Posts Tagged ‘dog’
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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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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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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Crazy Times
Things have been a little crazy around here lately. I blame the hurricanes in the Atlantic. If a flapping butterfly wing can trigger a hurricane, what do three hurricanes to the south/southeast of our continent trigger way up here? Probably something crazy.
The other day, Cyndie reported stepping out of the house to check on the chickens when she heard all sorts of commotion and squawking going on nearby. She found them over in the neighbor’s woods, all up in tree branches. It occurred in the late morning hours, so there was no reason to think they were just up there settling in to roost for the night.
She said it was easy to coax them down and lead them back near our compost piles, where she tossed some cracked corn in hopes of keeping their attention focused on our land. 
There was no sign of what might’ve chased them up into the branches.
Elysa and Ande stopped by last weekend and found the chickens in a wonderfully social mood. The birds enjoyed some grapes for a treat and spent a little time hanging out with the lounging humans.
Luckily, the birds weren’t loitering nearby on Tuesday when Cyndie was walking Delilah and a rabbit triggered a response that cut too sharp around a fence post. The ring which the leash was clasped to ripped out of the harness.
The dog was off-leash!
…And ignoring all commands, while disappearing into the woods after the bunny. Cyndie hustled to secure the chickens and then hunted for about a half-hour, before finding the escapee laying at the bottom of the backyard hill, looking like she was waiting to be found.
Just enough crazy to feel like something isn’t right, though, gladly for us, nothing forcing us to evacuate from fires, floods, or Category 4 and 5 freight-train hurricane winds.
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First Aroma
It was one week ago that I wrote about the waning days of summer and my noticing colored leaves in our grass beneath the tree that always turns early. Now, on the last day of August, it’s probably right on schedule that I noticed my first scent of dry leaves in our woods.
It doesn’t even look like there are enough leaves on the ground to be noticeable, but the smell is there.
I was doing some forest bathing with Delilah and breathing in the aroma as we walked the trail. It made me think of September, and then I realized that the month begins tomorrow.
The smell may not be early, but it seems like it is.
Last night was a gorgeous summer evening with a perfect temperature and fabulous sky when Delilah and I headed out later in the evening to tuck the chickens in their coop for the night. The horses had wandered through the open gate out onto the grass of the middle pasture again, and the scene was a perfect picture-postcard moment.
In sharp contrast to the travails of so many other people and places in the world, the sanctuary of our property is quite the healing balm for whatever assails my being.
The aroma of fallen leaves comes as a particularly precious added bonus.
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A First
Someone laid an egg. Yesterday afternoon, I found a cute little egg in one of the nest boxes, right where it’s supposed to be. It’s our first. Another milestone to record on the great migration to rural life for us.
Unfortunately, Cyndie wasn’t even here to enjoy it, as she has taken the dog and made a brief weekday visit to the lake with our friend, Melissa and her two daughters.
Maybe that’s why the chicken felt calm enough to lay an egg. Delilah hasn’t been around. The rabbits seem to have figured it out, as they have been making themselves a lot more visible than usual during the last two days.
When I got home from work on Monday, Pequenita seemed to be completely confused about the missing canine. The poor thing seemed extremely wary about not being able to see the looming threat that she has grown accustomed to expecting.
It made her noticeably uneasy. I carried her to the spot where Delilah’s crate is usually situated, in hopes of communicating the message that the dog isn’t here, but it seemed to upset her even more for some reason.
They behave a lot like the cat and mouse of the cartoon “Tom & Jerry,” so maybe, despite the appearance of animosity between them, there is a bond that has grown to mean something special. Although they seem to be constantly at odds with each other, the truth is, they complete one another.
Pequenita is anxious over the disappearance of her other half.
I wonder if she would be interested in a cute little egg as a temporary surrogate.
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Near Miss
Are you as amazed as I am that our three chickens continue to survive ranging freely around our property, despite our having done nothing different to protect them in the time since some predator decimated the flock of nine birds?
It almost seems counter-intuitive that something would attack the large group of birds, but now no critter has bothered with the three that remain. Maybe with such low numbers, it isn’t worth the trouble of stalking them compared to the easier pickings of attacking a large flock.
None of this factored into Delilah’s thinking yesterday.
While Cyndie and I were unloading bales of hay from the pickup and stacking them in the shed, we let Delilah hang out with us to watch. Cyndie had hooked the leash to the front of the truck.
Meanwhile, the three chickens wandered over to peck at the mess of hay shrapnel that falls from the bales. I’m guessing they were growing used to seeing the leashed dog and didn’t feel particularly threatened.
Everyone seemed to be getting along just fine, until Cyndie decided the charade had gone on long enough. She told me that she meant to shoo the chickens away and was planning to remove Delilah from the captive spot to take her for a walk and get her away from the constant tease of free roaming chickens, which surely was tempting fate.
Except that the moment Cyndie processed that thought, (when I think she may have indeed made some sound toward the chickens to back them off) Delilah exploded against her restraint and ruptured the webbing of the harness that held the ring to which her leash was hooked.
Delilah chased, the birds panicked, and Cyndie and I both screamed at the dog with all our energy. The chickens ducked the fence into the paddock, which slowed Delilah a bit, and by the time I got down off the stacked hay in the shed, the dog had paused her pursuit a short distance beyond that fence.
Was she really listening to us? Cyndie thinks so. She declared it a partial victory, because Delilah did choose to stop the chase and did, hesitatingly, come back to us. We were able to hook the leash to a different ring on her harness and Cyndie walked her to the house to confine her until she calmed down.
Disaster averted, but not for lack of trying.
Those three birds must have some special luck that they escaped unharmed again. Or maybe they have a cat’s nine lives. Yesterday seemed like the kind of ruckus that probably used up a life for a couple of our surviving birds.
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Dog Speak
John is out of town for the weekend and has asked the animals to fill in for him for a few days. Today, Delilah gets a chance to “bark,” and to do so without John or Cyndie hollering, “NO!” at her every time she does.
I Didn’t Mean To…
First, I just need to say, that joke about, “Squirrel!!,” …it’s really getting old. I’m sorry if we canines have a heightened sense of chase instinct. Other than that, hello! and consider this my face-wash of a happy dog greeting! There is so much to tell you about now that John has given me this unprecedented access to his blog thingie.
Did you know he asked the cat, Pequenita, to write for today before he asked me? I think he was just trying to be nice to her, because he sees how smitten she is with him. He absolutely knows I totally own her. That’s why he always feeds her first, trying to show me how high and mighty the little meow machine is around here. I see right through him. I can drape my paw over her back any time I want to and she just sits there with a stupid cat expression on her face.
She thinks she’s all that because she gets to roam free all night when I am imprisoned in my crate. Whatever.
What can I say? Dogs and cats. We are what we are.
Now, dogs and chickens… That’s another thing altogether. I didn’t mean to end that chicken’s life when I raced up and grabbed her with the soft grip I’m so practiced at using. When I do that to the baby rabbits around here, they never seem to have a problem with it.
I think the bird probably had a weak heart and couldn’t survive the excitement of seeing me up close. I’m a lot to handle, I know. I get that.
Hold on a second, I need to go bark at the window again. There’s nothing out there, but I still need to do this regularly to make a good impression. I mean, what if there was a rabbit/bird/squirrel/deer/cat/another rabbit/raccoon in the yard and I missed it? What would that do to my reputation?
I’m sorry if I’m panting too much. It gets to be a habit in the summer, between this thick coat I wear all the time and the pent up energy from confinement. Yeah, I brought that full-time leash rule on myself. I admit it.
A girl’s gotta run, you know. And when you’ve got legs like these… combined with my nose! Oy! I don’t blame John & Cyndie for their precaution. <yawn>
Squirrel!!
Dammit. Pretend you didn’t just see that.
I was doing so good for a while there, too. You should know, it’s taken all I can muster to paw out these human-like word sentence things and not just type, “Are they home yet, are they home yet, are they home yet…”
It’s a dog’s life, I tell ya. <bark! bark, bark!>
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Relative Something 