June 30-July 6, 2019

Weather | 6/30, 69°, 89° | 7/1, 65°, 77° | 7/2, 69°, 89° | 7/3, 71°, 93° | 7/4, 0.05" rain, 70°, 86° | 7/5, 69°, 89° | 7/6, 70°, 87° |

• Sunday (6/30): Normal dog training dreariness with 5 classes and some missing people/dogs at work. Mary trimmed trees, did laundry, and mowed.
• Monday (7/1): Worked with 2 dog training classes. Mary mowed and mulched garden, washed towels. Bill called. He'll be here the week of July 22nd.
• Tuesday (7/2): Walked through the chicken coop door in the morning and found a single chicken head in the floor. Probably a raccoon crawled up the sheet of plywood I had leaned against the outside, shielding the north chicken entrance from rain, ripped the fiberglass screening on the NW vent window, crawled in, killed a hen, chomped its head off, and hauled the chicken back out the way it came in. I drove to Lewistown, bought a roll of hardware cloth at Davis Hardware, and replaced the screening on the NW vent window with hardware cloth. Mary mowed and mulched and helped me put up hardware cloth.
• Wednesday (7/3): I added hardware cloth to the NE vent window of the coop. Katie called from Anchorage, on her way back home. She's considering applying for work in AK.
• Thursday (7/4): I worked...my 3rd straight July 4th of working...sick of it. The truck that was supposed to show up at 5 AM, didn't show up until 12:15 PM. Molly, who is charge of merchandise, left at noon to go on her vacation, so I canceled my dog traingin classes and together with Karl and Brandon, unloaded freight all day. Brandon left early. Missy got big-headed being the boss with Molly gone and didn't help much at all with freight. I decided today that I'm calling it quits at Petco...I'll quit as soon as I'm done with all outstanding dog training...sometime in September. I've had enough! It rained a bunch in Quincy. Back home, all Mary had was lightning and thunder and a little bit of rain.
• Friday (7/5): I figured income, balanced checkbook, and determined that I have 6-8 pay periods before I'm close to the maximum I can earn and still get social security. I took screening off the middle southside window of the coop and reglazed the window. Mary mowed and mulched.
• Saturday (7/6): Found that a raccoon crawled up the southside of the coop and tore up my glazing job on the window I did yesterday. Shane, my boss, was at the Quincy Petco, so Mary and I went to Quincy. I told Shane I was quitting Petco. My last dog training class is Sept 23rd. We decided I'd end employment by Saturday of that week. I feel better now that I have a definitive end date at Petco. Bought more window glazing and 3 sheets of acrylic to replace broken windows on the south side of the chicken coop. Bought groceries. I did notecards and the poster for Class 4 of the AKC Canine Good Citizen dog training that I have to do tomorrow. Walked dogs at midnight. Plato perked up his ears while going back in, so we went to check chickens...heard chickens squawking...opened door to coop and saw dead bodies, then a raccoon tail zipping behind the steel garbage can I keep feed in. Mary had a shovel in her hand, got mad about the dead chickens, and started whacking at the raccoon. I was holding the flashlight, so it jumped toward me a couple times. Told Mary to quit, while I got a gun. Used a .22 rifle and shot the raccoon. It killed 4 hens tonight...that's 5 dead hens in 1 week. We have a rooster and 4 hens left. We stuffed 4 dead hens and a dead raccoon in buckets, walked through high grass to the east side of our property, and dumped the dead for the critters. Oh, and in the shovel-flinging madness, we cracked another window glass, but the raccoon didn't escape out the window, because shovel-wielding Mary kept it at bay.