It's been an interesting journey so far in 2015, one that has been marked by two major themes: pet-sitting and health issues.
February landscape.
The first health issue was mine. On the second day of 2015, I got a migraine that didn't respond to medication. While I constantly have new migraines cropping up, most do respond to my medications or, at the very least, I'm able to sleep them off. This migraine, though, didn't budge. My meds didn't make a dent. It was of the type that I call a "brain-in-flames" migraine, which feels pretty much like how it sounds. I also had a nasty black ball of migraine pain behind my right eye. Add fatigue, cognitive fogginess, and the usual sensory sensitivity, and then next thing I knew, I was spending 20 hours a day in bed, unable to do anything more demanding than read children's books.
Imagine that the light in this video of the sun is pain and you have an idea of what a migraine is like.
That went on for a couple of weeks and then I finally contacted my neurologist. You'd think I might have contacted the headache clinic sooner, but I'm pretty much at the limits of what can be done for my migraines, so I wasn't sure there was any point. But I was getting scared that this unending burning migraine with the ball of pain behind the eye was going to be my new normal, so they checked me out and set me up with three days of DHE injections and though the injections didn't really help dramatically at first, eventually the migraine sort of dribbled off. It was followed by an equal number of weeks of postdromal (post-migraine) symptoms, including serious fatigue and unusual sensitivity in my peripheral vision. While the migraine did ultimately go away, it definitely spooked me. There's nothing more alarming when you have a chronic condition to have some new (and worse) wrinkle appear!
Good ol' Mr. Gorgeous
He spends most of his time sleeping now.
As the worst of the headache was on the wane, I looked after my good friend, Mr. Gorgeous the collie, for a few days. Mr. Gorgeous recently turned 14 million years old, a major accomplishment for any dog and truly astounding for a large one. There's simply no getting around the fact that he is, well, 14 million years old and 14-million-year-old dogs don't live forever. His owners had reported that he was doing well, other than the fact that he is ancient and has degenerative myelopathy. I was shocked, therefore, when I saw him. He was skinny and the coat that gave him his nickname was lacking luster, but what really worried me was that he seemed vacant on the inside. Now, Mr. Gorgeous has never been what you might call a genius and he's only got about half a dozen facial expressions (and, I have long suspected, only half a dozen emotions to go with them), but there's always been someone home inside his eyes. This time it seemed different. And then, worse yet, to use the simplest terms, he pooped his pants in his sleep.
Mr. Gorgeous also has laryngeal paralysis, a condition not uncommon in large, geriatric dogs. As vocal cord function decreases, his bark has been reduced to a whispery "hoo! hoo!"
Degenerative myelopathy causes progressive, irreversible damage to the spinal cord, eventually resulting in total paralysis of the hind end. Mr. Gorgeous' case has progressed much more slowly than I'd initially feared it would and while he walks with a flat-footed waddle and can't swing into his old trot without tripping over his feet, he's remained surprisingly mobile and still tackles the stairs on most days, albeit with a bit of a bunny hop. But the paralysis is still creeping onward and when I saw that he'd had diarrhea without even waking up, I was worried that I was looking at the first signs of loss of sphincter control. There's nothing less dignified than a grand old dog with poo-soaked fur and the idea that this is what it had come to really broke my heart. That vacant look, his loss of pleasure in his food, his lack of interest in having his ears rubbed, and that possible sign of the relentless progression of paralysis made me fear for the worst, and when I said good-bye to him when the gig was done, I said good-bye for real, in case it was the last time I saw him.
The end of Mr. Gorgeous?
I've wondered before now how I would fare when Mr. Gorgeous' time came. I'm enormously fond of him, sure, and get a big kick out of him, but have never had that soul-to-soul connection like the one I have with my own dog or with Sweetheart the German Shepherd. I've been taking care of Mr. Gorgeous for five years, the longest of any of my dog clients, so I know him intimately, and I knew I'd miss him, but would I grieve for him? The answer is yes. I cried when I got home that evening and cried again in subsequent days as I faced the possibility of the world without Mr. Gorgeous in it. Maybe I didn't have that magical one-being-to-another connection, but this great-big, good-looking dog had clearly claimed a piece of my heart.
A time for reflection.
I was relieved, then, to learn that all this heartbreak was premature. That vacant look, the accident in his sleep? It was all the result of an upset tummy. However, when his owners took him to the vet for a checkup, the vet did find a serious problem: Mr. Gorgeous needed twelve teeth removed. I had wondered if his lack of appetite (and therefore his thinness) was the result of tooth decay, as is very common among elderly dogs, and his owners had switched him to a softer diet, but the mess in Mr. G's mouth went way beyond some sore teeth and into the realm of impeding disaster. He was scheduled right away for oral surgery, and as it happened, his people had to go out of town shortly after the surgery, so I was called in to play nurse.
Mr. Gorgeous, minus a dozen of his teeth, including all of his lower front incisors.
Feeling better.
The first few days, Mr. Gorgeous was woozy and knocked out almost all the time from his pain meds, but he took his pills well enough if they were dabbed with butter and hidden in food that I hand-fed him on a spoon. He seemed uninterested in drinking his water--I think the extraction sites were very sensitive--so I added more water to his already soft and mushy post-op food and fed him several small meals during the day. He did meander after me as I wandered around his property with a camera, but was unsurprisingly subdued. By the time a week had passed since the surgery, Mr. Gorgeous started to perk up a great deal. He was enthusiastic about his meals (especially if I included some baloney pieces--he was quite unimpressed if there weren't a few snippets here and there among the canned food and mushy kibble and would stare at me pointedly through the door until I added some to his meal) and he started licking his bowl clean for the first time in more than year. He not only wanted to get ear noogies, he DEMANDED them, shoving his head into my lap and budging my hands until I rubbed the inside of his ears with a knuckle. He even demonstrated some moments of playfulness. In his old age, Mr. Gorgeous has lost interest in playing, so it made my heart happy to see him showing a bit of friskiness. It was so fulfilling to see his spirit rekindled and to have a hand in the process. Normally, I don't much care to handle pieces of baloney made slippery by canned dog food and dog slobber, especially first thing after I wake up, but for Mr. Gorgeous, it was an honor.
He's not what he was in his prime, but Mr. Gorgeous is still one handsome beast.
A black light revealed a flora infestation.
And then there was the paw fungus. I'd noticed Abbey was licking her paws more a while ago, but she's always done some paw licking when she's settled down and feeling drowsy, so I wasn't overly concerned until I noticed that she had developed saliva stains (which are reddish-brown) on the fur of her back paws. We went to the vet, where she was first prescribed an antibiotic to cure the crusty infections caused by her licking. She was still licking her paws after finishing the antibiotics, so we went back to the vet. This time, with the crustiness cleared away, the source of the itching was apparent: a fungal infection. Dogs carry fungi and yeasts (or "flora") on their feet all the time--it's responsible for the "Frito feet" (paws that smell like corn chips) phenomenon that many of us love--and most of them are harmless. When things get out of control and the fungi proliferate, it's a different story. Abbey picked up a new fungus somewhere and I think that during the time I was away dog-sitting in November and December and she was in her crate for at least part of every day, she probably passed some of the time by licking her paws. Dogs can sometimes get in a sort of trance-like state while licking themselves (I call it "mesmer-licking") and lick and lick and lick, spreading any fungi around, adding in bacteria from their mouths, and encouraging it all to grow with their warm saliva. Fungal infections can be difficult to treat, so the vet emphasized that our best bet was to knock it out as thoroughly and quickly as possible, which would mean that I would have to follow instructions precisely. What did that entail? Prednisone, an anti-fungal medication, daily medicated foot soaks, and preventing Abbey from licking her paws.
Overheated from prednisone and wearing socks to prevent paw-licking, Abbey tries to get some rest by sprawling flat.
Stylish in baggies over socks.
Abbey had no trouble taking her medications (she gets them in a marshmallow and she looooooves marshmallows) and she was perfectly fine with wearing socks on her back paws, held in place by a cuff of masking tape. She readily accepted having plastic baggies put over her socks when she went outside and she actually seemed to enjoy the inflatable cone that I put on her for a few days after she started licking her lady bits instead of going after her paws. But she hated soaking her feet. All she had to do was stand in a few inches of warm, treated water for fifteen minutes, but it was horribly stressful for her. I'd set a timer and give her a treat every thirty seconds of those fifteen minutes, gently restraining her while singing to soothe her, and although she made no desperate attempts to escape (aside from scrabbling while being lowered into the tub, which she was not about to jump in on her own), she panted anxiously throughout. She hated getting her feet rinsed at the end of the bath, too, though eating peanut butter off a spoon while I throughly washed the solution off her feet made it slightly more bearable. Those two weeks of nightly soakings were miserable and exhausting for both of us!
My poor anxious girl hating every second of her daily foot soaking.
And then there was the prednisone. I understand we got fairly lucky as far as Abbey's side effects go, but there were most definitely side effects. I didn't immediately catch on to how voraciously hungry it made her because I was busy making sure that she didn't lose her appetite, a sign of a dangerous complication of the fungal medication. Abbey is fed the same amount of food every day, portioned out with a measuring cup, so with the prednisone cranking up her metabolism, it didn't take long before her spine started showing and her hip bones jutting. We weighed her and were astonished that she'd dropped down to 42 pounds! She'd seemed a little thin after she shed her winter coat, so we'd weighed her just a week or two before starting to treat her for the paw fungus, so we knew that she'd been at 45 pounds. (She usually weighs in around 47.) She'd managed to drop three pounds in just a matter of days, so I ended up doubling her food and spreading it out over three meals a day instead of her usual one. She also drank at least triple her usual amount of water and had to go out every hour or so, it seemed. She became a pooping and peeing machine! We were lucky, though, that she remained in control of those functions, so there were no accidents. However, prednisone also gave her a bit of a personality change. She was bolder, punchier, naughtier. She's never gotten in the trash before, but one day, while I was in the shower, she managed to open the cupboard door, tip over the trash can, and spread its contents all over the kitchen floor, consuming several chicken bones in the process. We had to start putting a stool in front of the cupboard door so she wouldn't go shopping! She was either amped up and pacing and panting or sprawled absolutely flat in an area with good airflow, her tail stretched out, as she tried to keep herself cool. We did a very slow taper off of the prednisone and it was such a relief when I finally got my Abbey back!
She may look like she's smiling, but prednisone made Abbey hot, restless, roughish, and voraciously hungry and thirsty.
The good news is that all that effort paid off. Between the socks and the medication and the foot baths, when the vet rechecked her paws after two weeks, she had a normal and healthy amount of flora on her feet. I still put socks on her when I leave her in her crate because if she gets to licking her paws again her feet could flare back up, but for now, the stressful episode of Abbey and the Paw Fungus is over.
A pretty Pyrenees.
After a little bit of downtime, it was on to the next dog! Cutie's owner had to have a hip replaced, so I was called in to walk her and entertain her in the afternoons. While we're now down to a twice-a-week walks-only schedule, for much of the last couple of months, I've seen Cutie nearly every day. It's been something of an adventure, in part because Cutie is smart and sassy with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and quite a lot of energy for a big four-year-old. She's less go-go-go than she used to be and will settle while at home, but when she's on the go, she is on the GO. At 90 pounds and with four feet for traction, you'd better be ready to go, too! One day, while we were at a park, she started doing zoomies , a popular name for when a dog tucks its rump and runs around in a wild and crazy manner. And they weren't just any zoomies, they were mud zoomies. We'd been walking across a damp field and hit a patch where the mud was several very squishy inches deep under the grass and she went nuts. So not only was I being yanked this way and that, I was being yanked this way and that through the mud. She was quite a mess when I finally got her moved on, so I decided our walk would take us to a nearby creek where the two of us could rinse off a bit. Well, Cutie found the creek even more exciting than the mud and had a wild session of creek zoomies. In the creek! Out of the creek! In the creek! Out of the creek! And all with me being jerked along behind. It's fortunate I was wearing my hiking boots, as I would have likely fallen and been pulled about face first if I'd had any less traction. Oh, Cutie! It's always an adventure.
There's mischief in those eyes.
A wide angle lens has distorted Cutie's size as she stands on the console, but she really is huge!
Trying to rub off her head halter.
I should add that I'm never walking this big, powerful, playful dog just on a regular collar. Cutie walks best on a head halter, but she hates it, so as long as she's behaving well, I'll walk her on a front-clip harness. It reduces the pulling enough that she's manageable unless she sees something really exciting (or wants to have mud zoomies). Even though I sometimes make her wear the hated head halter, Cutie is always very happy to see me. She has the most ridiculous little bared-teeth grin when I first come in and she's given me the guard dog's ultimate compliment: she doesn't bark when my car pulls into the driveway, just stands at the window and wags her tail! I also love how she'll stand on the center console (looming enormously) when we first get in the car to go somewhere and gives my ears little licks of affection and delight. My own dog does a similar thing and I find it most endearing.
A happy, tired Cutie after a walk.
Of course, it's easy enough for a dog to like you when fun stuff happens every time you come over, so I'm actually very excited about a new client of mine, where the investment is going to be very different, but very rewarding.
The tiny poodle.
I'll call her Pipsqueak. She's a teeny tiny, five pound, five-year-old poodle who is smaller than Cutie's head. My natural preference is for medium to large dogs, but I have to admit, Pipsqueak is adorable. And therein lies the problem. Her owners like to say that she suffers from Too Cute Syndrome. People see her and they go into a frenzy of cooing and touching and getting in her personal space. They want to treat her like a baby, a little living doll. The thing is, while Pipsqueak may be tiny, she's every bit as much of a dog as Cutie is. She's intelligent, well-trained, playful, sweet, mellow, and affectionate. The big difference is that Cutie can knock you over if you infringe on her personal space. Pipsqueak has no such defense: she is physically outsized and overwhelmed by every human being she encounters. She's also a naturally private and rather submissive dog, so is it really a surprise that most people send her hiding under the couch? As someone who has dealt with anxiety myself, I can sympathize. My job, then, as her dog-sitter, is to respect her boundaries and earn her trust in addition to making sure her needs are met. Fortunately, Abbey's leeriness of strangers has given me an education on how to approach an anxious dog: namely, don't approach. After a decade of telling visitors that "when she's ready, she'll come to you," I get to put that into practice with Pipsqueak.
Imagine being swept up and squeezed by a squealing giant standing more than 50 feet tall and weighing more than a ton and a half: that's what it's like to be Pipsqueak. No wonder people unnerve her!
Pipsqueak and I hit it off right away when I consulted with her owners, so much so that she did me the honor of letting me pet her belly before I left. Apparently, I'm only the fourth person she's ever bestowed that privilege upon! She was much more timid when I came by the first time to spend a day with her, just the two of us, but she stayed in the room and on the couch (versus under the couch in a different room), which was a great start, so I just let her be. She pretended to ignore me and I pretended to ignore her. Eventually, she fell asleep. At one point, I looked up and saw that she had edged closer to me. I knew that this was a big display of trust on her part, and honored that trust by continuing to work quietly in her vicinity. She never felt quite comfortable enough to get off the couch during that afternoon, but we did progress to the point where she was wagging her tail when I offered her a treat (and eating the treat, too) and she did solicit some petting, including another offer to let me rub her tummy. I'm going to continue to do some short visits with her before doing overnight work, but I have confidence that as long as I take it slow, respect Pipsqueak's autonomy (and minute anatomy!), and move the relationship forward at her pace, we'll come to be good friends. As much fun as it is to be around a dog that loves everybody, meeting the needs of a dog that is scared to trust anybody is, to me, an honor. It's something that I can do that not everyone else has the patience or know-how to accomplish. Just as I felt is was a privilege to hand-feed Mr. Gorgeous slimy pieces of baloney if that's what he needed in order to recover from his surgery, I feel it is a privilege to work with Miss Pipsqueak and I hope to do right by her.
Pipsqueak rewards me for my quiet patience by licking my hand while letting me rub her belly.
During all this time, there was more migraine chaos. Some of it was caused by turbulent spring weather. I was driving out to Cutie's one afternoon, storm clouds looming and nausea rising, when I thought, "If I don't pull over RIGHT NOW and take some nausea medicine, I'm going to be pulling over in a mile to throw up." After stopping and taking the meds, I thought, "You know, if I'm going to be in danger of puking and likely get a nasty, weather-induced migraine to go with it, I'd prefer to be puking at home." So I hastily cancelled my walking duties, drove home with gritted teeth, paused to dry heave when I got in the door, and then went to bed for three days while the thunderstorms continued. Thankfully, Cutie's owners are very understanding and didn't expect me back until I was fully recovered.
Thunderstorms bring rainbows and migraines.
Some weeks later, I developed swelling in my neck around my throat. I was sure that it was related to a nasty too-much-blood-in-the-head migraine and stiff, sore neck I'd been having, but it was definitely weird. The swelling was sufficient enough to be visible and to put uncomfortable pressure on my throat when I swallowed. I was checked out by a nurse practitioner at my primary care doctor's office, where it was determined that my lymph nodes were fine, which seemed like the only other possible culprit. In the end, an injection of DHE, an erogtamine vasoconstrictor used to treat migraines, cured both the migraine AND the swelling, so I felt vindicated in my belief. I've had it thrice since. I'm thinking that exercise is an important contributor, because after doing research about histamine (an antihistamine helped bring the swelling down the second time it occurred), I realized that I've long had what is known as an exercise-induced histamine response. It's what causes my exercise-induced asthma, makes my nose run profusely when I exercise, and causes occasional episodes of itching. In simple terms, I'm allergic to exercise. Histamine, though we think of it as being solely associated with allergies, is actually what is known as an inflammatory mediator and is at work when there is swelling associated with injury and infections, too. In an effort to bring more white blood cells to an area where there is a legitimate injury or infection, or, in the case of allergies, when there is not a legitimate injury or infection but the body thinks there is, it causes blood vessels to dilate. Migraines also cause blood vessels to dilate. I think there is some interplay going on here when I exercise while I have a migraine, especially one with a lot of swelling, so my body is swarming with histamine and all those great big blood vessels in my neck get the message that they need to expand. I could be wrong, but my hunches when it comes to migraines have a pretty good track record. I'll be discussing all this in detail with my neurologist when I see her in a few weeks.
2000-2015
And finally, a very old, very sick cat that I looked after for a few month passed away. It was his time, but he was loved dearly by his family and will be missed.
So, between collies with oral surgery, paws with fungus, owners with hip replacements, poodles with anxiety, and some migraine weirdness, it's been a very busy spring. Undoubtably, there are more of all of these things to come!
I hadn't intended to take a walk today. I'd wanted to, what with the sun shining and the temperature nudging up toward 60 degrees, but I had migraines all day yesterday and was well aware that I had only a limited fund of energy to draw on today. I have hundreds of photos that need sorting and then backing up and I wanted to make that my priority for the day. However, I did need to drop an order in the mail and I took my camera with me to the mailbox because if you don't take your camera with you, you don't get to take pictures.
Well, once I was outside and taking photographs of flowers in the neighboring yards, it made sense, while I was out, to walk around the corner to photograph some blue hyacinths that I knew were in bloom because the temperature is supposed to get close to 70 this weekend and that will likely fry all of the currently blooming spring flowers, and once I'd photographed the hyacinths, I was already halfway around the block, so I might as well go all the way around and capture those early-blooming tulips... The following photos are the result of my impromptu spring walk around my neighborhood!
Flowering plum blossoms.
Grape hyacinths.
Daffodil.
Tulip.
Vinca minor (periwinkle).
Daffodils.
Hyacinth.
Hyacinth.
Hellebores.
Poor disappointed Abbey, who did not get to go on this unplanned walk, eagerly greeted me on my return home.
I spent this weekend looking after a new client, a golden retriever that I'll call Lady. She's the quintessential golden: sweet, mellow, and friendly. She's thirteen years old, and while she's got some arthritis, an active lifestyle keeps her joints moving relatively freely and she's still got plenty of spunk!
This active routine calls for a nightly walk to the park where I first met her and her owner while I was walking Mr. Gorgeous, where she plays fetch for roughly twenty minutes, and then walks back to her house, a little more than a mile away. I failed to replicate this routine for her, but not for lack of trying!
On the first evening, we arrived at the park to discover the presence of two policemen AND an animal control officer with a pup paddy wagon! It appeared they'd been called regarding a specific incident, since they spent the entire time speaking to an individual who had a barking dog in his car, but I was not about to let Lady off-leash in front of an animal control officer! The park is treated by the locals as an unofficial off-leash park, but there are prominently posted signs to remind park-goers that letting your dog off-leash is against the law. It would be terrible to have your client's dog hauled away because you were dumb enough to let it off-leash in front of law enforcement! But I am not dumb and neither were the many individuals who arrived with their dogs, observed the situation with dismay, and then left. Lady and I took a meandering walk around the perimeter of the park, stopping for petting sessions, trying to kill time in hopes that the cops would leave and I could give Lady her ball game. They eventually left, but the animal control officer didn't, and finally I gave up and walked Lady home. She thought it was a rather lame walk and I was very sorry that I couldn't explain to her why there could be no game of fetch that evening!
A (non)retriever and her ball.
Things looked more promising the next evening. When we arrived at the park, there were no problematic legal impediments to our pleasure, so I let her off her leash and threw the ball for her. Well, she moseyed after it and then lay down and rolled around on her back on top of it, but she didn't return it to me. I threw it again, she slowly trotted after it, and then stood with the ball in her mouth, surveying the scene. On the next throw, she settled herself in the grass to enjoy the breeze. Her owner said that she's great about bringing the ball and dropping it without any fuss, but Lady displayed no interest in playing fetch with me! So finally I gave up and sat down on the grass with her and gave her a nice petting session, which she enjoyed, pressing her head against my chest as she leaned into the rub-down. It was very pleasant at the park, but not exactly what had been prescribed! I then walked her around the park to see if I could get her juices flowing, and while she displayed so much enthusiasm upon seeing a man hitting balls at one of the tennis courts that he offered to give me one for my dog, she expressed zero interest in returning her ball when I tried tossing it for her again immediately afterward! So I gave up and we walked down to the marina and admired the high schoolers all dressed up for prom instead.
A sopping Lady post-swim with her toy in mouth.
On Day Three, I decided to try something different. Lady's owner mentioned that she loved to swim and that it was great for her arthritis, so I decided that we'd make an excursion to the secluded little lakeside park where I take my own dog swimming. It was sunny and 80 degrees, a perfect day for a swim, and Lady got extremely excited when I got one of her float toys out of her toy box! She insisted on carrying it herself out to the car and then down to the lake. In her enthusiasm to get to the water's edge, she nearly pulled me off my feet as we scrambled down the steep slope! (She's not exactly a loose-leash walker and can exert plenty of pull even on level ground.) We had the little park all to ourselves and it was very fun to chuck her toy for her out into the lake. Unlike with the ball, Lady had no problem retrieving her floating toy for me! It was such a nice thing to do on a hot May day. I had been wondering how much swimming would be enough, but I needn't have worried: Lady told me she was done by trotting away back up the trail, toy in mouth, at such a rapid pace that I had trouble catching up to her to get her leash on! We met two dogs and their families coming down the hill as we went up it, so we certainly weren't the only denizens of Seattle who were charmed by the idea of spending part of a sunny Sunday by the lake. I took Lady for a brief walk in the hot sunshine in an attempt to get her somewhat drier before putting her back in my car and then it was back home to bask out on the backyard grass.
A playful Lady rolling around on top one of her toys to get a good back-scratching!
Snoozing on her bed.
Except for our seeming inability to play a decent game of dry-land fetch, Lady and I got along just fine. She liked my massages and being brushed and grinned most gratifyingly when I returned to the house and got up in the morning. She could usually be found in my vicinity, including waiting patiently outside the bathroom door while I showered, and on one occasion, dropped her ball in one of my bags in the bedroom. I think it can safely be said that she found me an acceptable substitute for her owner in her owner's absence.
Lady in profile.
There were two things that went slightly awry during this dog-sitting gig. The first involved sleeping. It's never easy, especially the first night, to sleep in a new place. I had a terrible time falling asleep the first evening and then dreamed that I continued to be awake for sometime after I dropped off, and dreaming you're unable to sleep is not generally very restful! So after a poor beginning to my night's slumber, I found myself awakened when dawn came and started to fill the bedroom with light. It was a very nice bedroom, but it had an entire wall of east-facing windows, so on a sunny May day, even with the mini-blinds closed, it was flooded with light from about 4:30 onward. I have difficulty sleeping unless a room is pitch-black and have special "black out" blinds on my bedroom window to prevent any light from entering. I also need a lot of sleep in able to function properly. Between falling asleep after sometime after 1:00 and sleeping fitfully until 3:00 and then being awoken by the light at 4:30 and sleeping only fitfully until I finally gave up and got up around 8:30, I was a wreck! My mother was kind enough to buy me a sleep mask while I was at my acupuncture appointment, which fortunately worked wonderfully the next night, but Saturday was not an easy day. I nearly broke down when it came time to take Lady on her walk: the enormity of that mile-long walk with a large, pulling dog to the park and then the uphill walk home again just seemed too much. I was able to give myself a little pep talk about not trying to do too much and so, after eating an enormous bowl of granola for dinner and taking my migraine medication, I drove to the park with Lady and left my large, heavy, fancy-pants camera at home. (I was sorry I didn't have it because one of the park's resident bald eagles was sitting in the PERFECT place to get an amazing picture; I seldom go to that park without seeing one of the eagles, but it was the first time I'd seen one of them so perfectly situated in regard to unimpeded sight lines and not hopelessly silhouetted against the light!) In the end, I did have a nice time and while Lady didn't get quite as long of a walk, she did get some exercise.
The other thing that didn't go quite right was that I couldn't get the kitchen sink to turn on. I'm pretty sure this was not my fault. Lady's owner left me a note that the sink's garbage disposal wasn't working and I suspect that the water had been turned off somehow while she was poking around with the disposal. At least that's what I hope. It didn't SEEM like a difficult-to-operate sink, but I sure wasn't able to get any water to come out of it! That kind of thing will certainly make you feel idiotic and paranoid, though. I ended up washing the dishes that couldn't be put in the dishwasher in the bathtub!
Of course, one of my favorite things about dog-sitting (other than the dog) is getting to take my camera for a walk in a new place. Since it was sunny all three days that I dog-sat, I was able to get more than two hundred beautiful photos of late-spring flowers. The following are some of my favorites in rainbow order:
Bluebells.
(This is probably my favorite photo out of all the ones I took!)
Bearded Iris.
Rhododendron.
Spirea.
You can see more photos from this outing (and early spring photo sessions) in this Facebook album. (You don't need to be a member of Facebook to view the photos, by the way!)
That concludes my extended rundown of my first (and hopefully not last!) weekend with lovely old Lady!
It's Thursday and that means, once again, it was time for me to go hang out with Drifter. I initially considered skipping Drifter this week because I have a dog-sitting gig that starts tomorrow and I want to be sure to have enough energy for it, but then I thought of how good for my soul last week's visit was and realized I couldn't bear to miss a week of spending time with horses! Still, it was my intention to do a shorter visit, maybe just one hour of grooming instead of two, until last night, when I learned that a crew of men would be coming to pressure-wash our roof, patio, and deck in the afternoon. I decided it was much better for me to hang out with Drifter and maybe wear myself out doing so than sit in the house listing to the pressure washer's air compressor and getting a terrible migraine!
Drifter dozing off in the cross-ties.
I decided to bring Abbey along with me, since I knew that she wouldn't be pleased to spend the afternoon in her crate listening to people walk around on the roof. I emailed the stable's owner to let her know that my dog would be in my car. Abbey was so excited when I told her she was going to get to come with me that she practically jumped into her seat-belt harness. She suspected good things were in store, but she had no idea that she was going to get to play with her squeaky ball! I decided to have a little picnic lunch at the park where I took my first riding lessons and once I was done eating, I threw Abbey's beloved squeaky ball for her. She had a wonderful time skimming across the grass and leaping into the air to catch the ball. It's great fun to watch and I knew if she was worn out from doing her very favorite activity in the whole wide world, she'd mind less when I left her in the car for a couple of hours while I hung out with Drifter. I'd like to emphasize that she's great at waiting patiently and the car was parked in a beautiful shady spot, so it wasn't really such a bad deal!
Drifter has shed most his
winter coat on this side of his neck!
In the past, I've just brought along my little point-and-shoot when I've visited the stable, but today I brought my Canon and both lenses to see if I could get a few high-quality horse pictures. Naturally, most of my photographic efforts were focused on the gorgeous Syndicate, but I snapped a few of Drifter, too. All the horses were feeling friendly and let me pet them today, but Drifter got the bulk of my attention--two more hours worth of grooming! My intention to do a less-intensive grooming session dissipated once I got into plucking hunks of loose winter hair out of his coat. I love doing this with Abbey, too; it's so satisfying to tug on a clump of hair and have so much come away! I got all wrapped up in doing that and then his owner came by and told me I could give his belly a shampoo if I liked to help calm down his itchy skin. I've never bathed a horse before, but she showed me the wash
Drifter at the wash rack.
rack and the tools and products and it seemed straightforward enough, so once I'd finished his coat and brushed his mane and tail and cleaned out his hooves, I led him down to the wash rack (Abbey sat up and barked with alarm when she saw me leading that giant animal!) and gave the patient old fellow a belly bath. I'd avoided grooming his belly prior to the bath because I didn't want to stir up his itchiness more than I had to, but massaging in the soothing product was a great reason to give him the belly rubs he'd been hankering for! He really is very funny how he stretches out his neck, opens his mouth, and sets his lips quivering with ecstasy
Drifter contemplates life after being groomed.
when he gets touched on the stomach. There's no doubt about it: he thinks it feel gooooooood! After the bath, it was time to get his blanket put back on and then he got a carrot for being a good boy. I thought he seemed a trifle subdued today, like maybe he was a little bit tired, but he also might have seemed somewhat more subdued in contrast to the other horses, who were feeling frisky. Regardless of how sprightly he felt on the inside, when I departed, there was considerably less hair on the outside!
Drifter's ginger eyelashes.
Before I left, though, I made sure to get some pictures of the other horses with my good camera. The slope of the property made it somewhat hard to set up a good shot, especially when I was using my 100 mm lens, but the quality is definitely better than the ones I took with my point-and-shoot! I hope that one of these days I can photograph them when they are out in the pasture, which would make it much easier for me to get a shot of the whole horse and without all kinds of nibbled rails cluttering up the view! You may notice that the bulk of the pictures are of Syd, or Syndicate, but that's because he's the prettiest.
Beacon, the most aloof horse, surveys the scene.
Bear.
I caught Bear mid-yawn with his tongue out in this photo!
Bear and Syd seem to be buddies. They often touch noses over the fence.
Such a handsome horse!
He has a very nice inquisitive personality, too.
Look at Syd's beautiful muscular neck!
He has a beautiful big head, too.
Be still my heart!
The handsome Hanoverian.
It was a rather exhausting afternoon, but it was good I spent all the time at the park and at the stable. It ended up taking the roof-cleaning crew five hours to do the job and I'm very glad that I was away for four of them, spending time outside on a beautiful May day with some of my favorite animals. It beats sitting around feeling cross and wearing earplugs! I'll be starting out my new dog-sitting gig a little more tired than I would like, but I've had my weekly horse fix and that goes a long way!
