Beagle Puppies: Facts & Photos!

So, I got a beagle puppy in March.  Let me tell ya and you probably already know this...puppies are a handful!  If you're thinking about getting a puppy, think it through very thoroughly. Make sure you have the time to dedicate to the little lovable, yet hell raising pup.  Luckily, Bear, (my puppy) did very well with housebreaking.  He got the idea very, very quickly.  I've taught him all of his commands with ease, but he is still quite the little hellion at 7 months old.  Now, if you know beagles, you know how vocal they are.  I swear Bear barks as much as he does because he thinks he's talking like a human would.  He's so funny.  And such a little lover, loves licking people's faces.  Every time I take him running, he starts yipping when he's on a scent. He's my best friend.

What is your beagle's personality like? Do you use them to hunt?  What types of training methods have you found most helpful when it comes to training beagles?  

Beagles are one of the most beloved breeds of dog around the world. Snoopy, perhaps the world’s most famous dog, is a beagle. Here are some other interesting facts about beagles.

• Beagles were originally bred as hunters, especially rabbits, so if you have small pets around, be careful if you get a beagle. He might think he’s doing you a favor by bringing you a pet hamster.
• Beagles come in many colors, but mostly are of the tri-color variety: black, white, and tan. They are usually born black and white and they develop their tan fur as they get older.
• Purebred beagles should always have a white tail or a white-tipped tail. This trait was bred into them by hunters to be able to see the dogs when their heads were to the ground pursuing a scent.
• While the current Queen Elizabeth is know for her fondness of Corgis, Queen Elizabeth I was a beagle fan. Some portraits of her even included her dogs. King James I called her “his dear little beagle”.
• President Lyndon B. Johnson had two beagles in the White House named Him and Her that he would famously (or infamously) hold up by the ears.
• A “Beagle Brigade” was employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1980s to sniff out airport luggage that contained food that could have pests that might be dangerous to crops. Their noses contain about 220 million smell receptors; humans have about 5 million.
• Beagles are notorious overeaters. Their strong sense of smell enables them to find food no matter how carefully it’s stashed away. Get between a beagle and its food at your own risk. A regular amount of exercise is a must for beagles, or they will quickly become obese. Despite their penchant for food, they don’t drool like many other breeds.
• Beagles were bred so their coats would repel water and not attract burrs or other plants while hunting. As a result, they are easy to groom and they don’t have a “dog smell”.
• Because they were bred for hunting rabbits, beagles were often owned in packs to cover more ground. As a result, beagles seek out and enjoy the company of other dogs (and humans, if that’s the best they can find). For reasons undetermined, beagles tend to bond more strongly with women than men.
• Beagles are well represented in our culture. Snoopy, from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip, is probably the best-known ambassador of the breed, but Odie, Garfield’s pal/nemesis in Jim Davis’s strip is also a beagle. Charles Darwin’s ship on his five-year nature voyage was called the HMS Beagle, an appropriate name for a seeking expedition. The beagle even appears in some of Shakespeare’s works, including Twelfth Night.

Please enjoy these adorable beagle pup photos!

All About The Sun: Facts, Photos, Inspiration

The Sun is one out of billions of stars.  The Sun is the closest star to Earth.  The Sun rotates once every 27 days.  The Sun is now a middle-aged star, meaning it is at about the middle of its life.  The Sun formed over four and a half billion years ago.  You may think the Sun will die soon, but it will keep shining for at least another five billion years.  
    The Sun’s surface is called the photosphere.  The temperature of the photosphere is about 10,000° Fahrenheit.  Its core is under its atmosphere. The temperature at the core, or very middle, of the Sun, is about 27 million° Fahrenheit.  That’s pretty hot!  

  The Sun’s diameter is about 870,000 miles wide.  The Sun is 109 times wider than Earth, and is 333,000 times heavier.  That means if you put the Sun on a scale, you would need 333,000 objects that weigh as much as the Earth on the other side to make it balance.  

   The Sun is only one of over 100 billion stars.  In ancient times, the people believed the Sun was a burning ball of fire created by the gods.  Later, people thought it was a solid object, or a liquid ball.  Over one million Earths could fit inside the Sun.   Looking directly at the Sun can permanently damage your eyes because it is so bright.  A star mostly gives off light and heat.  The larger the star, the hotter its temperature.  A supergiant star can get to be 400 times larger than our Sun, which is almost a million miles in diameter.  The Sun is tilted.

  Without the Sun, Earth could not support life.  The Sun gives off heat and light that the Earth needs to support life (us).  If you lived on the Sun, and you built a spacecraft, it would have to go over 618.2 kilometers per second to escape the Sun’s gravitational pull.  The Sun is 695,000 kilometers at its equator.  The Sun is the largest mass in our Solar System. 

 Sun loops are large loops caused by the Sun’s magma (molten rock) shooting off of the Sun’s surface.  These loops can fly millions of miles into space.  Our Sun is approximately 25,000 light-years from the galactic core of our galaxy (the Milky Way).  It is like a really big star.  It is a million times bigger than the biggest. 
   Did you know that the Sun is made out of 92% hydrogen, 7% helium and the rest is other low number gasses? The Sun’s core is the hottest part of its matter.  It is 27 billion° Fahrenheit.  The Sun does not rise or set.  It just looks like it does because the Earth is moving.  The Earth orbits the Sun every 365 space days.  Can you believe that the Sun can burn over seven million tons of natural gas every second?  A star can live for over three billion years.  If the Sun was hollow, you could fit 333,000 Earths inside!  The Sun rotates, too.  It rotates every 25-36 days.  It seems as if stars always stay in the same position night after night, year after year, but they actually do move over time.  They helped scientists to develop a reference system for charting a planet’s movement.  

  The moon does not give off light of its own.  It is the Sun that gives light to the Moon.  The Moon reflects the Sun’s light. A star is the only body in space that emits its own light; everything else reflects light from the closest star.  Can you believe that it is over 4.24 light-years to the nearest star?  Did you know that about 65% of all “stars” are actually double stars?  They are stars that look like one, but when viewed through a telescope, they are actually two stars.  Stars vary in sizes.  They can be as small as 7,000 miles in diameters, or as large as 900 billion miles in diameter.  Some stars change in brightness over a period of time.  They do this when the star’s temperature dramatically drops.  These stars are called Variable Stars.  

 A star has many different characteristics, such as their position, motion, size, mass, chemical ingredients and temperature.  No two stars are exactly alike.  The number of stars in the known Universe exceeds one billion.

Inspired by Wolves: 35 Beautiful Photos

The Wolf: A Power Animal Symbolic of Freedom

Wolf power or spirit animals point to an appetite for freedom and living life powerfully, guided by instincts. When a wolf manifests its presence as a guide in your life, it could be a call to live your life more freely, to bring the intensity of passion in your everyday endeavors.

Wolves are wild animals that are not easily domesticated and when they appear as spirit guides, they could be an invitation to look at what supports your authentic self and the true expression of yourself.

The wolf totem is a reminder to keep your spirit alive and trust your instincts to find the way that will best suit you.

To find out more about the wolf as a spirit animal, click here.

Wolf Love