Rising Costs

We had a shock this morning, Newman was out of the puppy stall. He has now learned to climb OVER to get out. This complicates EVERYTHING. The stall door will have to be kept shut and Emma let in everytime she needs to nurse them. Newman is a big fat puppy that is usually lazy but when the food didn't arrive early he decided it was time to go find the food.
Raven was given the day off yesterday meaning today he might have to work overtime. We must get Eliza covered if she is still in and need to do this before the walk if I am to make it in to work on time. DaMita needs to be covered and Ylse is now showing signs of coming in. We will be shipping semen this week also to DesMoines, Iowa. This will need to be done by Dr. Pallen as Dr. Hoerr will be out of the state for the big endurance ride he is judging.
Dr. Hoerr asked us to raise the price on shipped semen for 2012 from $250.00 to $300.00 plus the customer still must pay the actual shipping charges. We don't like raising our prices. It is his call as he does all the work but it may be time to buy our own collection equipment as I feel this is pricing us out of the shipping business. Raven is always ready to collect and easy to collect but there is more to this than just that part. The semen needs to be inspected under a microscope, then extended correctly and cooled correctly. It takes Hoerr vet clinic about 30 minutes to drive here, then another 20 minutes to do the job then they must drive to FedEx and ship it out before heading back to their office. Plus when semen is needed everything else must be dropped to get it shipped off in time.
Emma does NOT like sharing the stall area with Sanna and her filly. The filly is always so curious and sticking her head in through the door to watch the puppies play. This brings a barrage of barking as Emma feels this is her private property. Rhoda came out last night to play with the puppies, they were play fighting with each other so cute she grabbed the video camera and took some footage that will be used in our puppy video. That cannot be done until I get an external hard drive as we have no cable here. We have a Sprint stick but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and when it does work it is VERY slow. Mark’s IPad pretty much always connects but it is hard to use for updates. At least I can check email and run in to Peoria if there is anything important. We have been living here for 2 months and are learning how to live without cable internet, finding out it is not impossible just inconvenient.