31 March, 2011

More childhood dreams fulfilled.

When I was a kid, every year I looked forward to getting the J. C. Penney Big Book, their Christmas catalog full of fantastic shiny toys. I pored over it for weeks, possibly even months.

Yesterday I ordered one of the things I always stared at but never got as a kid (mostly because I never put it on my Christmas list, I suspect): a rock tumbler. I plan to collect utterly random rocks and polish them. I also plan to solicit rocks from people and polish those and label them with the name of the donor.

Other people go out looking for specific rocks, or really cool rocks of one variety or another. Me, I’ll just be asking people to go grab the first small rock they see and send it to me.

(For the record, other childhood dreams that have been fulfilled: Dobermans and a black German Shedder. Still no pony, though.)

27 March, 2011

The naming of dogs is a difficult matter: the conclusion

I registered Sid today, as Blackthorn’s Obsidian, after much thinking and even probably over-thinking. But I do like my dogs to have strong names that suit them, and I generally don’t name a dog lightly, no matter what Tink’s name suggests!

So despite the fact that Christine may laugh at me for reading too much into her kennel name, I’m really pleased with the way Blackthorn and Obsidian go together.

From Druidry.org’s page on Blackthorn:

According to John Matthews, the message of Blackthorn is “Magic is Everywhere”. . .Blackthorn is used for purification, as well as protection, ridding the atmosphere of negative energy. It deals with issues on a Karmic level, which cannot be avoided. Meditating on Blackthorn can purify our minds of negative thoughts and impulses at the deepest level of our psyche. It can aid us in combating fear, depression and anger.

And then, of course, we have obsidian itself:

Obsidian is truth-enhancing. A strongly protective stone, it forms a shield against negativity. It blocks psychic attack and absorbs negative energies from the environment. Obsidian draws out mental stress and tension. It stimulates growth on all levels, urging exploration of the unknown and opening new horizons. Brings clarity to the mind and clears confusion. Helps you to know who you truly are. Obsidian dissolves emotional blockages and ancient traumas. Promotes qualities of compassion and strength.

Obsidian aids the digestion and detoxifies. It reduces arthritis pain, joint problems and cramps. Warms the extremities.

Black Obsidian is a very powerful and creative stone. It increases self-control. It forces facing up to one’s true self. Releases imbalances and negative energies. Black Obsidian is protective and provides support during change. It repels negativity and disperses unloving thoughts. (Source)

My Siddymonster has a strong name, that nicely captures the more metaphysical aspects of his service doggery. Currently my hairy talisman is asleep next to my chair, unaware that a momentous event has occurred and he has an Official Name forever and ever, now. He’s got a lot of name to live up to, but he’ll do it just fine. At almost 9 months old, he’s showing flashes of the adult dog he will be: steady, utterly loyal, smart, thoughtful, and careful. It’s a beautiful thing, watching him grow up.

25 March, 2011

They grow so fast…

I measured Sid again last night, one month after my last Dog Measurement Extravaganza. He’s up to 24 1/4″ right behind the shoulders, exactly the same height as Zille although he tends to look taller because he has a heck of a lot more hair than she does.

The height right behind his shoulder blades is a pretty important number. The handles of mobility harnesses for dogs top out around 9″ unless I get something custom-made for the handle. Since my ideal comfy cane height is right around 34″[1], I really need Sid to hit 25″ at least. But he’s got a while yet to get taller and I think it’s safe to say he’s going to get tall enough, at this point.

Also since I didn’t measure him until he’d been here about a month, that suggests that he’s grown at least an inch since he came here. I do know that when he arrived, he was visibly shorter than Zillekins.

In other news, this weekend is my first school field trip in, like, 17 years or something. My Civil War Military History class is going to Gettysburg. Predictably, although the weather has been FANTASTIC, on Wednesday the temps started plummeting and it’s predicted to be around 40 degrees and possibly rainy while I’m trying to tromp around a battlefield. Argh. Of all the weekends for the spring weather to turn cruddy, it had to pick this one.

[1] MY WRIST HEIGHT, WHICH IS WHERE A CANE IS SUPPOSED TO BE, IS ACTUALLY CLOSER TO 35″, BUT I FIND THAT REALLY KIND OF AWKWARD TO DEAL WITH AND HAVE MY CANE SET 1″ BELOW IT.

23 March, 2011

Spring is officially here!

Yes, yes, the temperatures have been getting steadily warmer for weeks and the bulbs we planted last fall have put up actual leaves and might decide to do flowers some day, and the first official day of spring has already passed. But as I know from growing up in northern Illinois, the official first day of spring often has nothing whatsoever to do with actual spring.

Actual spring, however, has sprung. Or to be more accurate, it has peeped! That’s right, the Spring Peepers are calling! And you can click right over there to the Virginia Herpetological Society page and hear them. Right now they’re not yet up to the “hundreds of frogs” level of calls, but there’s more than one of the plaintive little buggers out there peeping his little amphibious heart out.

I really love the frog calls that I get to hear here at the Manor. We also get the Gray Treefrog here, the Hyla versicolor one, and if you click over to VHS page for Hyla versicolor you can get an idea of what my back yard sounds like in the spring since they managed to capture peepers on that same recording. And we get the Upland Chorus Frog, who comes out earlier than the other two to make querulous creaking noises in huge numbers.

Screw the calendar, it’s not spring until the little frogs sing.

21 March, 2011

Multi-pet management

So these days we’re up to four dogs and five cats. This can make it a little bit tricky to make sure everyone’s needs are getting met, and leads to some creative management processes.

Cats have been the biggest area of concern. Rooney Lee has to be kept from eating kibble as it makes him projectile vomit, Braxton Bragg (aka Braximus Maximus Caesar) and the tabby girls (Noodlehead and Emmaline) must be kept from getting fat, and Aida the Small Angry Siamese must be kept from getting too thin. This is all quite an adventure as you might imagine.

The original method was to lock Roo in my room with his food and leave food for the other cats down while I was at work. The advent of Daniel meant that the cat kibble was getting picked up earlier because there is only so much desolate howling from Roo that Daniel can take. But under these methods, Aida kept just barely enough weight on to stay alive, while Braximus Maximus Caesar put on a small squishy gut.

The current method involves locking Roo in the crate we purchased for Juniper, which is still set up in the living room, with his ground raw food. Aida gets her very own bowl of kibble and another bowl with wet food in it and is locked into my room. Brax and the tabby girls get their own bowls of kibble in Daniel’s room, which can be picked up when Roo wakes from his post-breakfast nap and begins to whine to get out of the crate. Aida has been gaining weight at a steady, healthy pace since we started giving her “spa days” by herself, and is licking both bowls clean on a regular basis. Huzzah!

Meanwhile Roo’s food has been an adventure in itself, we recently upped him to 50 grams per meal (100 grams per day) because 45 grams per meal of rabbit made him whine obnoxiously from hunger for hours on end. We’ve also rotated, in the natural course of things, to duck for his food, and on the duck his coat has grown super-soft and extra-wavy. His ears and toes are also cleaner. So we’re thinking that the best thing to do is to eliminate the rabbit, which leaves Roo on a diet of chicken, turkey, pheasant, duck, and goose.

In dog news, it’s a struggle to get Sid to eat for some reason. He’s just not enthused about his food, and it worries me since he’s a growing boy. We’ve tried switching brands, garnishing the food with everything from water to an egg, feeding him in a crate, out of a crate, in a different crate, feeding him by hand. We’ve tried four different brands of food to date. Nothing reliably gets the boy to eat, and it drives me absolutely nuts.

20 March, 2011

Annual reassurance, or Tink Is Not About to Drop Dead.

Tink had her annual physical on Friday afternoon. I sent Daniel with her because I was feeling like flattened death-crap that had been warmed over. The verdict: aside from all her weird Tink-specific medical problems, she is in great physical shape. We have discovered no new weird Tink-specific medical problems that are likely to kill her. Huzzah!

For those of you who are new here (or those who have been around a while and do not keep a catalog of Weird Tink Medical Issues in your head), I always worry about my beautiful silver girl because she’s a picture-perfect example of what happens when you do heavy line-breeding without caring about the health of the dogs in the pedigree. I mean, go six or seven generations out on Siddy and he starts looking like his own grandpa, but those dogs were bred by people who were paying very careful attention to health and working ability, whereas Tink was…not.

So for the record, she has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, aka Rubber Puppy Disease. This is a genetic issue that causes her collagen to be malformed and abnormally fragile. It can have a lot of manifestations, but in Tink it results in skin that will break at the least excuse, joints that tend to be unstable if she doesn’t have good muscle tone (the tendons and ligaments are weaker and stretchier than they should be), and a tendency to get odd skin infections at the drop of a hat (currently we’re arguing with Tinea versicolor). She is microphthalmic, meaning her eyes are too small, and her left eye did not develop correctly and has an optic nerve coloboma, a big honkin pit in the eye with the optic nerve attached at the back of it. Her right eye suffered a retinal tear as a birth injury, which eventually lead first to retinal detachment, rendering that eye completely blind (a damn shame as it had no coloboma) and then a small cataract. Finally, earlier this year it suffered a spontaneous bleed that left it swollen to nearly the normal size of a dog eye, and we had it removed. Generally speaking I go for the least invasive treatment available, but in the case of her right eye a) it was blind already and b) if it was developing spontaneous internal bleeds I did not want to screw around with it and make Tink uncomfortable only to have it removed down the line.

She is also a Diva of the first water, prone to showing off and insisting on being the center of attention. When my friend Christine linked me to this video of a German Shedder learning a prancing heel, my first reaction was “you have to teach that? That’s how Tink walks on leash in public…” She is my beloved heart dog, my snuggly quadrupedal best buddy, and before I would agree to marry Daniel he had to come over here and make sure that Tink approved of him.

So I’m deeply grateful that despite Weird Tink Medical Issues, her heart and lungs and brain and guts are all working just fine, and I’m likely to have her with me for a while yet. She turned six in January and that combined with the mysterious bleed in her right eye had me all freaked out; to hear her vet say that she’s still going strong is therefore a relief. Here’s to many more years together with La Diva Tinkerbella.

19 March, 2011

You learn something new every day.

Yesterday I wound up coming home early because of a headache that was making me nauseated and miserable. They happen. I was kind of bitter about it because for the first time this year it hit 80F and warm weather is my favorite, and there I was in no state to enjoy it.

Anyway, I made it home and staggered and flopped into bed, leaving all the dogs on the other side of a 41″ baby gate (It’s one of these[1] and cool as heck, they have little cat doors in the bottom) so my wonderful husband could rub my neck so I could get to sleep. Unfortunately, Sid was upset by this. He stood outside the bedroom whining and moaning and periodically standing up and putting his front paws on top of the gate and rattling it , the very picture of distressed and affronted service dog candidate. His person was feeling unwell! And here he was with this stupid gate preventing him from sticking his tongue up her nose!

Which is probably why he decided to go over the gate. He did it very neatly, too, one small rattle that sounded like all the other rattles he’d been making in his quest to get into the bedroom. Once inside, he came and stuck his tongue up my nose, and in my ear, and snuffled me extensively to make sure I was going to live, and then he got in his crate. His little world was all right again.

Lesson learned: 40″ baby gates are an agreement between me and Sid, not an actual barrier. Then again I should have known, since Tink has gone over one before. Athletic dogs make life a lot more challengingfun.

[1] SO MUCH FOR THE “TALL 41″ HEIGHT HELPS PREVENT LARGE PETS FROM JUMPING OVER” PART. AT LEAST THEY DON’T DO IT REGULARLY.

18 March, 2011

On Dogs and Shoes

So a couple people I love and respect have brought up to me that they think the Shoe Analogy is problematic, because it compares dogs to inanimate objects and they don’t feel that dogs should be treated like things. Rather than continue to address everyone one at a time, and assuming that there are others out there who feel the same way but don’t trust me enough to approach me, I thought I’d clarify.

Despite the fact that I usually sound sort of flippant, I actually thought long and hard about the Shoe Analogy. Because (as I hope anyone reading my blog would realize) I do not advocate treating dogs like inanimate, disposable objects. I would hope, reading the way I write about my dogs, and dogs in general, and for that matter cats and chickens and Jeremiah Swakhammer the Eastern Box Turtle, that people come away with the sense that I cherish each one of these little beings whose lives are basically in my hands.

But I needed to find an analogy that able-bodied people would understand. Something almost everyone uses and would not dream of going out without for fear of getting hurt, getting sick, or just being really uncomfortable. Something so commonplace that unless the person is making an effort, no one remarks upon it. Something people of all genders use, so that no one would feel left out. That’s when I hit upon shoes.

Stop and think for a minute about your shoes. Odds are that unless you have problems that require special shoes, or spend a lot of time on your feet, you hardly think of them. So let’s pause for a second and consider all that the humble, taken-for-granted shoe does. A good sensible shoe lets you go anywhere you need to go. It protects you from harmful or just uncomfortable surfaces, it supports your arches so you don’t get weird random leg and back pain, some of them will even go the extra mile and support your ankles, too. Your shoes let you get up and get out of the house without having to think about where you’re putting your feet constantly, without having to ask if you can make it into the dog food store because there’s a ton of unshaded black pavement lying under the summer sun between you and a 30lb bag of grain-free kibble. Your shoes, in a very fundamental way, set you free.

And it says something about the way I think, the number of my friends who have disabilities that affect their mobility, the problems I deal with in regard to my own pain and balance issues, that I didn’t say legs instead of shoes. I could have. I mean, when was the last time you saw someone walking around and followed them to stare at their legs? (The right answer is “never” because otherwise YOU ARE CREEPY.) When was the last time you approached some random person in a store and were all “Wow, you have legs! I have legs! I had these great legs when I was a kid, I got a matched set the day I was born! Hey, can I feel your legs?”

But in my world, among my friends, legs are not reliable. My legs certainly aren’t, and I have a number of friends whose legs also cannot be depended upon. There are two things that make it possible for me to get out of the house: my mobility aid (the dog when possible, my cane when not) and my shoes. One holds me upright, the other keeps me from getting tetanus. So legs really and truly didn’t occur to me until I started writing this post. And before people object to me comparing a service dog to a cane — that’s the dog’s job. To be an infinitely superior cane, who will keep me from falling over whether I wobble left or right, who gives me a point of balance that I never have to lift up to move along with my feet. When I’m working Beowulf, when Sid gets old enough and well-trained enough, the dog is my cane. He is also my friend, companion, confidant, and adventuring sidekick, a pair of inquiring brown eyes, a wet nose nudged into my hand, a big heart (they both have huge hearts). He is not a pair of shoes, but I don’t know any other experience that I share with you, able-bodied gentle reader, than a good pair of shoes.

So, y’know, to those of you who found the shoe analogy problematic — stop for a minute. Remember whose blog you’re reading. Read what I actually wrote, which does not advocating treating dogs like shoes except insofar as everyone ignores shoes.

Let me close my quoting my beloved friend s. e. smith:

Access is a twofold issue: 1. You need to actually be able to access spaces safely (don’t pet the dog, don’t offer the dog food, don’t try to talk to you where you are in the middle of a task) and 2. You need to feel welcome and safe in public (don’t point and stare). Access is not just a physical need, it’s also an emotional one, and it’s possible to feel welcome and safe without being physically able to access, or to be able to physically access but feel very unwelcome. Being looked at like some sort of strange alien…yeah.

17 March, 2011

Lazy blogging — have some links!

From Marji at For the Pit Bulls: The foundations of empathy are found in the chicken

The study is the first to demonstrate that birds possess one of the important attributes that underpins empathy, and the first study to use both behavioural and physiological methods to measure these traits in birds.

From s. e. smith at this ain’t livin: Sally, Yes, Rover, No

Back in January, the New York Times ran a column by a physician describing how she almost killed the family dog. The column strikes a sort of rueful tone, but also with an overtone of ‘this is an amusing anecdote,’ something I suspect might not be the case had the dog died because of the doctor’s ineptness. It was a cautionary tale and a reminder that accidental ingestion of human medications is one of the leading reasons for calls to animal poison control hotlines.

From L^2 at Dog’s Eye View: Now In Effect

As of yesterday, March 15, 2011, the new revisions to the Americans with Disabilities Act are now in effect.

16 March, 2011

Dog training is sometimes silly.

Yesterday was a high-pain sort of day (THANKS WEATHER) but I really wanted to get in some training time with Siddy. He lights up with the clicker comes out, so I decided we’d just do stuff for fun, because I was on drugs that make me slightly fuzzy in the head. Fuzzier than usual, anyway.

The end result of this is that 1) Tink threw a tantrum because she didn’t get to play the clicker game and 2) Sid is now well on his way to handing me my pack of cigarettes when I ask him for them.

Someday I’ll be serious about this whole training thing. Yesterday was not that day.

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