Fall Fallowturn Moon
Gertie made it through her surgery with no complications. She’s resting now and will come home this afternoon.
Category Archives: Dogs
On the Table
Fall Fallowturn Moon
Heavy fog here this morning. Made driving through the leaf scattered roads and past our lakes scenic and atmospheric. On the road with Gertie, taking her over to Foley Boulevard Vets for her ACL surgery. She did not want to go with the vet tech, so I had to walk with her to the back.
She should be done around 12:30 pm, come home around 6:00. This is a 6 month rehab and a long stint with a bandage. Dog’s are not so good with bandages. That is, they like to tear them off then lick, lick. lick, lick the wound. Does not help healing. She may have to wear an elizabethan or e collar. Clumsy things to have inside.
Kate’s off to pick up her antibiotics and pain meds. We will give her a series of shots, 8 in all, at home after the surgery. These are to attenuate possible arthritic complications from the knee trauma.
Dogs and Fences
Fall Fallowturn Moon
Looking out the kitchen window this morning after breakfast, watching the bees fly in and out of their hives, the fruit trees with most of their leaves still on. And Vega wandering around sniffing the compost and the hay beside it.
(Vega in a non-digging moment, relaxing from the effort.)
Vega! She’s not supposed to be in there. Why? She chews up the netaphim and digs big holes. Vega and Rigel have systematically breached the fence that has kept them out for years. Why now? Who knows. Instead of climbing over it, or trying to fit between the rails–closed off since its installation by green metal wire, they decided this year that maybe digging under it just might work. They were right.
Up till now I’ve fixed each breach as it came, using various remedies that came to mind at the moment. This morning I stripped out of all those, maybe 6, and laid down hardware cloth, weaving it to the green metal fencing with lengths of baling wire. No bubble gum, but bailing wire is an all purpose, duct-tape like tool for outside repairs.
Putting in the lilies and iris has moved to this afternoon after the nap. Toward which I am now headed.
Just Like #24
Fall Fallowturn Moon
Got a little wound up yesterday about anti-science. Nothing on the plate like that today. Just rain, or at least, drizzle. Cool. Gray.
Got my ax, my felling ax. Handmade. Handforged and sharpened. Hand turned handle. A simple tool. I like that. The kind I can understand. After next weekend, I can get at it, too. I have lots of woods, lots of chances to perfect my technique while getting aerobic exercise and upper body resistance work.
Gertie. Like Adrian Peterson. A torn ACL. Yes, her ruptured disk has healed under prednisone therapy, but on physical examination her knee joint moved more than it should. Probably a small tear that became big.
Interestingly, our vet, Roger Barr, says they never see torn ACL’s in sight hounds, our usual breeds: Whippets, Irish Wolfhounds, Salukis, Pharaoh Hounds. Their ACL, he says, 
is like a cord.
Gertie, though, our adopted granddog, is a German Short Hair, a breed that apparently does not have a cord like ACL. That means she needs surgery. Ouch. Kate’s right. Gertie’s young. She’ll get back 80-90% of her use of that leg and her atrophied muscle should, with rehab, regain some mass. So, we combed our budget and came up with the money. Not an insignificant amount.
A Latin tutoring session today. Gotta go.
Fighting Drought
Fall Harvest Moon
Our irrigation company sends around alarmist circulars declaring potential severe injury or death for our sprinkler outside valve if we don’t have our system shut down early in October. I’ve ignored this for several years now as the droughts have lingered on into fall and made more moisture deeper into the season a necessity, especially for trees, shrubs and perennials.
Even so, every once in a while, like this morning, I get up, go to the irrigation clock and punch manual start. That way I can run water through the valve when temps are lowest while reassuring myself that it’s not locked up, frozen.
It’s working. Yeah.
In Recovery
Fall Harvest Moon
Kate said I recovered from the hernia surgery like a kid. Day two and I’m moving around pretty well. Still painful in certain instances, but not too bad. The pain meds, which I’ve cut back on, still fuzzy up the head and make sorting things through a problem.
Last night was a full moon. I’m not a big fan of the full moon drives folks crazy argument, though it does pull the tides in the Bay of Fundy (where Paul and Sarah are) up 80 feet at high tide, but I’ve never seen the real connection between lunar gravitation and human life.
It’s a different matter, though, when it comes to dogs. The moon casts more light on the woods, animals run around more and squeal more and our dogs go nuts more. In general we try not to reinforce them in behaviors we don’t want, so if they bark and bark and bark and bark and bark (and so on), we don’t get up to let them out. But, after three hours of barking, not kidding, we gave in. Now we have tonight to get through. We’ll see.
Still wuzzy from the vicodin. Maybe clearer tomorrow.
Animal Ironies
Lugnasa Garlic Planting Moon
Animal ironies.
5 years ago when we put in the orchard Vega and Rigel took it upon themselves to shred the netaphim irrigation system. We built a fence around the orchard to keep them out. This was around the time I installed an electric fence to keep Rigel inside the chain link fence that goes all round our woods and most of our property.
Of late, squirrels have taken to jumping off a small ash, onto the top run of the split rail fence and from there on to our honeycrisp tree. This was the first year the tree produced much fruit and we anticipated them. So did the squirrels. I saw one squirrel, with an apple twice as big as his head, leap from the apple tree onto the rail, from the rail onto the ash, all the time carrying this huge apple. After that he disappeared among the oaks.
Also, this year seems to be a gopher year. They come in waves, some years almost none, others they seem to be everywhere. This is an everywhere year. In pursuit (I think) of the underground rodent, Vega and Rigel have decided to join local 147 of the Sandhogs after seeing this picture and admiring the work of their NYC brethren.
They’re hoping for new tunneling tips from their brothers.
Also, yesterday Kate took Gertie, our German shorthair into the vet. Her left rear leg had not gotten better after a course of antibiotics to eliminate a possible Rocky Mountain Spotted fever infection. Gertie began her doggy life running around in the Rocky Mountains outside of Denver.
New diagnosis, confirmed on X-ray? Spinal stenosis effecting the 10th vertebrae. Just like her mommy. She’s now on a course of steroids to shrink the swelling, hopefully in a month or so.
One last animal irony. After my decision a year ago to shift bee management practices, taking only the honey the bees could produce in a year, rather than trying to overwinter the colonies, I have been forced–by the bees–back to the U’s original management 
strategy.
That is, buy packaged bees one year. Watch over them and help them thrive. Make sure they have enough honey to survive the winter. Divide them the next spring, take all the honey from the parent colony and repeat the process with the child colonies.
Once the bees educated me to the soundness of this strategy I can now declare this year a success since I believe both colonies will go into the winter with sufficient honey. So much for my plans. Bees laugh at the plans of man.
Gimmee That.
Lugnasa Garlic Planting Moon
Kona, our 12 year old whippet, as spry and agile as ever, a canine hymn to successful aging, started, about a week ago, jumping up and pulling down bagged honeycrisp apples. They were on a low hanging branch and I can’t imagine what she thought she was about, but she bagged (sorry) several before I saw her in the act and promptly plugged up her way into the orchard.
Honeycrisps mature in mid-September, so her effort, maybe she was being helpful?, was premature by a month or so. As a result, Kate and I decided to try drying apples and pears.
A word on pears. Thankfully Kate saw this in a drying article on pears and we got them off the tree in time. Saw what? Well, the UofM extensions says the mistake most novice pear growers make is to let the pears ripen on the tree. Geez. Turns out they get grainy and not as tasty if you let Mother finish the job.
We cut up the seven apples I recovered (some had been gnawed on by other dogs) and the four pears, soaked them in sodium bisulfite (from your friendly home brewing store in nearby Springlake Park), spread them out on drying racks and put them in our Excalibur. I had a slice when I got up from my nap and they taste just like dried apples! Success.
We’re reinventing ma and pa every day here this fall in Andover.
Grrr. Ruffff.
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
The Hiroshima Moon has begun to fade. Next up will be the Garlic Planting Moon. The Hiroshima Moon made me aware, the whole month, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The insanity of nuclear weapons. Then, the insanity of using them. Then, the insanity of stockpiling them. Now, the proliferation of nuclear states. I think I’ll keep the Hiroshima Moon in my naming list, just for the reminder. Never forget.
Vega and Rigel have a new hobby, digging under the orchard fence. There are now six such attempts, two have achieved break through. At one point this kind of thing amused me. Me against the dog. Human mind against canine. Now it frustrates me. A lot.
These two, sisters never separated since birth, act in unison. Rigel digs, then she rests and Vega digs. A hundred pound plus dog can move a hell of a lot of sand. A lot. Grrrr. Ruffff.
A Bike, The Orchard, Gertie Wounded
Summer Hiroshima Moon
Got a bike and a helmet today. Ready to ride. This bike’s a fixie which means it won’t coast, though it has a hub that can switch out so it rides like an old timey Schwinn. Not expensive, my helmet cost almost as much as the bike. Wanted another aerobic alternative, something to get me outside for exercise. This’ll do it. Bought the bike on line and had a local bike shop assemble it.
Kate and I worked in the orchard today. One day a week she says where and what she’d like to have me do outside. Think it’ll be two days this week. I like to work outside for an hour to an hour and a half, then I’m done. She likes to work until she’s finished. Commendable, but not my style. I parse tasks over time. Needless to say Kate gets more outdoor work done than I do.
Gertie has wounds again. This is the third time since she got here and the second time in a month. We’ve not seen it happen so we can only speculate, though they look like canine bites and tears. Fortunately pediatrics has a lot in common with veterinary medicine–that is, the patients often can’t talk–so handling doggy trauma at a certain level is well within Kate’s capacity.
I held Gertie while Kate put hydrogen peroxide on and into the punctures. The punctures went all the way through the dermis to the muscle fascia. She debreeded, then put an antibiotic ointment under the skin around the wounds. Then, some bandages that lasted for a bit.
We started her on antibiotics we have here from other doggy misadventures, gave her some rimadyl for the pain and let her sleep in our room. Where she is right now.