Night before last we almost had a water borne catastrophe of Titanic proportions. You might remember WKRP in Cincinnati's hog reporter Les Nesman? He famously declared after pushing several live turkeys out of a helicopter at 1000 feet, "...as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." As God is MY witness I thought ducks could swim. Actually they can swim and as "they say" our ducklings took to it like a "duck to water." Problem is their duckie down (no oiled feathers yet) got water logged pretty quickly and we ended up having to save our little water logged charges from doing their best submarine impersonation... uh-oooga... uh-oooga... dive... dive. Alexis and I had to get out the hair dryer and fluff the little guys up. It was touch and go for about 15 minutes as the 2 littlest ones began to wobble around and didn't look like they'd make it. Chris Jacobs our "Duck Master" warned us that they could keel over and croak if they got too much water... or would that be quack? Nevertheless we nursed them back to the land of the duckie living. Here they are right after launch:
We learned about the ducks about a month ago when we responded to a tip on Doberman puppies for sale. We arrived thinking "puppy" but we were quickly diverted to an education about ducks. Learning about ducks was fascinating... especially Indian Runners. We had planned on getting some chickens as a prep measure anyway but learned that ducks are easier to take care of and an Indian Runner can lay as many as 300 eggs per year (hopefully I didn't get 13 drakes!). Low maintenance, prolific egg producers... sounded good to me. We shifted gears from dogs to ducks and didn't buy a puppy that day. I went back last Tuesday to get our ducklings that had just hatched and Chris Jacobs, the owner of the ducks and dogs, had one puppy left. We really wanted a dobie puppy and the price was right (some fancy-smancy dobies can cost upwards of $2,500!).
Chris' family owned both the mama dog (a blue dobie named Diamond) and daddy dog (a "white" Doberman named Pistol). We had never heard of a white Doberman but both dogs were registered with the Continental Kennel Club an alternative to the AKC. Both dogs were good natured which was very important to us (we didn't want an ill tempered Doberman?)... so we came home with "Dixie."
This is Diamond breathing a sigh of relief now that all 8 of her babies have found good homes:
Here's Pistol, the proud papa with Dixie:
Here are a couple of shots of Dixie with her Confederate battle flag collar... it'll be a little big for a while: 
Here she is sleeping between her new Mama's feet:
And last but not least... Alexis' antique rose in bloom:
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