On the animal front...

First of all, in case you're not familiar with toy dog breeds, my dogs are not Chihuahuas. They are MINIATURE PINSCHERS! FYI, the Miniature Pinscher (Min Pin) breed in not related to the Doberman Pinscher breed. If you call them a Miniature Dobie, you're revealing your ignorance! Miniature pinschers were created by mixing these three breeds: Daschund (the wiener dogs), Italian Greyhound (the tiny greyhounds), and German Pinschers (looks like a MUCH bigger, stockier version of a Min Pin, or a small Dobie). Min Pins are very courageous, and they won't bat an eye when it comes to taking on a large dog (the stupid guy across the street keeps letting his big dog loose and it has come into my yard twice now and attacked my dogs) or a cat or raccoon. Okay, on to my story.
My two dogs, Cowboy and Indian, were attacked by a raccoon the other night, and here are their injuries. It was tough to see what was wrong with them the first night because they had been pummeled in the dirt, but the next day it was more clear. Cowboy (the black one) had a scratch on his back that could have used a couple stitches, but he toughed it out.

Indian (the brown one) was still holding her leg up the next day and crying a lot about it, so we thought she had dislocated her leg. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that it had a couple puncture wounds and her chest had some too. She was fine later that day.

The day after the attacks, I finally swallowed the $65 price tag to buy a coon trap. We set it up, knowing we were guaranteed to catch something since they've been robbing us of our cat food for the last month probably. Sure enough, around 11 pm, ol' Winky (he has a bummer eye) came back, which was surprising to me because Hyrum had smacked him with our broom handle only a few days before. Winky is by far the smallest of the coons we've seen on our porch. It took him a while to figure out how to go in the trap to get the bait, but he managed it and here he is this morning.

In case you didn't know, coons have really big, sharp teeth and sharp claws. If you get close to them they hiss, but I think they hiss out of their nose because his mouth stayed shut. What would happen if they hissed out of their nose while they had a cold? Would they look like Kiersa?

She has a cold right now, and every time she sneezes, this is what I find. Ah, the joys of parenting. I get snot rag duty.