New happenings at the Cottonwood Inn

Another month is almost gone here at the Cottonwood Bed and Breakfast. It's been a hot summer, but the recent rain (1 inch last night alone!) has done a lot to cool things down. It was nice to be in the mid 70s today-- much more like normal in Northern New Mexico.

This summer's projects have been big ones: cleaning up the new lot, re-building the little adobe house, training the 2 Great Pyr pups, and making the goosers into NICER GOOSERS.

Well, let's start in reverses order... the rescue geese are just as ornery as they ever were. Snarky, however, is absolutely lovely!! He looks like a Stevie Nicks pillow with two cute orange legs. He is still deathly afraid of all humans, but is now occasionally nipping at Brantly's shoes (a good thing).

Also, we've had some success training the new pupsters. Both Sparky and Shmoo now know how to sit, beg, come, beg, and (this is really exciting) herd the girls!!! And, of course, beg. Okay, by herd the girls, I mean get them all back into the pen. This is quite an accomplishment for a couple of boys who are only about 12 weeks old.

The little adobe is just about there. This week we will apply the last exterior coat of stucco, and stain the concrete floor (purple!!) We put part of the septic in today, and are about to level and clear the last of the junk away.

If you haven't been here to see these new changes (dogs, geese, and acres) what are you waiting for?? The weather is beautiful, the grass is green, and Taos is as cool as ever!

Big geese and BIGGER dogs!

It's hard to believe we've had the puppies for over a month! I didn't realize how much they had grown until I looked at the initial blog pictures-- holy cow! Or dog, actually. These guys think about one thing-- eating. And they eat A LOT. Winston and Eva are regularly horrified by how much of the daily food scrap ration goes to the new pups. Winston doesn't actually want to eat that many scraps, but it really annoys him to see it go to Sparky or Shmoo. This is Winston's first experience as the older (and wiser?) dog, and he is taking it seriously. I never knew he had fangs!

Syd and Nancy are just getting bigger every day. Nancy has recently decided that she likes Brantly, so he doesn't need to duck and dive every time he enters the bird run. She is infatuated by his New Balance shoes and likes to chew on them for hours. Surprisingly, Snarky has also decided that he wouldn't mind a bit of human interaction. He, too, has been seen nibbling on Brantly's tennies....

The plans for the barn are nearing completion, and the little, old house next door is looking cuter every day. This week the interior walls were finished.

The photo thing has been driving me crazy! The only reason the posts aren't more regular is because of our antiquated camera. It has become almost impossible to upload our daily photos and save them. We don't know what happened, but it can be traced to a virus on our computers a few months ago. In any case, it is an agonizing process to upload a photo, but hopefully we will soon have a new (and easier to understand) camera. Here are a few photos from recent weeks. Come to the Cottonwood Inn before the puppies are 160 lbs.!