Hi, Howard! You’re a good doggie, aren’t you?!
*** I have lots of whopper-size green tomatoes so BLT time is just around the corner. ***
Augie, if you ever want to have an out of this world BLT, fry up one of your green tomatoes Southern style, and add it to your usual BLT sandwich, preferably on lightly toasted sourdough. I promise you, it’s a winner. Keep the usual deliciously ripe red tomato on there. It’s extra decadent.
Unfortunately, I don’t tolerate solanine well at all...
Howard is a really sweet dog. He’s got a very tender heart - which is both good and bad depending on what’s happening in the moment.
Not knowing his previous situation makes training/discipline very difficult. I’m 100% certain that he was mistreated to some extent by his former “caretakers” so I’m trying very hard not to be harsh with him, but at the same time I need to teach good manners and proper yard dog etiquette. He’s still very much a puppy and has a lot of energy that needs to be burned off. I feel like we make a little progress towards that goal most days but there are times the hound dog stubbornness comes out and we (well, mostly me) struggle with that.
Yesterday was a good day - #1 Marine Daughter came over in the evening and we put up some temporary electric fence to shut the horses out of a section of pasture to allow the grass to recover from grazing. She brought her Doberman and we let all three dogs run free while we were working on the fence. Howard needed that after being mostly penned up for a few days.
After the new section of fence was finished we opened up the paddock that the horses had been shut out of. They always get the zoomies when they get turned into fresh pasture and Howard thought that was the most wonderful thing. He went out there and ran laps with them until they settled down. He’s not the least bit obnoxious with the horses like the other two dogs tend to be and the horses didn’t mind a bit him running with them.
On the tomato subject... the groundhog found them Sunday night. Dang varmint sampled at least one tomato on every plant that had one he could reach. I’ll catch him out and air condition him eventually, but in the meantime I placed an amazon order for a solar-powered electric fence charger, a 500 meter roll of fence tape, fiberglass stakes, insulators, etc. That stuff will be here on Friday. I’ll set up hot tape around the top of the perimeter fence to deter the horses from leaning in to nibble and some down low around the tomato cages to keep the whistle pigs from stealing my groceries.
And I will definitely try adding the fried green tomato slice to my BLTs. That sounds delicious.