Happy Sunday outside down here . . .

We keep hearing how awful the weather is up north around our families (Ohio, Pennsylvania and DC) and it is SO much nicer down here in Louisiana!   It's been up around the high 70's and low 80's all this week without rain -- nice and clear and sunny with a nice bit of wind. 

Since today is Sunday (and not package delivery), we've locked the front gate and let the horses out there into the front yard again.  They love it out there and WE love having them up there in front as well.

  

And obviously Boo enjoys being out in front as well . . .

They sure are cute critters, huh?   LOVE them!

It's been lovely that we could sit out on the front porch and watch them out there in front.  They've been hanging out up there all day long.  (Sure glad we have this nice place to live!)

POOR Boo! . . .

Boo has been such a sweetheart for all the years we've had him - and he's still adorable.  But obviously he's pretty darned old for a large dog and he's sure not feeling as good as usual at this point.  (He's a cross between a German Shepherd and a Husky and he's 15 or 16 years old.)

So instead of running around, he lays right by us most of the time these days --
and not moving around that much at all yesterday and today!

So these days we have to keep him separate from the other dogs because our Staffordshire, Joey, want's to attack him every time he gets a chance ever since Boo has been feeling bad, and our Cane Corso, Gigi, has to keep away from him as well just because she's way too big and activating. Although she wouldn't actually attack him, she no doubt WOULD just jump on him and that would certainly hurt him. So, he's all by himself these days - except with us.  

He's been really good anyway, but he's also had some problems.  He can't climb up into the truck anymore.  He used to ride with Mark whenever he went somewhere, but he can't do that anymore because he can't climb up into the truck and he's too heavy for Mark to lift him in.  

But currently, when he needs to go out he just goes to the door and lets us know and we let him out, but yesterday he didn't even make it to the door before he had a serious loss of poop!  Gees!  NOT good!

He accidentally dropped poop across the livingroom on his way to the door!  Gees!

And that stuff sure wasn't normal either!  Yuk!  (Poor guy!)

Well, I was able to manage to clean it up off that rug (fortunately), but if it had been normal poop it sure would have been way easier to clean up!   But what a mess, huh?

But fortunately I had his meds left from when he had problems walking normally previously (so he wouldn't be in pain), so I gave him those this last two days and he is feeling at least a bit better fortunately.  But I guess we still need to haul him up to the vet once they upon up tomorrow.  Sigh. Poor guy.

Bye David -- sure glad to have you visit!

Cousin David left for home up in Michigan this afternoon.  

Here's David heading out in his camper . . .

He has virtually everything in that camper -- almost like a home.  It's nice!

Seemed a bit strange to have David leave after he had been around here over the last few weeks!  But while he was here, he sure was a huge help with everything going around this place!   For starters, he helped replace the broken door on our horse trailer.

So here was that removed broken door before they replaced it --
and look how rusty those wheels were, too.  Yuk!

So here's the new door almost reinstalled --
the door closures haven't been installed yet, but will be soon.

And while they were at it, David cleaned up ALL those rusty wheels, too.
They sure look great NOW!

And while David was here, our dog Boo fell in love with him! And he would take him out for a walk all the time, too.  Now that he's gone, Boo keeps looking out the front door ALL the time, wondering where he is now.  ;-D

I'm trying to tell Boo to go lay down - there's no one out there now.
But he isn't willing to forget about it yet.  Sigh.
I hope he'll quit checking it out eventually now that David has gone home.

Well now Mark and I will be pretty much by ourselves again now for who knows how long.   We've had folks staying with us most of the time from last November right up until today! Well -- I guess now we'd better get friends to come over and visit or we'll be unusually lonely!  

Wow! Lucky we live where we do!!

I'll tell you what, Mark and I have both lived in the Baton Rouge area most of our lives at this point and no matter what happens -- hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. etc. etc. -- those things have NEVER happened to us where we live to date . . . thank goodness!  

Even if a hurricane comes ashore nearby, they settle down enough by the time they make it up to Baton Rouge that they haven't hurt our home.  In fact, after hurricane Katrina back in 2005 they brought all the dead bodies out of New Orleans and off the rest of the coast up to a huge building just down the road from us! Obviously they found this area completely safe!  And tornadoes until now have ALWAYS shown up north of Interstate 10, which is several miles north of us.  I have no idea how the weather understands the position of an interstate, but that IS what generally happens.  But yesterday the tornado came directly through Baton Rouge in the morning while I was at work downtown (they made us all go down into the parking area -- two floors below the main floor in our office building). Pretty darned scary.  And the tornado did go past our home property as well.  One of the trees on the land next door did go down, but nothing big happened at all on our own property. Whew!  What a relief!  

Now I hope nothing happens next month while I'm up visiting in Ohio.  But I'm sure glad Mark is retired so he would be able to deal with the horses and dogs in an emergency -- unlike an animal care person who wouldn't be there at all in case of a storm.  They'd sure be going to their own home instead of ours if there were an emergency.

I made my flight schedule a couple days ago but I had forgotten that we are supposed to have to go to court about a tree that fell during hurricane Gustav clear back in 2008.  A neighbor is suing us for not clearing one off his land.  Ha! Our insurance company said they would handle trees that fell onto our property from a neighbor's land, but not vice versa. Therefore HIS insurance should have covered that fallen tree, not us! Well, they haven't let us know when the court date is -- they just mentioned a couple months back that it would be in May sometime.   Well, I guess Mark will be stuck with that if I'm out of town at the time, but that is NOT a good thing.  I do have photographs of that tree having fallen so we can prove that it's been down for all those years, and it has not happened anytime lately.  (I was told by the attorneys here at my office that after more than two years he can't actually sue about it.)

Well anyway -- it's supposed to rain a final time this morning, then it's supposed to be nice and sunny and comfortably cool for the entire next week.  Yippee!  Now maybe Boo will go back to sleep in his own bed and not be right under our feet continually any longer.  (He is terrified of storms so when he hears something coming -- well before we can hear it -- he wants to be right next to us until it ends.)

And once the weather improves for a period of time, Blaze is planning to replace the roof on the storage building out in the back pasture, then Mark can clear out all the stuff inside and make the building ready to put all his tools and mowers, etc. in there so he can actually (FINALLY!) park his truck inside the garage!  Nice!  And then the next thing for Blaze to do will be either to extend our utility room OR build a pantry off the side of our kitchen.  (We saw one of those pantries we really liked at a house we looked at Sunday and that looked like a fine idea.)

I'll tell you what about those houses we looked at Sunday, though . . . we checked out a number of houses in several new subdivisions within 5 or 6 miles of us.  The costs varied from a little over $400,000 up to $700,000!!!  Good grief!! Sure glad we bought and revised our own home well before all the new houses have gone up around us, that's for sure!

Well, time to go clean our place up!  I'll tell you what -- I really need to get rid of a BUNCH of things.  I think we're going to have a huge garage sale sometime soon.  Maybe next weekend!  We've never done that before but we sure need to!  Maybe we can get some friends to bring THEIR things over and hang out with us during the day.  That might be a lot more fun.  Hmmm.  We'll see.

Getting back to normal -- eventually . . .

After losing Rocky last Friday, I've been pretty depressed. (See "REMEMBERING OUR DOGS WITH LOVE . . . "In Memorium" there at the top of this page.)  And the house still has a really bad smell from Rocky's throwing up over his last two days.  I took the rug outside that he was laying on.  It has to stay out there until we can get it cleaned.  And I'm going to have to spray that wood floor and let it soak to remove that smell since that stuff actually soaked through the rug - but I'm not going to do that until this weekend.  I'm still at work for a while yet.

But regardless of how depressing it is, we do seem to be able to relax now that Rocky has gone.  And the other three dogs seems to be relaxing as well.  Check this out -- Joey has calmed down completely.  ;-D

Apparently Joe was as exhausted as we were!
(And Boo is asleep too in that dog bed there behind that sofa.)

And despite the fact that it's been raining continually over the last couple weeks and the paddocks are completely full of very deep mud, the horses seem to be doing just fine as well. They do need their hooves trimmed, but they're all COVERED in mud up to their knees and even if I clean them off, once Zoilo gets them trimmed they'll go out and get covered in mud all over again! . . . not that good for their hooves.  So we're waiting for the weather to dry out some.  But in one respect, I guess it's a good thing to have all this rain.  El Niño is causing a lot of additional rain -- but it's also supposed to prevent major hurricanes, so better rain than storms, that's for sure!  But as soon as it dries out some, we will not only wash up the horses, but we'll FINALLY get to spread out all that sand in the round pen and begin working with them in there - maybe even Arthur!  I sure am looking forward to that!

And we also have a number of things we need to get someone to come to the house and work on.  I bought a discount from Groupon to have a guy come and clear out the air ducts and even the dryer vents but I haven't been able to get a hold of them to set it up yet.  

And then there's our annual tax return.  Because there had been so many novel things going on last year I'm having trouble completing the return,  I usually do it online through TaxACT but I guess I'm going to have to go back to the CPA we used to use some years ago and get her to do it for this year and next year.  Then I'll probably be able to go back to doing it myself after that since things will then go back to remaining the same year to year after THIS year.

Oh - AND we need to get someone to come to the house and deal with ALL of our computers because there's some problem in them that prevents us from getting into Google and instead of Google there is some other odd thing that comes up every time we open the computers.  We can request Bing instead for searches, but it won't let us get Google and with my memory problem I used Google ALL the time!  So whatever it takes to get them fixed up so we can have Google back will be worth it to me, that's for sure!

But other than those things, we're actually pretty much okay again.  We're just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping Boo doesn't have any problems for a very long time, even though he turned 14 last December! 

Actually, I think we're going to get a closed-in crate and then add wheels to the bottom so that if we have to get HIM into one of our trucks to go to the vet (or probably LSU in his case) we can just put him in that crate and wheel him down the steps and up into the truck by using a ramp.  If we had to lift him we'd probably BOTH lose our backs again!  But hey -- at the moment he's just fine.  He races around outside and when he wants back in the house he comes up to the porch door and jumps up and down!  He obviously feels perfectly fine!  Thank goodness!

Progress anyway . . .

Well, once the floor in our home began to look like it was turning into white carpet I did finally take Boo over to PetSmart and get him brushed out -- finally.  

This pic was taken the morning after I vacuumed it all up the evening before!
(THAT's when I decided to get him over to PetSmart SOON!)

And here's Rocky's bed after Boo decided to lay down in there for just a little while.  Geees!

And here he is waiting for me to let him back into the house since he SAID he was cold outside --
even though he has enough hair to be warm down to 30 below, I think!

I'd let him keep it for the winter . . . IF it wasn't falling out all over the house!!

Well, I guess I better take a new picture tonight.  They really do a phenomenal job with him.  He looks wonderful.

But then there's Gigi . . . remember that giant, super-heavy rubber pad I got for her crate so she wouldn't have to sleep on a metal floor?  Well, she ate all four of the corners off of it! Now that CAN'T be good for her.  So I drug that thing out of the crate and then once Jerry came over this weekend, he hauled it out to the barn for me.  So now I just throw a few of those heavy bathroom rug things in there and she manages to go to sleep with them all under her head.  Hey -- whatever works for her!  But at least she isn't eating THEM anyway.  Of course at this point I'm giving her pig ears to chew on when she comes in so she isn't desperate enough to eat whatever else she can get to.  At least not so far anyway.  I'll tell you what, I will be SO happy when she gets old enough that she doesn't need to do something strenuous continually.  Gees!

Then there's me.  Everyone I know is aware of those memory problems I've begun having.  Well, it's NOT Alzheimer's disease.  They've done enough testing to determine that at this point.  But this Friday I'm going to have to go spend SEVEN HOURS (????) over at the Neuromedical Center taking memory tests of some sort -- who knows what they have in mind.  Once they determined that the problem wasn't Alzheimer's (I thought that was a huge relief, but in fact there is at least some meds for that disease -- but not for a brain injury), they told me there were no medicines or surgeries that could help, so why they want to do all this testing I don't know.  Oh well. I guess our insurance will pay for most of it (since we'll have that insurance for at least another couple months) so I might as well find out what the heck is wrong, huh?  

Oh - and then there's THAT issue of our NEXT insurance . . . what social security additions we need to deal with.  We'll have to make THAT decision within a month or two after we stop working so I guess we better get on with figuring it out SOON.  Not looking forward to that, though.  Sigh.  

It's always something . . .  what I'd really like to do is stop working AND stop worrying about what else we need to begin doing.  Oh well -- one day at a time, huh?

It's FRIDAY!!

I've been pretty energetic since yesterday.  Hasn't been the case for a while now.  I think Gigi has been keeping me pretty much exhausted!  Well, I guess I'm getting over it -- I hope.  Regardless of why, I sure hope this lasts!  

 

I (finally!) cleaned the kitchen -- although I still need to store all KINDS of "puppy stuff" somewhere other than on the island and the dining room table and on all the island bar stools as well!   Mark will be happy to know that I did take out all the trash (he generally has two weeks worth to deal with when he comes home!), and I got the sleeping porch tidied up, etc. etc. etc.   

 

Glad it's not supposed to be raining tomorrow.  I'll be able to stick Gigi outside and then I'll be able to wash clothes without having to figure out how to get past her with them!  And then Jerry is going to come over and help me move that giant new crate from the living room out to the dining room.  That gate between the living room and the dining room is screwed into the wall, so I won't be able to just slide it out there so he's going to help me lift it over.

Here's that crate I'm going to put in the dining room. 
(Gigi will be INSIDE, not outside looking at Boo!)

 

I'm hoping once I get that thing out to the dining room  I'll be able to  feed Gigi inside of it and she will not be able to spread her puppy food all over the kitchen any more!  (She races around the kitchen and invariably runs straight over that bowl and all the remaining feed get scattered all over the place!  Grrrr!) 

 

I'll still put her in the smaller crate while I'm at work and over night so that she's less likely to get far enough away from her blanket to poop inside the crate.  But at least if she dumps out the puppy food in that large one, she'll be able to pick the stuff back up and eat it anyway. . . I hope.  There's not that much "large animal puppy food" out there and the stuff is expensive! I hate to sweep up half of it and throw it away all the time.

 

Boo seems to have gotten much better at this point, but I will need to haul him back over to Highland Road Animal Hospital to be rechecked after Mark gets home.  I'm also going to ask them to give Gigi her third shot that following week so we can start those puppy training classes.  HRAH is more expensive than AVS, but it takes a good 40 minutes to get over to AVS, and then we always end up having to sit there and wait for ages, even if we had an appointment.  So as long as we have enough money to manage it, they are all going to go over to Highland Road now since it's very close by and  no one has to wait.  Much better.

 

Okay - lunch is over.  Back to work.

Poor Boo . . .

Brought Boo home from Highland Road Animal Hospital last night.  Took quite an effort . . . AGAIN . . . to make him get out of the truck!  But he got out and went inside, then went out to wet in the dog yard, came in and collapsed on his dog bed. 

 

He had gotten those bandages removed.  That's good, so now I can put that antibiotic ointment on his sore spots three times a day easily.  (Well - easily on his head.  NOT so easily on his groin!)  But he still has so many really sore areas.  Poor guy.

 

 

I fed him right after we got home, but then he threw up almost immediately.  (You can still see all the spots on his bed and blanket and the rug AFTER I cleared all the grunge out of there.) 

 

He finally went to sleep, though, so I left him alone for the night and didn't put more meds on him before I went to bed as I had originally planned to do.

 

 

This morning when I got up at 5 AM (yikes!) I immediately took Gigi outside so I wouldn't have to clean up the kitchen floor before leaving for work.  Then I fed Boo about half what he usually eats - and without any antibiotics this time in case that was the problem with his nausea last night.  (The new vet DID say he wouldn't need those pills as long as he got all his injuries covered with antibiotic ointment at least 3 times a day.)  I did add a pain pill to his canned prescription feed, though. 

 

So an hour or so after he ate this morning when he had NOT thrown up and he seemed to be feeling quite a bit better I did go to work for at least part of the day.  John's daughter is getting married tomorrow and they have a lot to do today, so he was leaving at noon.  That meant I didn't need to stay for the rest of the day either.  Darned good thing.  I was beginning to worry about Boo and wanted to get home anyway!

Well, I never did get Boo out of the truck yesterday - poor guy!  I don't know if it was the pain meds LSU gave him or the fact that his back leg hurts a LOT, but he simply refused to get up at all.  He had gone outside last on Wednesday at 2:30 or so and Mark brought them all back in at 3 so he could go pick up his work pal at the airport.  Their fight happened at 5 or 5:30 or so and he was over at LSU emergency service until almost 10 Wednesday night.  So from 3 on Wednesday until 9am on Thursday morning he hadn't been outside at all --- for 18 hours!  And he never wet in the truck.  Wow. 

 

 

I called Highland Road Animal Hospital first thing yesterday morning and they said to bring him right over.  When we got there and I opened the door he did manage to get out (not all that easily) and once out he insisted upon going over to the grass!  The poor guy peed for almost 5 minutes!! 

 

 

He's staying there at the animal hospital until tonight so they can get him set up to where he doesn't need to be re-bandaged every few hours.  They said they would have liked to keep him through the weekend, but the place is going to be totally full of dogs being kept there while their owners head down to Mardi Gras in New Orleans this weekend so they have only small crates - nothing large enough for him.  But I'm just as glad about that.  John's daughter is getting married on Saturday, so he will only be at the office for just a few hours tomorrow morning.  That's about as long as I can leave all the dogs alone at home as well, so that'll work out.

 

 

I did find a couple of small marks on Joey as well, but NOTHING like poor Boo.  Unless Joey's begin to look infected, I'm not even going to bother taking him to the vet.

 

 

Oh -- Carl hasn't shown up this week as he said he would, and the horse stalls are a MESS!  I know he has a pregnant girlfriend, but if he wasn't able to come by it would have been good if he could let me know!  Gees!  I am just not in shape to haul out all those wagons right now.  I'll tell you what, I cannot WAIT for spring down here!  I was hoping to spend mega-bucks to pay toward the house mortgage, but whatever it takes to get the horse paddocks cleared out and NOT 2 feet deep in mud we WILL be spending! 

 

And in another couple months, Gigi will be old enough to begin puppy training.  That will also be a wonderful thing.  Guess I should try and appreciate each current hour and day, but hey . . . hurry up spring!

HORRIBLE night --

This afternoon Mark picked up a guy who works with him at the local airport so he could drive him down to the coast with him this evening, so we had a stranger in the house.  So I had closed all three of our grown dogs in the master bedroom to keep them away from his friend.  Well, when Mark and his friend went out in the front for some reason, those three dogs began barking like crazy since they could see them out the front window.  Then suddenly I began hearing a sound I had never heard before!  Thank goodness I was inside so I could hear it and not out with Mark because when I went into the bedroom to see what that sound was, it was Boo! . . . Joey had clamped down on his head and was not letting him go and Boo was screaming!!  And Rocky apparently bit him on his back legs while Joey was holding onto his head, and Boo was crying out in an incredibly horrible way! 

 

So I grabbed Joey and lifted him off the ground until he dropped Boo, then I threw him into the crate in there and made Rocky go outside.  Then when we looked at Boo he was covered with blood.  We wiped him off as best we could, but he was still bleeding a lot.  So Mark helped me get him into the truck so I could take him over to the Emergency vet service at LSU . . . AGAIN!!  I left home with him at 5:30 and we didn't get back home until after 9:30!!  They checked out his whole body and ended up shaving his head and back legs where they found a lot of deep bites on his head and one bad one on the inside of his back leg.  Poor Boo! He's not only in danger of infection, but he's in a lot of pain as well.  So now he's on pain meds and antibiotics -- along with the stomach meds and prescription dog food that he got from them 10 days ago.  Poor POOR guy! 

 

 

When I got him home, he couldn't even get out of the truck either!  They said the pain meds would wear off around midnight so I've left him out there for now, then I'll go back out at midnight and try again to get him into the house when the pain meds wear off.  I'll see if he's not getting out because he's sleepy, or because he's in too much pain to stand up.  Well, at least there's a comfortable bed in there anyway.  He has no food or water and can't get out to the bathroom, but he does have one of those giant dog beds in there at least.  Sigh.

 

He has to go back over to LSU again tomorrow afternoon to have his bandages changed out.  But they said if I see any blood on his bandages any time between now and tomorrow afternoon, to bring him in sooner because he'll get infected if he starts to bleed.

 

I'll tell you what -- he's going to live in the living room from now on . . . AWAY from those other two dogs.  Those other two bozos are going to get locked into the bedroom!  And Boo will go outside separately from them, as well.  Poor Boo.

 

I wonder what's going to happen as Gigi grows up.  I am definitely going to have to be sure she's well trained because if she were to attack anyone, well . . . I hate to even think about what could happen.

 

Well, I better go get something to eat and get to bed for a little while.  It won't be long 'til I need to go try and get Boo inside again.

Oh - and did I mention that it's POURING down rain out there . . . again!  At least Duke and Arthur are closed inside their stalls anyway because it's awful outside - not just plenty of pouring rain, but plenty of lightning as well.  Really nasty. 

Well, things MUST get better soon.  (I hate to think anything might be worse, that's for sure!)  But enough for now.  Time to go to sleep.

A fun afternoon --

Gave Gigi a new toy -- a really large hollow ball thing.  At first she just growled and barked at it, but within a couple minutes she was racing around picking it up, throwing it and chasing it again.  Talk about some serious exercise! 

 

When she was racing around trying to attack the thing, Duke was very concerned.

 

Both Duke and Arthur were fascinated by her behavior with that ball!  See Arthur standing there watching her as well.  If she were to come over to the fence, Duke would run Arthur off to be sure he wouldn't hurt her!

Here's Duke trying to get her to come over to him
while she growls and gets ready to "attack" that ball.

 

Duke appeared to be pretty concerned about her behavior with that ball. 
She was acting like it was alive and fighting with her, and he was obviously worried! 

 

 

But her real danger, we've found, has nothing to do with either that ball or Duke.  Her two worst dangers are Joey and -- worse yet -- Boo!  Very strange.  Boo has always been the gentlest and kindest of the three grown dogs we have, but he apparently does NOT like Gigi in the least.  He doesn't even seem to recognize that she's just another dog!  When she comes near him he growls big time and snaps at her and I'm worried that if she actually touches him she could get killed.  Boo DID, after all, kill all those goats that belonged to his previous owner so I have no intention of allowing him access to Gigi until she becomes an obvious large dog and weighs more than he does!  So I put him inside that new large crate this evening with his dinner because I knew if she made any attempt to join him she could be in serious danger.  She didn't go all the way up to the crate since he had snarled so aggressively at her earlier, but she did sit down and just stare at him.  And while she stared at him, HE stared at me. Obviously, if I hadn't been right there looking at him he would have had a definite response to her, that's for sure! 

 

 

Well, it's good that she does seem to have understood that he could be dangerous to her.  Still, I'm not going to take any chances on allowing them to be together for a while.

 

Gigi obviously got plenty of exercise with that ball!  When we brought her in, she carried it all over the place in the house, then she finally collapsed in the giant dog bed holding it right next to her!  (Once she went to bed, I hid it so she could get excited and get plenty of exercise all over again tomorrow night!)

Well, at least we have a way of getting her worn out before bedtime each night now.  That's a fine thing!

Moving right along

On the plus side, the doctors at LSU didn't find anything specifically wrong with Boo - no liver or stomach problems anyway.  So for the time being, he's just going to be on a few kinds of pills and prescription dog food to see if we can get him back to "normal" (or as "normal" as he ever is). 

 

Looking forward to the weekend, that's for sure.  I finally realized that we would be driving by within just 10 miles of Morton's in Madisonville -- that restaurant we've always gone to for our anniversary --  when we go pick up that new puppy Saturday.  Mark said we would be close by a restaurant we used to go to when Jan and Mike lived over in Hammond, but it didn't dawn on me that he meant Morton's!  Great!  So I checked with Jan and Mike and they will be going along with us.  We'll all go eat over at Morton's and then go on up to Bogalusa to pick up our new baby.  Really looking forward to that!  At least I HOPE Jan and Mike will be going along.  They plan to, but Jan's dad has been having medical problems lately and if anything more happens she will be heading up to Hattiesburg Saturday instead.  But I sure hope not -- for more than one reason!

And Mark gets home tomorrow, thank goodness!  Well, he's supposed to anyway.  With all this winter stuff up in north Louisiana and over in Mississippi, some of the guys may not get down there in time to come out to the rig.  And it's supposed to be storming just offshore in the Gulf, as well.  So I have my fingers crossed, hoping against hope that he actually DOES get home tomorrow!  Things are an absolute MESS right now at the house.  The place is beginning to flood and it's supposed to go on raining until Thursday morning!  Yuk!

I've left Duke and Arthur closed in their stalls since last night because it's just AWFUL in their paddocks - and if they're out in the pasture, they'll be trampling  the grass down into the mud and killing it!  So with them closed in, their stalls have become even more of a mess than usual and I haven't been able to reach Carl today for some reason.  SURE hope he makes it over soon!

What a MESS, huh?

But anyway, Mark will be home tomorrow -- I hope -- and by Thursday afternoon it's supposed to quit raining for the next week.  Life is looking up -- eventually!

Loooong day over at LSU Emergency Vet Clinic . . .

Haven't been able to get Boo to eat OR drink at all for the last couple days and last night he started acting really REALLY peculiar.  When I would sit down in the chair in the living room, he would jump up on my lap!  He never does that normally.  He weighs almost a hundred pounds -- that's NOT something I can manage!  Then when I went to bed, instead of sleeping either in the dog bed next to my bed or in that big dog bed in the living room as he usually does, he climbed up onto the bed and laid down ON TOP OF ME!!!  Good grief!  That has never happened before!  I managed to roll over and dump him onto the bed next to me (not easy!  he weighs a ton!) and I let him stay there for the night, but he panted and shook all night long. 

 

So first thing this morning I took him up to the LSU Emergency Clinic to find out what the heck is going on.  He spent half a day over there!  He was dehydrated so they gave him some subcutaneous fluids (and gave me an additional container so I can do it again tomorrow).  Then on Monday morning he will be going back to get an abdominal ultrasound done.  They said the x-rays weren't quite good enough to really know what's going on in his stomach and intestines. 

 

They also sent home with us a couple of different kinds of canned food that they think dogs will definitely want to eat.  We'll see.  He DID immediately go drink for a good while when we first came into the house, though -- something he hadn't done in a good while.  So maybe the things they did will help him.  We'll see.  But they said if he goes down for any reason I can bring him back over there anytime of the day or night.  Well - maybe from their end.   But from my end, if he goes down I'm not sure I can actually get him into the truck to get him over there.   He's pretty darned heavy!

 

Well - we'll see how things go tonight.  Hopefully he will be willing to sleep on Mark's side of the bed and NOT on top of me!

Looking forward to an interesting weekend . . .

Once I got that e-mail from the Bulldog Rescue girl saying she wasn't bringing Bettie up again this weekend, I decided to check with Ken over at OK Guard Dogs to see if he had another Rottie I might be able to adopt.   But the old phone number was disconnected, so I called the dog training portion.  That call went through, but no answered.  So I just left a message on there telling them I was trying to reach Ken at the Guard Dog service.  I didn't think they'd pay any attention to that, but in fact he called me back just a little while later.  Ken is even older than I am so someone else is handling that service these days, but he still owns it.  Anyway, he didn't have a Rottie available except those horrendous guard dogs.  I didn't want to deal with THAT again!  But he DOES have a Labrador / Great Dane mix that belonged to his step-daughter.  She sent her over to stay with him when she was moving out of town.  And after they got moved, she couldn't take her back, so she said if he could find someone he knew would take good care of her he could adopt her out.  So he told me I could come check her out.  He said she's extremely nice and good with other dogs.  Apparently, she looks like just a black lab -- but a REALLY large one. 

 

So I'm going to drive down and "meet" Bettie on Saturday, then I'm going to go up to Ken's house and check out that Lab on Sunday afternoon.  I really do want to get another younger dog SOON.  I really need to get Joey a friend who doesn't mind carrying on with him constantly!

 

As for Boo, I've been getting really worried about him not eating, but this evening I learned something.  He wouldn't get up to eat even a really special meal tonight.  But after a half hour or so, I carried it over to him (laying in that new dog bed) and just set it down next to him.  And he immediately began eating!  Wow!  I guess he's just in a LOT of arthritic pain at the moment and just doesn't want to stand up!  I'm going to up his pain meds during EACH meal for the week.  If that doesn't take care of the problem, he's definitely going to the vet once Mark gets home!  Poor guy.  I pretty much know how he feels -- and I take pain meds, too, when that happens to me! 

Yep -- good bed . . .

Had a little trouble sleeping tonight so I decided to get up and check my e-mail, and when I walked out toward the stairs, there was Boo -- sound asleep in that new dog "sofa" bed!  

 

 

By the time I got my camera, he was sitting up, but when I first saw him he was sound asleep with his head on that arm as a pillow -- he looked VERY comfy. 

 

He probably would have been up on our bed if he had been in the bedroom, but I had closed Rocky and Joe in the bedroom and left Boo in the living room by himself hoping he would eat!  He hadn't eaten this morning or this evening so I wanted to leave him alone with a bowl of food so Joe could NOT eat it for him!

 

 

And, as you can tell from that empty bowl, he had finally eaten.  That's a relief.  I was beginning to think he would need to go to the vet to see why he wasn't eating.  I think his problem, though, is probably pain.  When he walks, he doesn't walk normally at the moment, so he probably is having a lot of arthritis pain.  Maybe all our freezing weather has affected him.  Well, it IS warm outside again, and if he's eating he IS getting his pain meds down, so I hope he's going to be feeling better shortly.

Losing Lizzie

Lizzie --- 1991 to October 26, 2013

I've been really depressed lately, all things considered.  As most of you know, Lizzie, my mare, was euthanized after her surgery Saturday night at LSU after they informed me that her recovery would have been lengthy and in fact she would have been unlikely to actually recover.  She was 22 years old with Cushings disease, she had 22 feet of intestines removed in that surgery, septicemia (an infected bloodstream), and laminitis in her feet.  Poor baby.  So she was euthanized while still under anesthetic.  She's going to be cremated and I will get at least part of her ashes back.  I guess it's a bit peculiar, but I'll feel a little better once I have those remains of her back with me.

 

When we took Lizzie away to LSU, Arthur (our mule) began throwing a hissy fit!  He stood at the gate leading out to the horse trailer and brayed incredibly loudly over night.  The next day he began checking in her stall, then running along the fence and calling LOUDLY, then he would stand there for a little while and wait to see if she was going to answer.  Then he'd run further down and do it again.  And again.  And again.  Finally, by mid-week he began hanging out right next to Duke constantly.  He even went into Duke's stall with him and joined him in eating his hay -- something Duke NEVER allowed until now!  I guess even HE was sorry for Arthur.  But now the two of them have begun to behave pretty much as usual - except they're still together all the time.

 

Then on Wednesday, Boo had surgery too, over at AVS, having growths on his mouth removed and sent out to determine if they are malignant.  While they were at it, they cleaned his teeth, too, though, so his mouth IS in a lot better shape now, although he has to eat canned dog food for the next week or so.  He came through it quite well, thankfully.  (He IS almost 13 years old now, so I was a bit concerned about him being anesthetized.)  Haven't heard yet what the tumor results are.  Fingers crossed.

 

I sure hope absolutely EVERYONE we have left is fine indefinitely.  This has been really depressing.  I have to say, although Duke already was insured, I've added colic insurance for him as well now, so if anything happens to him we'll have, I think, almost $20,000 to cover his medical costs.  (I don't care WHAT it takes, he WILL survive no matter what!)  I hated to lose Lizzie, but losing Duke would be catastrophic - even for Mark!