Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Third Diagnosis
Finally. After seeing a third veterinarian in the past week at the clinic in River Falls (because they were gracious enough to squeeze her in without an appointment at the end of each day), we have a diagnosis that seems the most logical and believable. Maybe the third time was the charm simply because the first two had ruled out other possibilities. This time, Cyndie came home with antibiotics to treat Delilah’s external yeast infection.
In my uneducated opinion, I’m guessing the back pain was probably referred pain from the infection, but I don’t think that was the prevailing opinion at the clinic. Cyndie seems to feel they saw this latest affliction as occurring in addition to the back problem.
I don’t understand why Delilah would suddenly suffer from these two issues concurrently.
Whatever. I’m not going to fret over it. Now we have another two prescriptions purchased and the dog is going to be spending some time in a cone of shame when Cyndie applies a cream to Delilah’s underside.
One silver lining I saw last night from this predicament Delilah find’s herself in: It significantly curtailed her usual uncontrollable barking toward the scary rumbles of thunder rolling in from the distance. She tried a couple of times, but gave up in short order. I think she was just too uncomfortable to persist.
It led to a bizarre sound that started as a bark and morphed into a yelp.
Just laying quiet appeared to be her preferred coping method.
Thank goodness for that.
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True Love
First, let me report that Delilah is no longer emitting as many outbursts of shrill vocalizations of pain as a couple of days ago. Maybe the meds are taking the edge off. However, things are still definitely amiss. We are seeing behaviors that are obvious indications that she is incredibly uncomfortable.
Between moments of normalcy, she is suddenly out of control in reaction to something that even she doesn’t seem to understand. Her behaviors give me the impression she wants to crawl out of her skin. I think, …allergic reaction. To her meds? Then, she focuses on licking at her groin, which isn’t easy because she still looks like it is hard to move, …like her back is still a problem.
We wondered about maybe a kidney stone?
Of course, it was Sunday, so we have waited until today for our next consultation with the vet. Delilah is managing incredibly well for extended periods of time between her bouts of discomfort, so we decided it wasn’t an emergency situation. We also recorded a video of her weird behavior to show the veterinarian.
Life around the house is relatively normal, with just an odd fraction of the impression that things are not alright. I think Pequenita is aware, but unsure how to respond.
She gave us a good laugh last night while we were laying on our bed. Cyndie always talks about how ‘Nita is totally in love with me, but doesn’t think that much of her. As she often does, Pequenita was laying across my extended legs when Cyndie slid over to lay next to me with her leg across mine.
Pequenita didn’t move a muscle, other than to make sure Cyndie wasn’t touching her.
We started laughing about it after Cyndie pointed out the scene to me, and suddenly our cat turned and gave me a look.
At first, I wondered aloud why she was looking at me. It was Cyndie who was horning in on her love.
Then, in an instant, Cyndie and I came to the same conclusion.
That look seemed to be saying, “Are you going to do something about this intrusion on our space?”
‘Nita didn’t look happy with our outburst of laughing to tears.
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Exhausting Effort
Yesterday was an unplanned effort that turned into an all-day haul. This is how it came about…
We were looking to double the amount of hay we have stored for the winter in our hay shed. Using just our pickup truck to move 41 bales at a time over the summer, we had accumulated under half of what we are comfortable having for the winter months.
It made most sense that we should find a trailer to haul more bales per trip, so Cyndie contacted our neighbor.
His immediate response was, “Not right now.”
He had a car loaded on the trailer and didn’t want to take it off. Maybe next week, he said. Okay, we can live with that. Then a day later, after I had spent half a day covered in spider webs and dryer lint (the hose venting to outside needed replacing) and half a day mowing and cleaning the mower deck of moldy grass clippings, I was desperately looking forward to a long soaking shower.
The second I turned on the water, Cyndie said our neighbor just arrived to drop off his trailer and wanted to show me some details of the hookup. Surprise! She told him I had just stepped in the shower and he said he would be waiting down by the trailer.
I barely got wet, then dried off and jumped into clothes so I could hustle down to greet him.
He generously provided his ball mount attachment to fit the coupler and guided me through all the safety connections. We are so very lucky to have him for a neighbor.
With trailer in hand, we suddenly had a different itinerary for our Saturday. We ended up making two trips to transfer a total of 240 bales of hay for the day. That involves stacking 120 on the trailer, strapping them down, anxiously driving to our place, unloading 120 bales, lifting 120 into place inside our shed, and then driving back to do it all again, a second time.
Keep in mind, the bales appear to get heavier with time, as our bodies fatigue. The second batch of bales are harder to lift, and I need to climb higher in the shed to stack them on top of the first load.
Since we were trying to fit our two loads into the hours our hay seller was available –basically, the hours in a day– this effort came with nary a break. As I finished stacking the first load, Cyndie hustled up to the house to put together sandwiches for a lunch we could eat in the truck at 1:00 p.m. while driving back to pick up the second load.
After a non-stop day awash in dusty, scratchy hay, I was looking forward, even more than the day before, to that long soaking shower to calm my itchy skin.
It was a soothing finish to a full day of exhausting effort.
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Sad Face
We are still waiting for significant signs of improvement in Delilah, but whatever is causing her sharp pain –even though she is simply lying on the floor or in her crate overnight– it appears to be more intense than the drugs she is on.
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Since Cyndie is trained to administer Tellington TTouch, she is offering Delilah more than just the pain killers prescribed by the vet, but our poor dog still finds ways to move that triggers involuntary vocal response of acute discomfort.
That is so too familiar to me and my degenerating discs. We have inquired with the vet about a local dog chiropractor and I’ve been wondering if Delilah would tolerate accupuncture. It helped to ease my discomfort.
There have been a couple of encouraging glimpses of Delilah’s old self appearing, but thus far they are too few and far between to allow us much release from the ongoing stress of knowing an animal in our care is suffering.
I’m looking at this as a way to help me slow down my perception of the ever-faster passing of days. With October looming large and the standing order to keep Delilah completely inactive for two weeks, I’m hoping the days will drag for a while.
It’s not my preferred way to slow down the days, but already it feels like our sad dog has been hurting for far too long. The next two weeks are going to take forever if we can’t let her have her usual luxuriously long walks.
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Pained Puppy
Our doggie girl is a hurtin’ unit right now. Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to cause her all this pain, but she is wincing with a shrill whine with disturbing frequency. Like dogs do, in between the bouts of sharp pain, she acts like all is well and good, but we know better.
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Cyndie took Delilah to the vet last week and their guess-timate of a diagnosis was possible arthritis or bulging disc in her back. They prescribed an anti-inflammatory pain reliever. A few days later, when Delilah woke in extreme pain and was trembling, Cyndie made another trip to the vet.
That visit included a blood test to rule out Lyme disease and ended up with a prescription for muscle relaxants. They still think the problem is in her back. Oh, and they also issued a strict order of total restriction of activity for two weeks. How are we supposed to accomplish that?
Yesterday, Cyndie called me at work and asked me to stop at the vet on my way home to pick up a new pain med. Delilah did not have a good day.
Today, we are hoping for any sign of improvement, because nothing so far seems to be bringing her relief. At this point, the total activity restriction seems like it will cause her more angst than the pain. Poor girl doesn’t understand why she isn’t patrolling the perimeter three times a day anymore.
I think she’s worried some unauthorized intruders might trespass on her turf if she is not on the job doing her regular rounds.
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Triple Fenced
The heat and humidity have broken and it finally feels a little more like September now. We were expecting the transition to involve a lot more rain than showed up yesterday. The line of precipitation slowly moving west is doing so at an angle that is sliding from the southwest to the northeast and for some reason, most of the rain moved around, rather than over our region.
Ironically, now I am wishing we would actually receive a heavy dose of rain, because last Friday we put a lot of energy into shoring up the silt fence at the property line adjacent to our neighbor’s corn field. In fact, we turned it into a bit of a terrace with three-tiered layers of silt fence.
The first two are short sections to slow the flow before it reaches our long fence. Between the top two sections there is the skeleton frame for a berm, in the form of piled dead pine trees. The soil runoff will accumulate around the branches and hold them in place. Eventually, weeds and grasses will grow through the branches and that forms a nice natural barrier that will hold soil in place but allow water to flow.
We have added support to the fabric fence by using old hay bales that we can’t feed to the horses because they have gotten moldy.
If I am able, I hope to trek out there in the middle of heavy rain to observe the action as it happens. At the very least, I now know that we need to check it after every big rainfall and remove excess soil if it accumulates.
I don’t know why I originally assumed the soil fence wouldn’t need regular maintenance, but after the soil conservation consultant pointed it out so very matter-of-factly, digging out accumulation makes total sense to me now.
If our enhancements work to mitigate the mud overflow messing up that area, we will be one step closer to being able to enjoy a good cloudburst when it happens. There still remains a problem in the paddocks, where a terrace or silt fence is not an option.
We plan to do some digging to create a couple of better defined routes directing runoff straight to the drainage swale beyond the wood fence, hoping to reduce the amount of flow traveling to one spot with energy that washes away our precious lime screenings and creates a deep canyon of a rill.
It’s fine if a little flow goes that way, but it is currently a problem because most all of the flow is combining to rush sideways along the fence, instead of straight under it out of the paddock.
The trick in the paddocks is, our solution needs to be horse-proof. Their heavy hooves have a way of disrupting all of the simple spade-width channels I’ve created in the past, causing runoff to flow every which way, and ultimately not where we really want it to go.
The next version we have in mind will be scaled up. Maybe I should triple-size it.
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Done Trenching
We had a variety of options available to work on yesterday, but chose to stay with the project to bring electricity to the chicken coop. It seemed as though the chickens were wondering when we were going to show up. When I stepped out of the house, they were all up near the front door.
I turned back to warn Cyndie, because she was bringing Delilah out with her. Despite a recent occasion when I was distracted while holding the leash and Delilah jerked violently in an attempted chase after the chickens, Cyndie reports a series of well-behaved, closely supervised, successful passes between dog and chickens.
Delilah is acutely aware of the chicken’s presence as Cyndie leads her past for a walk.
Despite the third consecutive day of abnormal heat for September, we braved the blazing sun to complete the trench to the barn. That was not an easy feat, because the last stretch crossed an area where we had laid down a lot of gravel for the driving path extending beyond the back of the barn.
To put it mildly, it was rather unforgiving. That’s great news …for a road. Not so great for trench digging.
Once inside the barn, we routed the cable to the circuit breaker box on the far side. That was about the extent of energy we had left to offer. Final connections will wait.
The hard part is complete.
We are done trenching, thank you very much.
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Adding Electricity
Despite the sweltering heat and humidity bathing our first day of autumn, freezing temperatures are not too far off, so work has begun to add electricity to the chicken coop. With an outlet available, we will have the option to provide a waterer that won’t freeze and maybe a light or heat lamp, depending on the situation.
On my third attempt to drill through the floor and miss a stud or screw, we were able to pull wire up for an outlet box. Then we trenched.
The chickens seemed to take great interest in our progress. Maybe they sense this is for them?
We are over halfway to the barn circuit breaker box this morning, so I’m optimistic I can get it done by winter.
Maybe I have some skills in procrastination. Time will tell.
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Cayenne’s Magic
One of the truest sayings is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. For some reason the last couple of days for Cayenne, it had become downright irresistible.
On Thursday evening, after we had walked the trash bin down to the end of the driveway with Delilah, Cyndie decided to open one of the paddock gates to the hay-field for the horses. They are well-familiar with the timing of being given access to the grass after the sun gets low, and calmly joined her as she neared the gate.
I stood on the driveway with Delilah and watched as the horses stepped out. Cayenne immediately walked up to the arena web fence, almost as if she was going to go right through it, then stopped and leaned over in attempt to graze.
I chuckled and commented over the obvious display of her interest. We know they like the short grass, and we keep the arena space closely cropped, but with the entire hay-field –now also cut short and open to their access– one would think they would be satisfied with the availability of the wide open acreage.
Regardless, Cayenne kept her focus on the arena grass. The other horses seemed satisfied with the grass right beneath their feet in the alleyway, but Cayenne moved along the web, continuing to seek access to the shortest grass.
I saw trouble coming the instant she put her head between the two lines of web and warned Cyndie, who was already trying to get around the other horses to redirect Cayenne’s attention. Before Cyndie arrived to back her up, Cayenne managed to make a mess of things, bending a step-in post and popping the web off in a mini-panic to extricate herself.
It was safest at this point to let her proceed forward, instead of getting her to back out. Of course, now the rest of the horses wanted in, so when Cyndie opened the access point to move Cayenne out, they all pushed in to join the fun. After some grumbly coercion, Cyndie got them all out and fixed up the fence.
We thought that was that on the issue, …until yesterday morning.
After breakfast, as we wandered down the driveway toward our first project of the day, we found Cayenne all by herself in the middle of the arena, looking guilty as hell while trying to project an aura of innocence. What was most shocking about it was that the web fence was perfectly intact and the access closed.
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Did she jump over to get in? Did she figure out how to step her four feet over without snagging the web? We have no idea.
The mystery will go down as simply being Cayenne’s magic.
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Embattled Planet
I do my best to send love out into our world, but lately it feels a little short, in terms of effectiveness.
We had a lovely time out to dinner with family in downtown Minneapolis last night to honor Julian’s birthday. I’ll give a happy shout out to Randle’s restaurant on the Nicollet Mall. Nothing pretentious about a straightforward menu and lots of sports on tv screens covering the perimeter walls.
This is the view I had coming home, and this is about as clear as it looked to my weary eyes:
During the long drive home, I was basking in the afterglow of the wonderful time we had, while also contemplating the attention grabbing headlines of catastrophic weather and geographic cataclysms. With hurricane Maria wreaking havoc in the Caribbean and the severe earthquake that occurred in Mexico, previous travails get overshadowed, yet are no less deserving of continued support.
From the challenges of renters forced to continue paying rent for unlivable properties in Houston and Florida in the aftermath of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, to the cholera outbreak in Yemen during their civil war, and the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya muslims in Myanmar, as well as everyday ongoing poverty and homelessness, there seems to be no end to the struggles around our globe.
I get to sleep in a comfortable bed, with a safe roof over my head, blessed with spectacular late-summer weather seeping in through an open window.
I don’t deserve to have it so good, and it makes it hard to fully immerse my mind in the blissfulness when others suffer so.
Sending love to all the aforementioned, as well as to all others with needs, known and unknown.
Would that it be that each loving intent we project out into the world would have influence enough to make some measure of difference, no matter what challenges others are facing.
Put more simply, I hope it helps.
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