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The dog seems to be anxious about something, because she's lying next to me on the sofa, something she almost never does. OTOH, this means she's next to me on the sofa, and I'm petting her, and telling her she's a good dog, and everything else you might do with a sofa dog.
After more than two years, we have a dog again.
Mercedes is a 6 year old Australian Cattle Dog mix, surrendered to the MSPCA because she was miserable living with children. She never did anything untoward, but once, when cornered by a group of 5-year-olds, she went pretty much catatonic and pitched over sideways. So obviously, the biggest question was how she'd react to Kylie. Initially shy, but in short order Kylie was walking her with no problem on either side.
( +2 )
This has been in the works for a week, but I didn't want to post about it, for fear of jinxing it. I first saw her after my volunteer shift last week, took her for a trial walk, and when I got back to the desk, there was someone else waiting to meet her. So I started filling out the application that minute, because I've seen how this works. About a month ago, there was a small whippet (possible Italian Greyhound cross) who, when I first saw him, already had two applications; mine was the third, but I knew my chances were slim to none. Ironically, we met him again last Saturday, when his adopter brought him in to have his nails trimmed.
We had an hour-long behavioral consultation yesterday, which failed to dissuade us. Two hours today, going over paperwork, getting rabies vaccine, heartworm, flea/tick, etc., also failed to dissuade me. So here I am, again with a dog. The cats are hissing, the chickens are running away, and I'm happy. :)
Mercedes is a 6 year old Australian Cattle Dog mix, surrendered to the MSPCA because she was miserable living with children. She never did anything untoward, but once, when cornered by a group of 5-year-olds, she went pretty much catatonic and pitched over sideways. So obviously, the biggest question was how she'd react to Kylie. Initially shy, but in short order Kylie was walking her with no problem on either side.
( +2 )This has been in the works for a week, but I didn't want to post about it, for fear of jinxing it. I first saw her after my volunteer shift last week, took her for a trial walk, and when I got back to the desk, there was someone else waiting to meet her. So I started filling out the application that minute, because I've seen how this works. About a month ago, there was a small whippet (possible Italian Greyhound cross) who, when I first saw him, already had two applications; mine was the third, but I knew my chances were slim to none. Ironically, we met him again last Saturday, when his adopter brought him in to have his nails trimmed.
We had an hour-long behavioral consultation yesterday, which failed to dissuade us. Two hours today, going over paperwork, getting rabies vaccine, heartworm, flea/tick, etc., also failed to dissuade me. So here I am, again with a dog. The cats are hissing, the chickens are running away, and I'm happy. :)
the end of the dog
May. 22nd, 2008 10:42 pm(To be perfectly clear, we're not talking about the dog in the icon - that's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
old animals and excrement
Dec. 3rd, 2007 11:24 pm1. Empress Josephine, 14 year old greyhound, had a couple days of explosive diarrhea (two words that should not occur together) last week, all over both of her beds, the floor in between, and herself of course. Fortunately, it appears to have been the switch to a new food, a food she took enthusiastically, but as we say around here, food that stays inside is better than food that doesn't.
Recovered, but of course she's still old, slowly losing muscle mass, having increasing difficulty getting up and down the stairs to the back yard. But we weren't expecting her to make it to 14, and we got her a full set of vaccinations at her last vet visit, because you never know.
2. Cheyenne, 28+ year old horse, also had diarrhea for about a week, apparently over now. At any rate, when I saw him yesterday, the shit that filled his tail had dried. I brushed it out, and it looks a whole lot better now.
More worrying is that he stopped finishing his grain, refusing carrots, etc, coincidentally right after having his teeth floated. Yesterday, I brought him some applesauce with molasses and oatmeal, and he went after it like he'd never eaten before, so he's clearly not decided it's time to die yet. His owner reports that he's gone back to eating his grain, so his teeth may be feeling better. I hope. I hope.
Recovered, but of course she's still old, slowly losing muscle mass, having increasing difficulty getting up and down the stairs to the back yard. But we weren't expecting her to make it to 14, and we got her a full set of vaccinations at her last vet visit, because you never know.
2. Cheyenne, 28+ year old horse, also had diarrhea for about a week, apparently over now. At any rate, when I saw him yesterday, the shit that filled his tail had dried. I brushed it out, and it looks a whole lot better now.
More worrying is that he stopped finishing his grain, refusing carrots, etc, coincidentally right after having his teeth floated. Yesterday, I brought him some applesauce with molasses and oatmeal, and he went after it like he'd never eaten before, so he's clearly not decided it's time to die yet. His owner reports that he's gone back to eating his grain, so his teeth may be feeling better. I hope. I hope.
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the dog is okay
Aug. 27th, 2007 10:58 pmPicked up Josie this morning (embarassingly, we missed closing time at the vet yesterday). She's recovered from the heat stroke, but they're worried about the diarrhea, so she's on a couple meds and a diet of chicken and boiled white rice. She may actually put some weight back on at this rate. Still a little wobbly going up and down stairs, but she's an old lady after all.
bikes, dogs, blue screens
Aug. 25th, 2007 04:40 pmToday was the Blazing Saddles Century, a ride I've done a number of times over the years, most recently two years ago. Given the heat and the fact that I haven't been biking much this year, I might have skipped it, but I promised tcb that I'd be there, and I'm generally game for a challenge, so I did. At the last minute, I decided to take the 20 year old Raleigh rather than the 5 year old Bianchi. They're both good bikes, both kind of curmudgeonly, like me.
It was pretty good up to the lunch stop at mile 47, but I never my groove back, so I split off to do the metric century. It kind of felt like quitting (although it was still 17 miles back to the finish from the decision point), but I really didn't have it in me to go another 40 miles.
Funny thing about timing. As soon as I got home, I was greeted with a veterinary emergency. Josie (13½ year old greyhound) had collapsed in the back yard, couldn't even lift her head, and was panting fast and hard with her tongue all the way out of her mouth, even after being hosed down. Word from the vet - rubbing alcohol to the foot pads and groin area to help her cool down faster. By the time we got her to the vet, she could lift her head, and had retracted the tongue a bit. EKG, chest X-rays, blood work, oxygen, subcutaneous fluids, IV fluids, and the diagnosis is...heat stroke and dehydration. Still, they're keeping her overnight, because she's still not breathing normally without oxygen, and can't sit up, much less walk.
In other news, I picked up a new hard drive for the laptop, hoping to clone it for a minimum of fuss, but I appear to have waited too long - it won't stay up long enough to do anything meaningful, and often doesn't come up at all. I've got full backups of all my personal data and projects, but I never bothered to back up the programs. I can reinstall all the programs on the new disk, but that's a pain, and I can't get things like the corporate VPN client until at least Monday. We're at a crunch time, and it would have been handy to get some work done this weekend, but I don't feel like driving up to Nashua to spend time in the office on the weekend.
tcb that I'd be there, and I'm generally game for a challenge, so I did. At the last minute, I decided to take the 20 year old Raleigh rather than the 5 year old Bianchi. They're both good bikes, both kind of curmudgeonly, like me.It was pretty good up to the lunch stop at mile 47, but I never my groove back, so I split off to do the metric century. It kind of felt like quitting (although it was still 17 miles back to the finish from the decision point), but I really didn't have it in me to go another 40 miles.
Funny thing about timing. As soon as I got home, I was greeted with a veterinary emergency. Josie (13½ year old greyhound) had collapsed in the back yard, couldn't even lift her head, and was panting fast and hard with her tongue all the way out of her mouth, even after being hosed down. Word from the vet - rubbing alcohol to the foot pads and groin area to help her cool down faster. By the time we got her to the vet, she could lift her head, and had retracted the tongue a bit. EKG, chest X-rays, blood work, oxygen, subcutaneous fluids, IV fluids, and the diagnosis is...heat stroke and dehydration. Still, they're keeping her overnight, because she's still not breathing normally without oxygen, and can't sit up, much less walk.
In other news, I picked up a new hard drive for the laptop, hoping to clone it for a minimum of fuss, but I appear to have waited too long - it won't stay up long enough to do anything meaningful, and often doesn't come up at all. I've got full backups of all my personal data and projects, but I never bothered to back up the programs. I can reinstall all the programs on the new disk, but that's a pain, and I can't get things like the corporate VPN client until at least Monday. We're at a crunch time, and it would have been handy to get some work done this weekend, but I don't feel like driving up to Nashua to spend time in the office on the weekend.
medical status
Jun. 26th, 2007 11:47 pmMother-in-law's pathology report looks good - very early stage lung cancer, they think they caught the whole thing, chemo/radiation probably not needed (1 month followup, then every 6 months for a couple years).
Dog has a UTI, which is better than kidney failure. (She's 13½, where greyhounds have a life expectancy of 10-12.)
Daughter is short, eligible for growth hormones, but we're just going to continue to feed her for the time being. OTOH, going in for the orthodontic "records appointment" tomorrow morning - last step before getting braces.
Wife and I are doing fine, thankyouverymuch.
Dog has a UTI, which is better than kidney failure. (She's 13½, where greyhounds have a life expectancy of 10-12.)
Daughter is short, eligible for growth hormones, but we're just going to continue to feed her for the time being. OTOH, going in for the orthodontic "records appointment" tomorrow morning - last step before getting braces.
Wife and I are doing fine, thankyouverymuch.
up in the downeast
Jun. 15th, 2007 10:59 pmReally, it was sychronicity. We had already planned to go up to Orono to visit Francie's mother. Then she had surgery on Monday (more details when the pathology report comes back), and wasn't discharged until yesterday, so we were there to stay with her on her first night back at her apartment. Not exactly what we'd planned, but life is never exactly as you plan, and we got to be useful.
Front-page article in yesterday's paper was how global warming was making northern Maine more like northern Massachusetts (i.e. where I'm sitting right now), and how they could expect to see japonica mosquitoes, dog ticks and deer ticks (with concomitant danger to the moose population), opposums, and tufted titmice (cutest of all winter birds).
And in today's paper is an article about a William Wegman art opening at a Turnpike rest stop.
Each panel is 5' square, but then it's about 20' off the floor, in the atrium.
Front-page article in yesterday's paper was how global warming was making northern Maine more like northern Massachusetts (i.e. where I'm sitting right now), and how they could expect to see japonica mosquitoes, dog ticks and deer ticks (with concomitant danger to the moose population), opposums, and tufted titmice (cutest of all winter birds).
And in today's paper is an article about a William Wegman art opening at a Turnpike rest stop.
Each panel is 5' square, but then it's about 20' off the floor, in the atrium.
funney/strange
May. 29th, 2007 11:08 pmAfter picking up Kylie from school today, we went the mile or so up the road to the Addison Gallery of American Art for the William Wegman retrospective show Funney/Strange.
I was aware of the dog pictures - who isn't? - but being largely ignorant of the contemporary Art world, I was unaware of the depth and breadth of his work. A lot of his drawings and paintings didn't do anything for me, but many did, and most of his photography and video work did as well. The things that resonated for me tended to be the ones that turn your perceptions sideways. He has a large body of recent paintings based around postcards or greeting cards, expanding the scene in new and different directions, like a "dogs playing poker" postcard turned into a Last Supper scene, or (my favorite) postcards of the New York Stock Exchange and the Wailing Wall, stiched together into a seamless crowd scene.
Even the dog photos tend to have more going on than mere poses and dress-up, like the triptych of dog backs and rumps, looking like large rocks on a seashore. Or the 5-part picture of a dog lying on its back, each part matted and set enough apart from the others to invite you to consider the shapes and textures as abstract from the dog as a whole.
And it's all so big (e.g. the polaroids are all 20" x 24"). I bought the book, but you lose a lot of the detail (and impact) in the reduction. (And you art fiends are rolling your eyes, and saying "duh".) Elsewhere in the gallery, among the rotating display of their permanent collection, there's a Jackson Pollack piece; what the books and photos fail to show you is the incredible texture of his work. This is why we have art museums, and not just art books.
Anyway, the exhibit has been open for almost two months, and I'm embarrassed that I haven't gotten to it before, considering the number of times I drive by the gallery. But it's running for another two months, and it's free, with free street parking.
I was aware of the dog pictures - who isn't? - but being largely ignorant of the contemporary Art world, I was unaware of the depth and breadth of his work. A lot of his drawings and paintings didn't do anything for me, but many did, and most of his photography and video work did as well. The things that resonated for me tended to be the ones that turn your perceptions sideways. He has a large body of recent paintings based around postcards or greeting cards, expanding the scene in new and different directions, like a "dogs playing poker" postcard turned into a Last Supper scene, or (my favorite) postcards of the New York Stock Exchange and the Wailing Wall, stiched together into a seamless crowd scene.
Even the dog photos tend to have more going on than mere poses and dress-up, like the triptych of dog backs and rumps, looking like large rocks on a seashore. Or the 5-part picture of a dog lying on its back, each part matted and set enough apart from the others to invite you to consider the shapes and textures as abstract from the dog as a whole.
And it's all so big (e.g. the polaroids are all 20" x 24"). I bought the book, but you lose a lot of the detail (and impact) in the reduction. (And you art fiends are rolling your eyes, and saying "duh".) Elsewhere in the gallery, among the rotating display of their permanent collection, there's a Jackson Pollack piece; what the books and photos fail to show you is the incredible texture of his work. This is why we have art museums, and not just art books.
Anyway, the exhibit has been open for almost two months, and I'm embarrassed that I haven't gotten to it before, considering the number of times I drive by the gallery. But it's running for another two months, and it's free, with free street parking.
(no subject)
May. 25th, 2005 09:01 pmI feel like Jim Inchower from the Onion: "Hola, amigos, I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya." Haven't read personal email in a week, haven't read LJ in I don't know how long. Nothing to say? No, actually a lot's been going on. Too busy to say? No, not exactly that either. Just, I don't know, not too social lately.
1. I finished the Photoshop course at UMass a couple weeks ago. Really ought to post the pictures from that.
2. Started a new time-sink hobby – ripping vinyl. This is complicated by the exceedingly crappy sound card in my laptop, so what I do is a) record to my Archos Jukebox (hard disk-based mp3 player/recorder), b) copy the mp3 to the laptop, c) convert mp3 to wav, d) run the wav through a program that removes clicks and finds tracks, e) write the tracks back out as mp3. This can take a couple hours per album, not counting the recording time, and we've got something like 400 LPs, so this could take a while.
3. Work is kind of a cluster-fuck. We're putting out a major release, involving every engineering group, and it seems like more than usual has been left to the last minute. I mean, usually it's just me, but this time they're making changes to the configuration management and build/release infrastructure. Oh, and they're doing build-out next to my office, so there's intermittent noise and fumes.
4. Francie's mother was in the hospital all last week, so Francie has been driving back and forth to Portland (Maine) a lot. She was released on Monday, and Francie spent the last two days at her apartment, doing the shopping and laundry and cooking and such. Meanwhile, I've been a single parent, leaving work at 2:30 to pick up Kylie from school. Not complaining, just saying.
5. The dog broke a toe a couple weeks ago. She's pretty stoic about pain, so it wasn't immediately apparent what was wrong, but we took her to the vet after she'd been limping for a couple days. Now we're going back once a week for followup and split-changing.
6. It's almost Memorial Day, and we still haven't planted the garden.
That's about it, except for the monkeys in the kitchen. It sounds kind of whiny, but it's more 'eh', y'know what I mean?
1. I finished the Photoshop course at UMass a couple weeks ago. Really ought to post the pictures from that.
2. Started a new time-sink hobby – ripping vinyl. This is complicated by the exceedingly crappy sound card in my laptop, so what I do is a) record to my Archos Jukebox (hard disk-based mp3 player/recorder), b) copy the mp3 to the laptop, c) convert mp3 to wav, d) run the wav through a program that removes clicks and finds tracks, e) write the tracks back out as mp3. This can take a couple hours per album, not counting the recording time, and we've got something like 400 LPs, so this could take a while.
3. Work is kind of a cluster-fuck. We're putting out a major release, involving every engineering group, and it seems like more than usual has been left to the last minute. I mean, usually it's just me, but this time they're making changes to the configuration management and build/release infrastructure. Oh, and they're doing build-out next to my office, so there's intermittent noise and fumes.
4. Francie's mother was in the hospital all last week, so Francie has been driving back and forth to Portland (Maine) a lot. She was released on Monday, and Francie spent the last two days at her apartment, doing the shopping and laundry and cooking and such. Meanwhile, I've been a single parent, leaving work at 2:30 to pick up Kylie from school. Not complaining, just saying.
5. The dog broke a toe a couple weeks ago. She's pretty stoic about pain, so it wasn't immediately apparent what was wrong, but we took her to the vet after she'd been limping for a couple days. Now we're going back once a week for followup and split-changing.
6. It's almost Memorial Day, and we still haven't planted the garden.
That's about it, except for the monkeys in the kitchen. It sounds kind of whiny, but it's more 'eh', y'know what I mean?
