Posts Tagged ‘dog’
Asher Digs
It is no surprise to learn that Asher digs after the scent of critters in the ground similar to the way our previous dog, Delilah did. Since the digging done by dogs is so destructive to our lawn areas, we spend a lot of energy discouraging digging in the grass. However, when on walks through the woods, I like to give a dog the chance to exercise their natural instinct. Yesterday, Asher plowed after something his nose told him was there.
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His efforts failed to produce any reward, but like Delilah many times before, that didn’t seem to matter. He just returned to the trail and we resumed our walk along the perimeter of our property.
Within a day or two of getting Asher home last week, Cyndie and I noticed he was adjusting to our regular routine more than we were changing our days to accommodate him. It’s another sign for me that he will be a good fit for the kind of pet we would like to have. After a bit of whining yesterday, he settled down for a good chunk of time in our outdoor kennel while we worked nearby. Cyndie was planting in her produce garden and I did my core strength and stretching exercises.
I recently read a recommendation that yoga routines can be enhanced by doing them outdoors and our philosophy of promoting the health benefits of forest bathing seemed to boost the idea doubly for me. This week I have moved my planking and stretching outside beneath the branches of two large trees. I’ve also made a change to the time of day I start, which doesn’t feel like it fits my routine yet but does offer a chance to linger in bed for a bit after waking. Slowly getting out of bed feels like a BIG luxury that suits me, even though working out first thing in the morning has always been my preference.
There are a few details I hadn’t considered when thinking it would be great to be outside. The mosquitos could become a problem and ants have already been a nuisance. The leaves aren’t completely opened yet so the sun was a little hard on my eyes yesterday. The ground not being perfectly flat is probably good in terms of adding difficulty for some balance routines but one particular bump interfered with keeping my back as flat as I wanted while stretching my hamstring muscles.
Speaking of new leaves opening up, I found this little specimen of baby oak leaves on the driveway beneath one of our biggest trees. They hardly got started and now it’s already over for them. That little sprig was about an inch across.
It’s sad to admit these brand-new leaves won’t even be missed. There won’t be a “bald spot” in the tree where they would have been. That tree will have more leaves than can be counted. At least we’ve given them worthy respect and have saved an image of them that will outlast all the rest of the leaves that survive them.
We are so very lucky to have all our trees. Looking up into the leaves when doing a cobra stretch is a great alternative to the ceiling of one of our rooms.
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Stormy Weather
The day started reasonably enough yesterday. The ground is still pretty saturated, but I decided to give it half a day before trying to mow some of the areas that are most in need. Despite my decision to mow our grassy areas in April and May (as in not doing No-Mow-May), we aren’t entirely shortchanging the pollinating insects of wild blossoms.
The dandelions are all over our pastures and the horses are absolutely thriving on the access we’ve finally given them to graze to their hearts’ desire.
After lunch, I hopped on the zero-turn mower and tried tackling a few tricky spots. I give my performance a C-minus, but a significant portion of that low grade comes from the ground still being almost un-mow-ably wet. It doesn’t help that I’ve yet to master driving without excessively spinning a rear wheel as I try to maneuver.
An embarrassing number of muddy skids are present in almost all of the areas I tried to mow. Luckily, the grass will recover, the ground will eventually get dryer, and I will get better at driving with practice. The getting dryer part will probably take longer than the other two.
Last night as we were eating dinner and watching the PBS Newshour, the weather alert tones interrupted the show with a tornado warning for our county and a community just east of us. That was an unexpected surprise. The sky didn’t look the least bit threatening out our windows at the time. I immediately brought up a view of the weather radar on my laptop. Sure enough, there was one little spot of intense-looking weather happening very close, off to our east.
As time passed, that one spot slid south and morphed in a way that started to wrap around us. At that point, the skies did turn more ominously dark and big raindrops started to fall. I kept refreshing the radar view and saw new cells popping up all around us.
The best part of the whole night of stormy weather was the fact that Asher never paid any attention to what was going on outside. Our previous dog, Delilah would have started barking at the invisible monster before Cyndie or I heard the first rumble of thunder and she would have kept it up despite every trick we tried to calm her. The fact that Asher is not similarly bothered by thunder and lightning is bringing us immeasurable appreciation and satisfaction.
Almost makes me not care that he can’t be trusted to stay off our bed and the kitchen counters yet.
He does bark when someone shows up at the door but not at thunderstorms.
Perfect. Good dog, Asher.
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Playing Balls
Not just one ball. Asher was holding one ball in his mouth while kicking another one around like he was in a game of soccer. I think he would be pretty good at futsal. The video below has a quality problem between 18-28 seconds. I apologize for my inability to solve the glitch. It plays fine on my computer but something must be failing during the upload.
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I am thrilled that Asher can catch almost every throw I send his way, that is when he doesn’t have another ball already clenched in his jaws. We are going to have a lot of fun sporting around together.
Yesterday afternoon, I let go of his leash and let it drag in the grass as we killed some time in the backyard. I’m happy to see that he is showing promising signs of not being a flight risk when outside without being tethered. We will get a little bolder about experimenting with him once his identification tag arrives. If he takes off for one of our neighbor’s properties, we don’t want him to have the appearance of being a stray.
We’ve only had him here since Monday, so he won’t be familiar to folks around here yet.
Some of them may have heard a new bark resonating in our valley. We think we’ve discovered a trigger that upsets him. He doesn’t like being tied on a short leash. Even though we were near him, he yelped until we fixed the situation. He was more satisfied being loose in the house and watching us through the windows than finding himself tied near us outside.
I got the labyrinth mowed using the push mower and also did some other cutting with the new zero-turn mower. Navigating slopes did not go well for me. I need to start cutting differently than I used to.
The landscape is ready for World Labyrinth Day tomorrow (Saturday). Cyndie will be baking treats today in preparation. The only thing left to make it a perfect day is out of our control: The weather. Hopefully, the 50/50 chance of precipitation will be in our favor until later in the afternoon.
While mowing the pathway of our north loop trail, I came upon a pheasant standing fully exposed in broad daylight. He calmly walked away from me as the tractor approached him for about 5-10 yards before turning and heading into the brush for cover.
I learned it is impossible to take a hand off one of the steering levers to take a picture while the mower is still rolling along. Playing ball with Asher is much easier for me than steering a zero-turn mower.
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Lonely Walk
I took a walk on the perimeter trail through our woods yesterday for the first time since Delilah died. That path was getting footsteps (boot steps) up to three times a day with Delilah to give her exercise that would expend her high energy. Sometimes I wasn’t all that interested in making the trek for a third time in a day, but I never regretted the opportunity once I was out there getting my own exercise and experiencing our precious wooded acres.
Without Delilah needing to be walked, I have been avoiding wandering our trails, partly out of respect that it was her thing and she isn’t with us anymore, but also because it would poke at my grief over her passing. Yesterday, I decided to trek through the crusty snow for the first time in almost three months to see if any trees have fallen or what wild animal tracks might be visible now that there isn’t a dog living here.
There were a few branches down and several spots where limbs burdened by snow had tipped over, now frozen in place. No large trees have come down in all the winter weather we’ve received thus far.
It was a lonely walk and it did poke my grief.
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Not Better
If something is not getting better, does that mean it is getting worse? Not necessarily, but possibly. We continue to face the parallel issues of Cyndie’s recuperation after breaking her ankle and Delilah’s mystery illness that is looking more and more like what may be the end of her life. Cyndie and I are striving to be positive and calming alongside the obvious sadness we are experiencing.
The main evidence we are getting from Delilah is that she has stopped eating. Short of further expensive veterinary options, we are left with that clear X-ray and good blood results as the only reference for ruling out easily resolved causes. There are a variety of other afflictions that may be triggering Delilah’s shutting down but at ten years old, putting her through the trauma to learn more won’t necessarily provide much in the way of extending quality years for her.
Since kitty treats were the only thing she would accept (her ignoring scrambled eggs this morning was a real gut punch), we figured she could enjoy those yesterday and get a little more than zero calories.
That just resulted in a return of her vomiting this morning.
I’ve shortened her walks to just long enough to pee and/or poo if she has it in her to do. I told Cyndie this morning Delilah’s poop was rather cat-sized. I guess that’s what you get on a diet exclusively of kitty treats.
She mostly lays at Cyndie’s feet but still occasionally pops up to bark at something outside that neither of us can identify. Delilah shows no signs of pain or discomfort so we are left with witnessing her slow down between glimpses of her old spark.
If she continues to refuse to drink water or broth or eat anything we offer, it will be a matter of days before we will need to make that final decision which is never easy to make.
Not much else beyond keeping Delilah comfortable seems very important to us at this point.
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Food Issues
How strange it is to have our Belgian Tervuren Shepherd becoming finicky about eating. In our attempts to treat her for what was becoming chronic vomiting, she seems to have lost trust that we are offering nutrition in good faith. We tried hiding her two prescription pills in every possible enticing morsel. She ate the first one or two and ever after has successfully separated the pills from whatever we hid them in.
Now Delilah is refusing the prescribed diet offerings and even turning away from servings of her regular food. The only thing she still gladly chomps are kitty treats left over from our days with Pequenita.
Maybe she misses her kitty sister.
Honestly, I think Delilah won’t get back to normal until Cyndie is back to normal, too.
This morning I heard Cyndie report to someone over the phone that she was off the prescription pain meds, so she is continuing to make good progress. The biggest burden she is struggling with is not that her ankle surgery is only one week old, but the fact that Delilah is not doing well.
I continue refining my technique for serving the horses their three feed sessions. Since half of them are supposed to receive larger portions, I can’t just leave them on their own or the bolder ones will move in and push away the two who should get the larger servings.
When I am successful in splitting them into groups by serving size, I can care less about who is stealing whose portion.
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Light is notorious for wanting to get in Swings’ space, yet Swings is the primarily dominant mare of the herd. Why Swings tolerates the intrusions from Light is beyond me. Is Swings peacefully sharing or is Light perniciously seeking control?
I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter to me since they both receive the same serving size. They both eat together until the servings are gone, so neither is getting short-changed.
Now if Delilah would resume eating until her servings are fully consumed and keep them down long enough to digest them fully, that would be great.
I need to go feed Cyndie. She seems to be having no problems eating food.
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Status Update
One week down, seven to go before Cyndie can hope to be allowed to put weight on her right leg. Not that I’m counting. I’m noticing promising progress in her pain control as she is reducing narcotics and replacing them with over-the-counter alternatives.
I wish we could say Delilah is showing as much improvement. Even though she is no longer throwing up like she had been, her energy has dropped and she’s totally rejecting the vet-prescribed food and meds that are intended to help her. We’ve been throwing money at the problem and have learned there is no blockage visible by X-ray and her blood levels all fall within a healthy range.
Taking Delilah for a walk has become an exercise of my patience. Instead of pulling me down the trail like usual, she now trails behind as far as the leash reaches. At one point, as she stood foraging for grass to chew, I hooked her leash to a fence post and continued on to feed horses without her.
Normally, she would bark and bark if we left her behind. This time, she didn’t seem to mind one bit.
I think Cyndie and Delilah are unconsciously in a contest to see who gets better first.
Between my tending to each of them, I have continued to chip away at tasks we had hoped to take care of before snow arrived. Yesterday, I finally retrieved Cyndie’s prized “door-table” that she sets up on two plastic sawhorses in the woods under a big tree. It’s a novelty that she loves having, but it sees little if any use throughout the summer. It is now stored in the barn for winter.
I also pulled out the ATV snowplow from the back of the garage and installed it on the Grizzly. In the morning, it seemed like I was going to have snow to scrape off the driveway but by the time I was ready to plow, the snow had again melted from the pavement.
It looks like we installed heating in the asphalt. I’m pretty sure that residual ground warmth is fading fast. Our temperatures are due to drop for a few days, swinging us from unseasonably warm to colder than normal for mid-November.
Eventually, I will need to plow the driveway. For now, I am more than happy to wait.
It feels strange to walk the snowy trails without Cyndie. Winter will be half over by the time she gets to join me again.
It challenges one’s ability to live in the moment when you can’t put weight on a leg for two months and the immediate moment involves uncomfortable surgery pain. It’s safe to say that both Cyndie and I are setting our sights on a day that is weeks away. For now, that’s the moment we are living in.
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Like November
It’s beginning to feel a lot like… November. Finally. The temperature stayed below freezing all day yesterday and we experienced a misty drizzle that created a shiny frozen glaze over surfaces.
The upper area of the paddocks just beyond the overhang had become a sloppy, muddy mess after the recent rains. Now it has become the classic ankle-twisting gnarled and knobbly frozen surface that makes cleaning up piles of manure an exercise in futility. It completely stymies my desire for impeccable cleanliness in the area where the horses linger longest.
This morning on our walk, Delilah and I enjoyed a little visit with the cows who seemed particularly curious about our arrival at the corner where our properties meet. I don’t know much about cows, but it got me wondering about how they view the world of wild animals that travel these acres in comparison to their confined domestic status.
It probably isn’t very different from the experience of our horses, but the horses give off an aura of awareness that the cows appear to lack.
After Delilah’s vet visit yesterday, we have her on a strict bland diet of rice and meat and are giving her some anti-nausea medication to see if her stomach can regain its control in keeping contents contained.
I am extremely grateful to have not needed to clean up vomit for more than a day. Here’s hoping for two in a row.
Cyndie’s mom came over yesterday and spent the night offering her help in kitchen patrol. Our kitchen is not optimized for her methods so she is sounding just as taxed as I do when I pretend to cook for Cyndie, and I know where most things are stored and how our appliances work.
I’ve become chief fireplace officer and video entertainment system tech.
Pain management appears under control for Cyndie now and she is doing her best from the confines of her recliner to advise on the location of searched-for items, hoping to stay ahead of Marie’s and my frustrations as we do the caretaking of the caretaker.
Not that I’m counting, but only 8-weeks to go before Cyndie can start putting weight on her right foot again.
By then, November will be a distant memory.
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Two Patients
That was one heck of a day, yesterday. It turns out that I have two patients to take care of because, in addition to Cyndie recuperating from her surgery, Delilah is experiencing a problem with continued vomiting.
Delilah’s condition isn’t too concerning at this point because she is regularly drinking water, pooping healthy, and is full of her typical spunk at normal times. It is, however, inconvenient to have her making disgusting messes unexpectedly at the worst times possible.
We can’t rule out stress as a possible contributing factor but there is also a possibility we have a bad batch of food or she could be developing an allergy to an ingredient.
I’m pretty sure Delilah doesn’t grasp the concept but I have her fasting for a while in an attempt to disrupt the troublesome routine she has fallen into. Then I will need to decide what food I will start testing to see if we can solve whatever is ailing her.
Tuesday night didn’t start out well for her because the thunderstorm we endured was quite dramatic with booms of thunder that shook the house. She was having a fit in her overnight crate trying to bark back the storm that wasn’t letting up. I tried staying up late with her to give some support but that didn’t seem to ease her distress much.
After a few-too-few hours of sound sleep, I was woken by Cyndie at 3 a.m. because she could hear Delilah throwing up. With her splinted leg propped up on pillows, Cyndie couldn’t do anything about it.
Last night, Delilah threw up again, just before dinner time. I was in the middle of cooking my own dinner and manning the phone tree of contacts with reports on Cyndie’s status. The doctor had called me to say everything went well and there were no complications. It was time to walk Delilah and tend to the horses but I was waiting for a sitter to show up and take care of those tasks.
I put Delilah on a leash in the front yard, tossed paper towels over the mess in the front entryway, answered my phone, and turned over fish fillets baking in the oven.
I thought last night was going to be a moment of rest while Cyndie was tended to by professionals. Nope. Forgot about the other patient here needing TLC.
At least Delilah doesn’t seem to realize anything is ailing her. If she had a bum leg, she’d still try to run anyway. That’s the way dogs are.
Good thing Cyndie doesn’t take after her dog.
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Relative Something 