Routines can be boring, soothing or beneficial depending on your point of view. For dogs, routines rule. For chickens, not so much - though we are getting there.
Our new routine with Princess Sassy is one of ongoing worry and frustration. Since she's come home from the hospital, she is determined to defeat any attempts to entice her palate with food. We dutifully try to hand feed her, we cook for her, we even broke down and bought foods we would NEVER consider giving a dog to tempt her into tasting a few morsels. So far her answer to all this servitude is pretty much the same: nope, nope and nope. Every once in awhile, we're able to get her to eat a few bites, but nothing to sustain her paunch over the long term. Out vet assures us that as long as she is drinking she'll be okay for a bit. And I'm happy to say she's shown more zest in the last day. Our new routine for getting her medications down is paying off as well. But c'mon girl...you gotta eat!
With Ninja, I'm pleased to say she and I have hit on a routine that seems to be working well (although she still refuses to believe we are not monsters who are out to hurt her). From what we can gather, she sleeps in the thicket in the front yard, but by 6 am transfers herself to the backyard where I put out her chicken feed and mealworms (yum!). She happily scratches through the mulch pile and various areas of the garden, and when she's ready for a rest, settles in a depression under the tree, where she also takes a leisurely dust bath. She then waits for me to sit on the patio in the afternoon before adding her fresh veggies, consisting of broccoli, carrots, mung beans, and bits of apple, to her chicken feed. I sit on the patio to show her we are her friends, and she will sometimes come quite close by to check me out, though mostly she is still wary. Then she hops over the back gate into the back of beyond for a bit, comes back to the backyard as I'm working on the garage organization and around 7 pm, we both call it quits and she disappears. Every now and again I find an egg, though I'm beginning to believe she has made yet another place to stash them where they cannot be stolen. Either that or she's on strike.
Fortunately, maintaining this routine is easy for me, because I actually hate having to dress in corporate drag to go anywhere and shopping has all the allure of dental surgery. So staying home to organize spaces to ready them for projects that have been put off for too long is a pleasure. Speaking of which, I am a mere couple of hours away from a functioning, clean workspace for said projects. And pardon my librarian background, but I even labeled everything in sight and (I should be embarrassed to admit this), organized the little itty bitty drawers alphabetically. Evidence below:
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