa got up very early, and took off again, while Grammy tried to get a little more sleep in her rolling, pitching bed.

During the nights, Pippin slept in the top bunk with Papa, while I slept between the wall and Grammy’s back. If Grandma OC hadn’t been at Mango’s Mansion, she would have slept between Grammy’s feet, and Unca BG slept on a quilt on top of the fridge area where Pippin rides during the day.


Anyway, on Wednesday, we drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and into Lake City, Florida

Grammy was NOT impressed with Louisiana… at least from Hwy I-10! All we saw was dead, mossy trees and swamp… for MILES and MILES! She thought it would be a terribly depressing place to live, and I thought it would too because there wasn’t any place to run and play! She said we couldn’t even swim in it because there were alligators all over, and I don’t know what an alligator is, but she made it sound really scary!


All through Mississippi and Alabama there was the most HORRIBLE storm that Grammy says she’s EVER seen! We could only go 35 miles an hour at times because Papa could only see two white lines in front of us with all the heavy rain! We looked like we were on the back side of a waterfall when looking out of the windshield sometimes.

Grammy was really praying hard… especially after it got dark because then the storm got REALLY BAD! There was lightning bolts every 2-3 SECONDS during one half hour period, and it was hitting so close that the truck was shaking with the thunder! We couldn’t pull over because we were afraid we didn’t have enough time to get to Florida as it was.

It’s a good thing that God was watching over us because we almost got in an accident a couple of times! A truck stopped RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, and our brakes were wet and we ALMOST didn’t stop on time! Missed him by about 2 inches! He’d had to stop real quick because of a Mini van that had gotten stalled out in a flooded section of the road. I almost fell off the bed!

Papa was SO TIRED when we crossed into Florida, that we found a truck stop and finally went to bed. He had driven 851 miles in all that day! Poor Papa still had to get up, when it was barely light, to drive the rest of the way to Jacksonville the next day, because the trailer had to be offloaded, in the shipyard, before 4 p.m.

We got there a little after noon and got the trailer offloaded with one hour to spare! Papa was SOOO relieved! We drove about an hour back and then they stopped for a nice dinner at another Cracker Barrel. That’s were they ate dinner almost every night in the towns we were in. A couple of their grand-daughters work in Cracker Barrels, and one of them even travels at times to train the servers when they open new stores.

Papa got us some GREAT Ham Biscuits and then we drove another hour or so and stopped at a nice Rest Stop near Pensacola, FL where we could get out and run and play for a while before going to bed. We traveled 431 miles that day.

Friday, we all got up really late (Papa had been SOOO tired), and Grammy and Papa were VERY sad to find out that their eldest son, had run into a few problems and wasn’t going to be able to drive the 5 hours up to meet with them like he had been planning.

They decided to go ahead and take off and drive back toward Houston, TX so that they could at least get to spend some time with their daughter and her family (3 of their grandsons are there.) Back through Alabama… and Mississippi…

We even went through a place near “Pascagoula,” Miss. and Papa sang a song about a Mississippi Squirrel that terrorized a church in Pascagoula.

We were ready to go SQUIRREL HUNTING, but Papa said we didn’t have time.

We went back through that depressing Louisiana place again and made it back to Orange, Texas before stopping again to sleep (only 417 miles), but we were still quite tired and wanted to rest up before seeing the grandkids on Saturday. We’ll tell you about THAT fun time the next time, OK?

Oh, and by the way, notice my EAR is UP… FINALLY! That is because that “Ear Assassin,” my sister, Mercy, didn’t go on this trip with us!

Grammy note: Sorry this is taking some time to get out but I had 104 vids to work through and edit into pics, etc. so the corgis could tell THIS story…

Aaaahhh… REST at last!

Happy Labor Day everyone! Papa is home and we are very thankful that he can have a day of rest because he is such a wonderful provider for us and labors hard all the time to take care of us.

We are all praying that God will Bless America and those that have labored to make it into such a wonderful country to live in. May God Bless the workers, and the community service people, like the ones fighting the fires here in California, and our police officers, etc.

Since today is Labor Day and it is to celebrate those who labor, and I had labored hard, I decided that I’d let my people hold my babies for a half hour or so today so I could rest a few minutes. I figured from the first, of course, that I could trust them, but I just would get nervous for no good reason when they would pick them up. Papa let Gimli crawl up under his beard where my little son went to sleep for a while.

They’ve held them a couple of minutes at a time, and always brought them back since they were born, so today, I decided that it would be ok for them to hold them for a bit while I just laid out and relaxed.

Papa held Gimli and Mercy for a while, until Grammy snatched Mercy. Grammy put Mercy into the front of her blouse in a little “pocket” and she went to sleep there.

Grammy is thinking about keeping Mercy, and wants her to get used to her heartbeat and bond well. BG is supposed to be Papa’s dog, and Grammy doesn’t feel that it is fair for her to take so much of BG’s time and attention from Papa. (It makes Papa a little sad...)

Mercy looks like she is going to be a full-sized Corgi, and strong enough to be a helper dog. Grammy says she’s not sure yet, what will happen…

The pups have been nursing almost constantly since they were born and are growing SO FAST! I’ve hardly left my little cave since they were born except for quick peeks to keep track of what’s going on and quick runs outside. I’ve not even wanted to get out to eat, so Grammy has been fork feeding me my special reinforced Mama Dog Food several times a day. I'm even getting dark bags under my eyes...

She also brings me my bowls of homemade puppy formula and holds them for me to drink. She says it’s a lot easier to do that than to feed the pups herself like she had to do with me and my brothers. The puppy formula gives me the nutrients, fluids and extra calcium I need to make so much milk. I’m so little and the pups are getting so big that she wants to be sure I don’t get to much sucked out of me. She’s a bit worried because I am so “SKINNY” as she puts it. I just think I’ve got my “girlish” figure back, though I don’t know if my poor “Mams” will EVER be the same again… :(

Grammy tried to put down food near my bed that first day or two, but then the ants found it. She doesn’t want that to happen again, as she doesn’t want them to get on the puppies. That’s when they took my box out of Grammy’s room and put it across the hall in the spare room after making sure there weren’t ants in our box. She won’t put any food in the new room to be sure the ants can’t find us. I’ve got a big water bowl, but no food, so that’s why Grammy feeds me.

She also can’t put out food anywhere else in the house because Mama OC is on a diet and can’t have food laying around to tempt her.


Well, I best tell them to put my little ones back so I can feed them, as they are starting to get antsy. Thank you all so much for your kind words and thoughts! Dott

A Bit More About Country Corgi Critters

First, we wanted to answer a few of the comments we got on our last post about the Tarantula Hawks. Mom hates spiders, too, but isn’t totally arachnophobic (like her brother-in-law who goes into a fetal position at the site of more than one spider of any kind). She only dances if one gets on her. The tarantulas around here aren’t particularly poisonous unless you happen to have an allergic reaction.

One of Mom’s crazy sons likes them and will pick them up and play with them (She thinks that's NUTS!!!) She will have one taken off the property or at least to a wood pile usually. The one we took pics of was almost frozen and almost dead when we found it last November. She set it out in the sun & took pics, but it never came around… She thought it had probably been ‘seeded” with a T. Hawk, so she put the body in a jar with a lid so that she would have it to show her grandson.

We don’t like those big spiders and they don’t like us. If we see one, it will usually rear up and looks like it is shouting really nasty bad words at us in “spider language.” We tend to leave them alone, and we don’t see them at all except during the late fall, and maybe only one or two around here every year or two… It is more on the roads while driving that we will see several.

Mom says we’ve never had one IN the house, though that one came close, being on the wall just outside the back door of the patio. We HAVE had snakes, scorpions and centipedes (which have a painful sting) come into the house.

The T. Hawks aren’t aggressive and won’t chase you like the Yellow Jackets. Mom doesn’t like ANY kind of wasp or bee, so she ducks a lot if there are some around, but isn’t really afraid of them… just doesn’t want them in her hair.

It’s the Brown Recluse Spiders that are really dangerous around here! The Black Widows, and Brown Widow Spiders can also make you kind of sick feeling for a while unless you are allergic and THAT can be a problem. Mom says, Praise God, she isn’t allergic because she’s been bitten by Black Widows a few times.

These three kinds of nasty spiders are smaller and hide in dark places. They will get you if you don’t carry a light and check any dark place you need to put your hand into… like when feeding horses at night.

We will probably post more about these nasty critters some other time. Mom just wanted you all to know that she thinks the rattlesnakes around here are a MUCH worse threat to us, but she prays for us a lot about the nasty critters in this area, and is glad that we have been really smart about pointing the nasty things out to her … Well, DUH! We ARE Corgis!!!

When we see a nasty, we bark our “ALERT!” bark and bounce back and forth at it, staying out of reach, until she comes and takes care of the problem appropriately! Auntie Sadie is the one that taught us that. Border Collies are really smart too, I guess… Auntie Sadie sure is!

Also, about the Road Runners… Mom’s not crazy about those either as they are mean to other birds and animals. They eat eggs, kill chicks and other small birds as well as lizards. We will post more on them later sometime, too.

Sorry Dott hasn’t wanted to take her turn at posting lately. She started eating like a HORSE instead of her usual “bird like” appetite a few weeks ago, and then, suddenly, she seems to have lost a lot of her appetite and is kind of dumpy and sleeping a lot more. She does get out and run when we do go out, but she doesn’t seem to be able to “fly” like she used to when she jumps up on things.

Mom is watching her closely and she doesn’t really seem to be showing any signs of sickness, but she is acting differently, and so we are still wondering about the possible “Puppy” thing…

Praise God, Mom found it!

Mom was REALLY happy this morning! She was going around praising God A LOT… She has been looking for a Money Order for over $300 that had been misplaced several days ago, and since it was to pay for health insurance and was due by tomorrow, she was getting a bit stressed. She kept praying and telling God she knew that He would help her find it because she knows that He is the one that provided the insurance for her in the first place, but she had about cleaned the whole front room and hadn’t been able to find it all week.

Robert kept saying that he was SURE he had given it to her, but she couldn’t remember that. Today, she started looking in the old envelope that he had put all the receipts for bills he’d taken care of the day he got the Money Order, and THERE IT WAS! She was SO THANKFUL!!!

She got some other paperwork for her retirement together, and went with Robert to the big city. It is called Bakersfield, and they had to drive an hour to get there… AND they didn’t take ME! They said that it was business and I would have had to spend a lot of time in the car, and I really hate that. Still, I hate it when they leave me behind, too. I could have guarded the car or something.

Mom did a lot of mumbling when she got back about cities, and road makers following drunken mice around mazes, and putting on blindfolds and then pointing at maps to decide which roads should be one way roads, etc. I gathered she wasn’t happy trying to find a “Hall of Records” and parking spaces near it so she could prove she’s been married to Dad for over 33 years. She hates cities anyway. She says she told Dad she would follow him anywhere EXCEPT a big city, before they got married. She only goes when it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!




At least she got home safe this evening and we all greeted her and welcomed her back until she begged for mercy… something about needing hearing aids soon?


PS... I guess God knew she needed to work on the house cause she just found out tonight, that her sister, that she hasn't seen in over a year, is coming this weekend... She says there's always a reason for what God does when we are trying to put Him first...