Beagles and Berries!

[bluesgarden]

My dogs live such a hard life, don't they?


It's rough hanging out in the air conditioning and digesting tallow covered kibble with bonus brisket leftovers.

River is on a diet, by the way, but you can see how well it's not working. She gets mashed sweet potatoes mixed with some grain free topper and grain free kibble. I've reduced the amount of kibble a couple of times, but that weight isn't going anywhere. The only thing that seems to help is lots and lots of exercise to the extent that we just can't give her right now, especially in this heat. I'm talking miles of bunny chasing every day. Sigh. She has the most remarkable, completely non-existent metabolism.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think that we should have waited to have her spayed until she was at least a year old. Also that I should talk to the vet about hormone replacement therapy for her and have her tested for hypothyroidism, which is much more common in spayed females than otherwise. Anyone have any experience with this to share?

On a totally different note, the second round of raspberry picking was yesterday! We were still out in the heat for 3 1/2 hours, but it went much faster and we came home with about 26 1/2 pounds of black and reds.


Acres of bushes!


My flat of berries, just as I was getting started.


The final haul - mostly black raspberries as usual, but we also picked some more reds for me to make into jam. The seeds of black raspberries are surprisingly hard when being made into jam, and virtually impossible to separate from the pulp, so I'll probably make all jelly this year rather than a combination of jelly and jam. I am going to try some black raspberry pie filling, though, so we'll see how that goes.

Right now, some of the reds are freezing (until I get to jamming them, it will keep them from spoiling) and there's a flat of the blacks in the steam juicer. The house smells much better than when I was rendering suet. :)