Baby

Baby’s Vet Visit and a Visitor to our Yard

Baby fell in the back seat of the truck on the way to the vet and couldn’t get up. I couldn’t reach her, so she had to stay put till we got there. She was a little tipsy, but was smiling when we got there. Baby loves traveling and visiting exotic locations, especially ones with foreign lizards and frogs to hunt. On a side note, as wobbly as she is in her walking, she managed to get a frog last night in the yard!

We were at the vet’s for 3.5 hours on Saturday! That was just too long. We got there on time for our appointment, but due to Baby’s skin problem, which the vet diagnosed as a hot spot (?), there was no acupuncture.

Instead, Baby got an x-ray of her chest because she’d been coughing. She had two x-rays actually. Here’s one.

The first thing I flipped out about were the black lumps on the film. Then I found out it was fecal matter making its way down the canal. Baby does have borderline pneumonia. So we started with a neck problem, which seems to mirror Wobblers in my opinion, but the vet says no because Baby would have had symptoms when she was around a year old (?), and we’ve added hot spot and borderline pneumonia. (The vet mentioned Baby’s heart was large, but we couldn’t tell much more than that from the x-ray. It’s not heartworms, that’s for sure.)
Baby is on prednisone, Tramadol, and Methocarbamol for her neck issue. She’s on Cephalexin for her hot spot and borderline penumonia, and taking cough tablets for the latter, as well.

Phew!

Well, no matter what is going on in Baby’s life, she lives it to the fullest. She also attracts friends wherever she goes. At the vet’s office, the office dog, Reggie, was attracted to Baby’s aura. She came over to join us.

We finally made it home, then on Sunday, I went outside to water.

I figure this is a corn snake. I found an ID close to it here. The reason I have these pictures is when I was watering, the snake came out to visit with me. It wasn’t afraid of me, though I couldn’t return the sentiment. Even though I heard it’s (supposedly) harmless. Though how anything that can cause a person to have a heart attack may be termed harmless is beyond my comprehension. I just hope it doesn’t get into the house.

Helen

P.S. Sandy from our local extension office wrote the following: “It is a baby Southern Black Racer. It is marked like this to protect it from predators. It is a good snake and will take care of a lot of bugs in your yard. I have a few adults that I play hide and seek with in my neighbors and my yard.”

Baby, Wildlife

Sep

2008

Poopy Weather

Helen

There’s nothing more invigorating than a tropical storm in tandem with a herd of Dober and Aussie kids who have diarrhea. I cleaned up doo-dee when I came home at lunch, as I was about to go on my way back to work, when I came home at the end of the day, after I let them out and all through the night.

Annie was particularly crafty by pooping at the crate door and using her crate blankey to cover it. I’d wondered why she had that opposite set-up in her crate when I left for lunch. It wasn’t until hours later and plenty of wiping up and realizing the odor wasn’t going anywhere until I did some snooping and found the well-hidden pile. Eeek! That Annie is a crafty girl, she is!

It wasn’t easy getting some of my CSK (cross-species kids) to go out that door and use the great wet outdoors as their potty.

Luigi woke me up at 1:30 a.m., when he finally decided it was time to take a dump. Thank goodness he didn’t just drop it in the house. Because it was drizzling, I had to join him in the rain while he did his thing.

Because of all the action going on, I cooked up a batch of sweet potatoes, red potatoes and rice with a slice of cheese last night. That was a modified Dr. Marty anti-diarrhea diet because I wasn’t going out to the store for that turnip and leek. I think it may have worked, but time and my lunch break will tell.

Here’s what Tropical Storm Fay looked like. She was a bit rude. That ladder you see in the picture? Well, last night I’d tethered the door open so the kids could run in and out due to their innards erupting out the rear with barely any warning, and when I came out to take a look-see, that ladder was knocked to the ground. So were several chairs; and my Luigi tree – aka a Vera Wood tree – had been pushed onto the fencing I’d just put up a few weekends ago. You can see the top of the Luigi tree in the picture with the yellow flowers. I picked up the tree, and leaned it over in the opposite direction on top of the sweet potato vines.

Fay is still moseying on by, with occasional bouts of rain and wind, but mostly she’s just bringing the color gray to Fort Doberdale, Florida, and its surrounding vicinities.

Helen

P.S. The rice and potato dinner worked. Lunch time, I held my nose as I opened the door, but no need! The air was fresh and clean of the doo-dee odor. Yeehaw!

Annie, Baby, Leissl, Lilian, Luigi, Weather

Aug

2008

Friday Round-Up

Helen

Today I drove really fast within reason going home from work, so I could mow my lawn before it was too late. I wanted to get that out of the way, so I could finish my high jump this weekend. The first thing I needed in order to mow the lawn, was the lawn mower. I pulled it out of the shed, all the way down three steps and do you know what peeked out at the bottom of the steps? A possum! Cute little thing. I was wondering where all the dried leaves were from as I know I didn’t leave them in that shed. She went back under the mower, and I had a time getting her out, but she finally agreed to leave, and I got to mowing. I did sweep out the nesting materials. I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to have a possum using my lawnmower as a place to sack out, but it’s certainly better than having rats in there!

Speaking of rats, when I dropped off the newspapers and some shoe boxes at the Wildlife Center at lunch time, I found that the green lizard that the Fedex driver brought to the center last week and which had been stuck to the glue trap for rats had been released. This was amazing to me. They said they could help little lizards stuck, too. Incredible! I’m glad that came to a happy ending.

Baby ate grass today. I didn’t mow all of it away, so she picked up the slack.

There is a mostly full moon out tonight. Absolutely beautiful! Tomorrow night will be the total full moon. We will be there.

Helen

Baby, Trees and Plants, Wildlife

Aug

2008

Training, Trees, and Other Goings-On

Helen

Tonight I started working on Raven’s sit stays more seriously. She and I are signed up for that beginning agility class in September, and I suppose it’s time to settle some manners into the Raven. So we worked sit stays where she did very well, staring at me for 10-second intervals between clicks and treats. We ended on a 15-minute sit stay and she got a jack pot. Then we did a handful of treats worth of touch the dumbbell on the floor. What a doosie of a pup!

Meanwhile, there is something about that look of hers that I often wonder about. Of course, this picture was taken when she had a right to give me such a look. OK, so I had to remove some of the temp fencing around my vegetable garden yesterday and replace it. I use a brick to pound in the new stakes, and I used to have a beat-up towel that I put between brick and stake when pounding. I looked around for something to use that was well-worn and I thought this old Wubba cover was it! Uh huh. I pounded a few times, and something called me away. As soon as I moved off, Raven snatched back her Wubba cover, and this was the resulting look. I guess I deserved it. I decided to pound without a cover, and it worked fine.

This morning, thank God, the tree men came back and removed all those tree pieces and chunks of trees from behind the hedge of the yard and put them into the swale for bulk trash pick-up Wednesday. I was so happy that was done! Whilst the two younger men worked, the leader pointed out all the work that he could do in my yard. Yep. I know. But I’m a do-it-yourselfer where I can be due to thriftiness, and taking down 40-foot pines or 25-foot traveler’s palms was not examples of those times. Hence why he got that work.

The FDSP had oatmeal and peanut butter for Sunday breakfast. It was intended to be a treat; however, Baby (the Queen Mother) didn’t like hers. She walked around checking in everyone’s bowl to see if they had the same thing as she did. She was disappointed to find it was so. Ginger loved her breakfast, as did the rest of the FDSP. She has a hobby of picking up stray toys and non-chalantly strolling back to her den with them. That’s why no one has any Nylabones to munch on!

Luigi had a good time eating his breakfast, too. I get the feeling he may have irritated the DoberDiva, though. She is good at spitting especially when she has a mouth full of food that she’s not particularly fond of.

This evening, Luigi and I worked in the kitchen on scent discrimination. I brought out a second metal dumbbell and he and I clicked and treated our way through his selecting the right one each time. However, he has no clue yet, why I click on the one with my scent on it. But he will. He’s Luigi. Bright as they come. He also is in the beginning stages of learning to walk backwards. The light bulb dimly came on for him and me on learning/training walking backwards. For most of our tries, he would step back and as I was clicking, he would be sitting. That is one of the habits we need to correct. I’d like him to tuck sit instead. However, at the end of the session, he stayed standing instead of going into a sit when I clicked his steps backwards.

Now both Raven and Luigi are resting and quietly thinking about what went on with our training tonight, so all that knowledge will be stored in their Dober memory banks.

Baby and Bunny Butt absorbed lessons from the Peace Stone this weekend, and Ollie found an old favorite ball to prance around with. Ollie is one to find a toy that everyone else wants and hog it till either he gets bored, or somehow another dog snatches it away from him. He’s no fun for playing fetch because of that, but he’s good for keeping other family members occupied when the real Queen Mother wants a break from having a Cuz ball or other toy shoved at her.

By the way, Raven has a new elegantly Dobermann look about her. She does. (It startled me at first.) OK, it’s occasional, but that look has arrived since the Peace Stone fell from the sky and her maturity started kicking in. She’s by no means mature, but she is getting there. She still barks hysterically in her crate when she wants immediate results, but heeds my warnings and closes the yap for 10-15 seconds intervals. Hmmm, that’s the same amount of time she can concentrate on a sit-stay. Maybe we have something there!

It was a fine weekend. I even got further along with building the high jump until the rains kicked in and the instructions got a tad confusing on Saturday. I needed a couple more PVC poles as well, being there was a piece to the construction puzzle I failed to recognize. PVC poles were purchased today, and next weekend, I should be able to complete that high jump. The bar jump will be the last of the set. Alleluia!

Helen

Baby, Ginger, Luigi, Ollie, Raven, Taylor, Training

Aug

2008