Recirculating Cheese

(This 2009 pic is my phone background, naturally. I like big butts and I cannot lie.)

It was pretty much inevitable when she didn't respond to treatment. She wasn't getting much worse, but she wasn't getting any better at all. She wasn't in pain or even distress, but I didn't want to wait until she was in pain or distress. If I wasn't going away tomorrow, of if I was more sure of her condition, I would have (selfishly) waited until after Sunday, our 6-year anniversary together. But I didn't want to her to have a crisis while I was away.

So I had her put down at 10:00 this morning. wereterrier and lyonesse were there with me. Once she was down on the ground, we were petting her as she died. Even more than with the cat and dog, I could feel the transition from horse to dead horse - a palpable change in muscle tone.

I took a big chunk of her tail, which maybe I'll have braided together with Cheyenne's tail into a bracelet or something. I'll also take her leftover grain, and make horse cookies. (She was always a picky eater, so we've been in the habit of collecting her uneaten grain so I can see how much she is or isn't eating, since I'm not usually around for feeding, and also so I can feed it out for lunch or snackies. She especially doesn't like anything dusty or powdery, so I've been sifting out her leftover grain and making cookies with the powder. But now I've got the remaining 3 gallons (about 3 weeks worth) of leftover grain - enough for about 36 dozen cookies.)

Anyway, I've been remarkably okay for most of the day. I really wish it hadn't come to this, but I think I made the right decision. I'm just more bummed than anything else right now. (And the 'death' tag rises to 29 uses, even without posting about Terry Pratchett.)

Thanks to teh Facebooks, I found out that my high school psychology teacher, one Donald Palmisano, died today of esophageal cancer (the same thing that killed our neighbor six years ago). Mr. Palmisano was a flamboyent Italian-American who taught us psychology through opera, since that has all the great themes and emotions - misplaced trust, misplaced mistrust, passion, betrayal, and the ability to sing while dying of tuberculosis. He swore a knowledge of opera had practical benefits as well, like impressing your date. "This situation reminds me of La Boheme." "Oh Paul, I didn't know you knew opera." "I know...many things."

Anyway, the local paper did a nice profile last month. I haven't seen him since 1982, but he was one of two high school teachers who made a lasting impression on me. (The other once confessed that he became a high school chemistry teacher because he liked to blow stuff up. He also hosted the high school science fiction club.)

Our next door neighbor died a few weeks ago. He was 83, same age as my dad and Francie's mom, but he'd been in poor health for several years, largely house-bound for the last year, except when he was in the hospital.

Anyway, his kids lost no time putting his house on the market. Over the weekend, they emptied 40+ years of cruft into a dumpster. The only things I salvaged were a cheap 4-gallon stock pot (for making beer) and a complete 1937 encyclopedia. And then the dumpster was gone before I got around to checking it again.

Any anyway, it's listed here at $275k, which is cheap for this town. There's an open house on Sunday.

Shortly after we got back from vacation, one of our hens started disappearing. Didn't turn up for bed check, usually (but not always) showed up sometime in the middle of the day to let us know she was okay, then disappeared again. Okay, she's got a nest somewhere and has gone broody. We have a rooster who's been courting her assiduously, so we'll wait until she either gives up, or comes back with chicks in tow.

Friday afternoon found her taking a tremendous dust-bath in the yard. Decided maybe we'd follow her, see where her nest was. But every so often there's this...smell. Like something's died. The stench of death, as it were. It's hard to tell, but it's stronger by the chicken coop. Could something have crawled underneath and died? Because it smells like death.

Hands and knees. Flashlight, rake. Started pulling out the leaves and... egg shells. And eggs. Six whole eggs, no seven, no wait, a couple from one of the other hens. "Whole" has to be put in quotes, because at least one is majorly cracked, and only the membrane is holding the inside in. One exploded while I was pulling it out, and another exploded while I was burying them.

"Exploded" is perhaps too dramatic a word. "Popped" or even "burst" is more accurate with regards the sound and the effect, but consider that eggs should never ever do this - rot and ferment and build up gasses to the point that the shell, which was intended to prevent stuff getting in, is now preventing stuff getting out (and not good stuff neither).

They say rotten eggs smell like sulfur. It's possible that the rooster was actually doing his job, and last week's heat killed the embryos, and that's why it smelled like death, or it's possible that exploding eggs just smell that way. I don't plan to do a controlled study, in any case.

Chicken status: 3 hens, 1 rooster, in the coop, no one camping out elsewhere.

+ Yesterday was the road trip to freakin' Vermont, to see an adorable Icey mare. Text and pictures on that later (plus food p0rn).

++ Today was the barn visit by the MSPCA. They want to see what sort of a home I'm going to be providing for their horse. 24x7 turnout with run-in sheds, free choice hay, well-maintained, well-organized barn, active boarder community, private access to the state forest, Mass. Horse Farm of Distinction for 10 years, etc. Yeah, I think we're worthy. I wasn't worried about being turned down, even with the current conditions (mixed ice and frozen shit), but I was happy to show the place off.

++ So yeah, it's Gemini for me, and it's just a matter of logistics. For one reason and another, it's likely to be around the 12th of March before she actually moves in. But I'm happy. :)

--- On the way out, I found the barn cat, who had been hit by a car. Cara Mia was the mother of our two kittens, plus dreams_of_wings and aatish2's kitten. And I'm not happy. :(

This is a terrible street for cats, and after losing two cats to it, we no longer let our cats out. Keeping a barn cat inside isn't an option, but I had never seen her anywhere near the road before. She was just about two years old, and absolutely sweet. :(

This is not a happy post. Just skip over it.

This is my horse. He's a good, old, skinny, ornery, surefooted, mountain goat of a trail horse. And he'll probably be dead by this time tomorrow.



He was down on Thursday morning, but was well enough to come up for grain Thursday evening. Friday he wasn't moving his back legs at all, and didn't/couldn't come up for grain. I went over last night to see him, instead of watching the presidential debate.

This afternoon, I got there just as the vet was leaving, so all I have to go on is the owner's version of what the vet said. He has no detectable pulse in his left hind leg, and it's cold and basically dead. The owner said the vet said pulmonary embolism, which doesn't make sense, since he doesn't have any problem breathing. According to the wikipedia, "the most common site of origin of pulmonary emboli are the femoral veins", so maybe he meant femoral thrombus, but I'm not the one with the DVM.

In any case, he has no circulation to the left hind leg, he can't move it, and he's just standing in the paddock, occasionally rotating around the hind legs, even more occasionally dragging himself a few feet, as when he felt beset by the other horses (he was getting treats, and they wanted some of the action). He's probably getting put down tomorrow morning, but I'll be on a plane to California by then. So I stood with him in the rain for 4 hours this afternoon, feeding him treats, grooming him, singing to him, and generally saying my goodbyes.



This is lyonesse, feeding him hay. He still has a good appetite, despite having some dodgy teeth, and despite a rather severe case of diarrhea - also not good for keeping weight on the skinny old horse.

Cheyenne came into the barn as a boarder, as someone else's horse. But he proved too much for his owner, and she was intimidated by him. She was paying Laine (the barn owner) to train him, but he didn't need training per se, so much as regular work, so Laine sublet him to me. At the time, the horse I had been riding had recently died, and I was a sort of floating leaser, riding whoever was available, and whoever needed riding. Cheyenne's owner eventually stopped showing up, stopped paying, and Laine seized her horse as abandoned property. Rather than sending him to the auction house (how much will you offer for this 24 year old horse?), she kept him as a lease horse. He had another rider in those days, who left to be a cowboy in New Mexico (true story). I've been his sole rider for about 5 of the last 6 years.

Once we got past the testing, and the trust issues, and all the ear-pinning, air-kicking Drama, Cheyenne turned out to be a fabulous trail horse, with an inerrant sense of direction, combined with an inclination to explore, to bush-wack if necessary. See e.g. i said to the horse, "surprise and delight me," and he did. Together, we've covered probably 75% of the trails in the Harold Parker State Forest, and the ones we haven't been on are mostly both far from the barn and on the other side of a busy road. He probably knows the trails better than I do, and he has a definite preference for the narrow, twisty side-paths over the big, wide fire roads.

I also have to give props to lyonesse, who has been my riding instructor and co-conspirator for the last two years or so. At her instigation, we got him out of the ported western bit (low-ported, but ported nonetheless) into a rubber D-ring snaffle bit, and ultimately into a side-pull bitless bridle, with no loss of communication or control. We've also been working recently on communication and aids through the seat and legs, where he's been used to being steered exclusively through the head. I think I've become a better rider, he's become a more responsive mount, and we've become a better team.

Anyway, there's lots more I could say about Cheyenne, and the barn, and riding in general, but it's late and I still have to pack.

Quail are nature's snack food. (Actually, I originally said this about mice, but it holds for quail as well). So we named the bird (birth announcement, baby pictures) Fizzing Whizbee, or just Whizbee, for the Harry Potter candy that flies just out of your reach.

We'd been keeping her in a cage in the guest room/office, but she kicked her bedding all over the floor, and pooped on the floor when let out of the cage. So Francie built her an outside enclosure, and a little quail house. We started putting her out during the day a couple weeks ago, then starting leaving her out overnight this week (just in time for it to get cold and damp).

Last night/this morning, something got to her. We found a small hole dug under the enclosure, a lot of wet feathers outside the enclosure, and, a little ways off, a single foot. Until we found the foot, there was some hope that she'd gotten away (although she never had any street smarts, and wouldn't have lasted long in the wild anyway).

We still have a bunch of (unfertilized) quail eggs that she laid. We'll blow out some of the shells, but they're a bit delicate.

(To be perfectly clear, we're not talking about the dog in the icon - that's lyonesse's dog. We're talking about a black greyhound, last pictured here.)

Empress Josephine is a dog of very advanced years. She's 14½, and has been noticeably declining for the last couple years. She's lost a lot of weight, and, more importantly, she's lost a lot of muscle mass in her hindquarters. She can't stand up without assistance. She can't climb stairs without assistance. She has to be carried down stairs. She has a number of mysterious lumps, skin tags, etc, and a big fluid sac on one elbow. OTOH, she still eats and drinks, and appears reasonably content. She doesn't seem to be in pain, but I really can't say for sure, since she's never been one to complain.

She's prone to falling on her butt, and recently gashed her tail. I bandaged it, and it seemed to be doing okay, but the other day she fell on it again, and opened it up to the point that the wound went halfway around her tail. We got to the vet 10 minutes before closing time, got it stapled shut, but the vet suggested that we might want to consider her "quality of life", which re-opened a discussion we've been having for about a year.

I want to do the right thing by my pets. I'll do my damndest to keep them alive and healthy, but I'm willing to euthenize when it seems appropriate. The thing is, how do you tell? Our first dog developed lupus about two months after we got her, and died at the vet's while undergoing treatment. The second dog lived with arthritis for years, but declined rapidly when he finally started to go - it was a matter of days from "can't get down the stairs without falling" to "can't lift his head". With Josie, I've been looking for some obvious sign that the threshold has been crossed, but it's all been so gradual.

We talked about it, Francie and Kylie and me, and decided that this really is the time. Saturday is the day. I think it's the right thing, but it feels like hell.

One of our hens died this morning. No idea what happened. They don't get handled every day, so our first clue (yesterday) was that she wasn't using the perch, but roosting on the floor. When I picked her up, she had lost a shocking amount of weight - down from about 6 pounds to maybe 2. She remained so fluffy that it really didn't show. No other obvious signs of distress other than the weight loss (and death, of course) - eyes were fine, feathers were fine, legs were fine. We don't know how old she was - hadn't laid in several years, so not young - so it might have been old age related.

The others appear to be healthy, but they all have a touch of diarrhea, so I wormed them today. This means we can't eat the eggs for a couple weeks, but they mostly haven't been laying anyway. When it gets a little warmer, we're going to strip the coop and dust for mites (regular spring cleaning).

This is a bit distressing, and mysterious, but we're just going to keep a close eye on the others for the time being.

I just found out that my neighbor Bill died Wednesday of throat cancer. He was 57. That doesn't seem so old to me now as it once did, maybe because it takes less and less imagination to see myself as a 57-year-old person. Heck, even 80 doesn't seem that old to me anymore; my dad's going to be 80 in a few weeks.

(My dad, BTW, is in his second round of chemo for lymphoma, doing well as far as I know, but I'm not renowned for keeping in close touch. I'm almost afraid to call.)

The thing I didn't post about was 2 weeks ago today, when we attended the funeral for the father of a close friend of ours. Full Catholic funeral mass, including communion. The priest had no compuctions about speaking for the audience about what We believe and how We feel and how thankful We are that the deceased is in the hands of God. But there was nothing about the deceased himself, no eulogy, nothing to indicate that the priest knew more about him than his name, despite the fact that he was a member of the congregation for decades longer than the priest himself.

Dick was a retired firefighter, and the firefighters were much better about acknowleging and respecting one of their own. As the funeral procession passed the fire house, all the trucks were pulled out to the street, with their lights flashing. And that's where we sussed that the reason the car was pulling hard to the left was that it had a flat tire. If you have to get a flat tire while in a funeral procession for a firefighter, the place to do it is in front of a fire station; the firefighters totally took control, gave Francie a ride to the cemetary, changed the tire for me, and had me on my way in a matter of minutes.

Anyway, that was then. We'll be ducking out of Arisia tomorrow for Bill's wake. He's having a private funeral now, with a memorial service to follow when they can arrange a gospel choir.