Adventures in Pet/House Sitting

From last Friday to today (Monday) I was spending time with some of my buddies. My newest buddy is Dublyn a 5 month old Golden Retriever puppy. My other buddies at this home may be familiar to you – Leo (Golden Retriever) along with Timmy and Harry (cats). Most of my photos today are these 4 critters over the last few days, but a couple of birds managed to find their way into some shots too.

First 2 photos are a Hummingbird enjoying the flowers in the garden

We had fun. Each day the dogs and I went out for a good walk – early in the morning when it was fairly cool. We also spent some time relaxing in the yard. Dublyn was often pretty rough with the cats and they didn’t enjoy this much – but as you can see by the photos, he also had some quiet time with them.

I did have one problem while I was there. I was out in the yard late in the afternoon with the dogs when I was stung by a wasp – followed by several more stings before I was able to get inside and away from them. Over the years, I’ve been stung before – by bees, wasps, hornets and maybe more, but this was the first multiple event. All these stings were on my head (which is also different than normal for me). One sting was on my eyebrow and the rest were on my head and under my hair. There was a bit of throbbing that evening and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to lay my head down to sleep without it hurting. But, I slept well and the only spot that is still sore is the eyebrow one and it only hurts when I touch it.

Amazingly enough someone on FaceBook posted an article about wasps this morning. It has some very interesting information, which explains things and makes me more sympathetic to the wasps. I’m not going to quote the whole things, but basically, the worker bees are left without a job at this time of year because the Queen stops laying eggs. They are suddenly very hungry and if you leave a sugary drink out for them to eat, they will remain calm and not be attacking people (or pets).