I'm working as a Fish Culturist at Hidden Falls Salmon Hatchery in a remote spot near Sitka, Alaska! AM I CRAZY!? I'm starting to think so...

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Snow records...

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HI… My name is Tucker. I’m 10 weeks old. I love my tennis ball and my rope and my deer antler and my red ball… all my toys. I like sleeping under the coffee table and on feet. I like to chew on zippers and hooded sweatshirt strings and fingers and baby ears! My mom and dad think I’m super cute… and of course I am!


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Hey everyone!

Before I get into that guy and everything else, I wanted to start off with something a little funny. Remember my first year and the massive amount of snow we got… how could you forget, right!? Well……….. this year, we beat that snow record! I’m not joking! That year, I think there was something like 207 inches of snow (starting in October or November the year before). Well, as of Friday, we were about 3 or 4 inches away from catching that record. It’s been snowing most of Saturday and today so far. I definitely think we beat it. It really surprises me because it hasn’t seemed as bad. Maybe that was just because we haven’t had to do any roof shoveling!? The first few weeks I was here, we didn’t get anything and it was sunny everyday! This past week, though, we’ve gotten about a foot or so. Adam said most of the snow was probably from earlier, like around November and December, and there has been a bunch of melt off. Just crazy, I say!

Anyhow, last weekend, I sent out an email to most of you about the new arrival. Our cute adorable puppy, Tucker! He’s a yellow lab and he was 9 weeks old. Well now he’s a week older and a few pounds heavier (17 lbs now) and getting braver! Last Saturday when I arrived back at the hatchery, it was a bumpy turbulent flight and he didn’t like it one bit! That first night was pretty rough, for him and us. He went nuts when it was bedtime and whined, cried, SCREAMED for about 20 minutes before he calmed down. It was so sad to listen to. Then Adam took him out in the middle of night and we had to go through the whole 20 minute ordeal again. The next day, I researched ways to get your puppy to sleep better! Well we took him over to the bunkhouse and wore him out right before bed. We also threw a shirt in there that Adam had been wearing all day. Something about that helped because to our shock and happiness, he slept THE WHOLE NIGHT! And every night since! I can’t believe it really… doesn’t seem normal, but I can’t complain! One night, he did wake up at 4:30 am and I took him out and he took a few minutes to calm down and quite crying when I put him back in his box. There has definitely been some progress with his box… randomly, he’ll go lay down in there, which is exactly what I’m hoping for eventually! So he’s doing really great with that!


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I do think he’s super smart already! Though he doesn’t really come when called sometimes, he seems to know how to sit already (maybe that just comes naturally to dogs though??). He does get a little distracted outside when Muttley is out. Well, as I said, Tucker’s getting braver. Getting into more things, biting more. His favorite spot to sleep is the bottom shelf of our coffee table, which is really sort of funny! He’s going to realize one day that he can’t fit under there anymore, though! He really likes our carpet in the room, but we don’t want him to get used to going in there, so we mostly keep that door closed. When he first got here, we let him explore though, and he really enjoyed climbing around under the bed. Makes for some cute pictures but he’ll try that one day again and get stuck! He’s only had two accidents in the house, which I consider pretty amazing for it being his first week!

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Everyone on site loves him! How could you not!? Muttley, the giant dog on site, doesn’t seem to enjoy Tucker very much though. Muttley is a very low energy, low key, “I just wanna chill” dog. Tucker wants to play with him and crawl under his legs, but he just bothers the Mutt. He acts kind of like an grouchy old man around Tucker. It’s kind of funny! We took Tucker over to Ben and Jacquie’s on Thursday (we watch Grey’s Anatomy over there) and introduced him to their dog Rocky, the VERY HIGH ENERGY, crazy, completely opposite of Muttley! It was pretty interesting. Tucker was a little scared at first, then Rocky went nuts. They were running all over the place and Rocky was still too high energy for Tucker, knocking him over and such. They put Rocky in his room, then we ate over there. Their daughter, Emma, was enthralled with Tucker and wouldn’t even eat. So Jacquie put Emma on the ground to play with Tucker. She loved it, for a little bit, but Tucker would get a little too rough and start nipping. He loves her ears for some reason! There’s also Smokey, who is Ben Smith’s dog, the maintenance guy. Tucker gets a little scared of her for some reason… maybe because he doesn’t see her very often. She’s kind of big too.

Well, work related business. We’ve definitely been doing some shoveling, but mostly on docks and pens. We spent the last 5 days (all this past week) ponding the Hidden Falls chum. We only have 3 days left with that. It’s gone amazingly fast and easy, though we’re trying to go a bit “slower.” If you remember, in previous years, when we had to pond the boxes, we’d use a crane to hoist the box onto the ponding machine. Then someone would have to push down a level to lift up that box, and then use their brute strength to lift the heavy box up. Well this year, there is none of that, thankfully! They installed an air powered lifter (I don’t know what it’s really called!?) to do the heavy work for us. All the person has to do now is step on a foot petal, and up the box goes on its own. It makes ponding way easier. We are also rebuilding the stacks as we go also. So we pond a box, clean it, rebuild it back on a stand. I didn’t really like this idea at first but it’s actually gone really good! This means that come June, we won’t have to do this! It’s already done. We’ll have to go back and level all the stacks but that’s about it.

Besides shoveling and ponding, that’s about all we’ve been doing. This weekend, the American Patriot, a big boat, came to deliver our Takatz food, our Costco order, and to tow the house and pens to Takatz. Today, they are down there loading the food into the house. Adam was helping yesterday and today. So I’m a single mother of a pup-toddler for the weekend! It’s fun though.

That’s all I have got for now! Except more pictures...


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He likes to sleep....

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And he'll sleep anywhere!

For some more puppy pictures, you can go to this link...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036593&id=53900044&l=04cb061d00

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He really is cute, and much better than a child because you can beat him when he is bad! Someone who breeds Labs told us once that you don't train the dog, the dog trains you! I believe that. So when he gets to be a normal, psychotic labrador, maybe you and Adam will be as pyschotic too! DAD

Anonymous said...

He is the cutest thing ever! Rascal used to scoot under the coffee table and couches, until he got about half under and his butt got stuck! He learned quick, so I'm sure Tucker will too!

Are the water levels up because of all the snow? Around the office, it is like an island... all the roads are flooded over due to all the snow & rain last week, and it is supposed to rain more later this week. People that have never had water in their basements are having some real issues now!

Val said you were thinking of coming home around my due date... we'll see how the baby girl cooperates! When do you think you'd buy your ticket?