• Category Archives Dogs

  • Post-Op Pups

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                            Waxing Harvest Moon

    The need to constantly monitor our two post-op pups and Kate’s difficulty with her neck and back has made me feel trapped in the house.  If I leave one of the pups in the kitchen too long, they chew up and ruin something I’d rather have.  If I let them outside, they run the risk of opening their incisions and getting an infection.  Kate’s pain has made her less able than normal to help with them.  So, I stay close, listen for chewing sounds and rotate the pups, one inside and one outside.

    While Kate was here this morning, I made a quick run to the temple of the cost conscious consumer, Costco.  Got dogfood, dog treats, kitchen trash bags and two large jugs of Tide.  I discovered a while back that if you go right at 10 a.m. when they open, the chances of getting in and out in a reasonable time rise dramatically.

    OK.  That’s enough whining.

    How about that Favre?  He was in for two sets of downs, did a bit of this and a bit of that, nothing spectacular.  The paper claimed season ticket and jersey sales have almost made up for the money they spent on his contract.  Geez.  Here’s a bit of irony.  Tavaris Jackson followed Favre and played well into the fourth quarter.  He looked great.  His passes were crisp; he didn’t hesitate.  Seemed to know what he was about.  Then John David Booty stepped in and looked good, too.

    It made wonder if the coaching staff has picked Favre for an additional reason to the apparent one, that is taking an already good team deeper into the playoff season.  Maybe, just maybe they hope his play and presence will elevate the work of Tavaris Jackson and/or John David Booty.  Maybe, just maybe Favre plays a couple of years, these guys apprentice from one of the best to play the game and become our quarterbacks of the future?  If I can think of it, someone else can, too.


    Dogs Sport 📎and tagged

  • The Girls After Their Operations

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                         Waning Green Corn Moon

    We move into the new moon tomorrow, the moon that will see us well into September, the harvest moon.

    Rigel and Vega do not feel good.  They have lain around ever since returning from the vet and their surgery.  When I came downstairs, they lay together, Vega’s head on Rigel’s chest.  Littermates hang together throughout life; Hilo and Kona still  sleep together and cuddle, 8 years after leaving mom behind.

    I guessed Vega’s weight to be  90 lbs and she weighed out at 86.5.  I guessed Rigel at 73 and she came back 74.5.

    Political agony has not ended with the demise of the Bush administration.  Now we begin to see why the left has not trusted the Democratic party for years.  Even with solid majorities in both houses division between fiscally liberal and fiscally conservative Democrats make passage of health care reform of any meaningful kind unlikely.


    Dogs 📎and tagged

  • Free kittens. Spaded.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                    Waning Green Corn Moon

    Rigel and Vega have returned home, a bit foggy and uncertain.  Spayed now, they have to be on home rest for the next 10 days.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll make that.

    Kate and I saw a cute poster on the bulletin board posted in the airlock going out of the Festival Grocery.  Done in crayon it said, “Free kittens.  Spaded.”

    These lectures on the cycles of American political thought I’m listening to right now have prompted a considerable amount of noodling, most of  it focused right now on the central paradox of our democracy.  A solution borne of the Enlightenment, our government and in particular our Constitution and Bill of Rights makes a lot effort to protect the individual and that crucial virtue which ensures individualism, liberty.

    The paradox at the core of our nation is this:  government exists to co-ordinate and organize a community, yet its chief underlying value is individualism.  Thus, the purpose of government, focused on community, stands over against the individual it exists to preserve.  This paradox, unresolvable, lies at the fulcrum of so many of our political disagreements.  I’m not any further along with this right now, but its on my mind.


    Dogs Politics 📎and tagged

  • My Dog Ate My Remote

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    OK.  In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have:  escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring.  All that, but now they’ve done something serious:  revealed the insides of the dvd player remote.  Yike.  Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player?  I thought not.  Sigh.

    Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back.  It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies.  I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange)  while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.

    While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me.  Crack, snapple and pop.  Not rice krispies.  Nope.  It was my lower back.  Owee.

    Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then.  She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too.  I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it.  Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.

    I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.


    Dogs Health Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Eureka!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    Got some sleep.  Feel better this morning.  A busy day ahead.  Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.

    Kate comes back from Denver today.  I  had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day.  My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan.  Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us.  I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon.  He had a bad ride home from the hospital.  A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs.  Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.

    Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas.  By eat I mean shred and coat with drool.  The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me.  Just one more of the V&R stories.

    Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside.  And refilled it.  Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water.  Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container.  She was happy.  Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her.  90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.

    The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer.  Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died.  hirschJon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does.  Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor.  That comes on the 27th.  Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago.   A lot for a young family to absorb.  Why I was conflicted.  (pic:  Hirschel)


    Aging Dogs Family Health 📎and tagged

  • Watch the Video

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                 Waxing Green Corn Moon’

    Former Door County dairy farmer and Woolly Mammoth Bill Schmidt passes the Dairyland baton to northern Indiana’s Fair Oaks Farm.  Why?  They produce enough milk to provide for the dairy needs of an 8 million person city.  They have 25,000 acres and 32,000 cows, milked 3 times a day on a moving carousel.  Hard to believe?  Watch the video.

    Kate and I spent the morning at the Minnesota Spine Center.  We met a confident and capable surgeon who gave Kate some possibilities she had not had before.  Whether any of them will relieve what has now been a 20 year 0rdeal that has caused a lot of pain and cost here 3 1/2 inches in height we do not know, but we will.

    Vega the wonder dog continues.  Now she has found the netaphim running through the raised beds.  She has gnawed on some of it though she cut through none of them.  She’s an intelligent, active, inquisitive dog.

    The Blackberry Storm I got at the Verizon store got terrible reviews when it first came out.  I have used it for a few days now and can say that the problems I’ve encountered so far fall the into the severely annoying class, frustrating but not crippling.  Example.  Like the I-Phone, the device it attempts to copy, it has an acclerometer that switches the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone.  Unlike the I-Phone the Storm does not always respond to the turn, at least not right away.  Likewise the internet link acts up sometimes, offering less than the full website for viewing.

    On the other hand it has a full qwerty keyboard in landscape mode and two thumbed typing can  be accurate and fast.  It also has a smaller footprint than the I-Phone, something I appreciate.  It will work for my needs just fine.

    I’m back to working out with the full routine:  flexibility, resistance, balance and aerobics.   Body and mind work better when exercised.


    Aging Dogs GeekWorld Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Quieter Dogs

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    Kate’s plane is in the air, but 30 minutes or so late.  I’ll leave in a bit to pick her up.  It’s a long hike to the airport from here.

    The dogs have not been noisy today.  Daddy was home.

    Yesterday, via Netflix, I finished the first season of TrueBlood.  My fascination with horror, monsters and science fiction has been lifelong and I imagine it will be with me when I head out on my 49 day journey to the next adventure.  As an HBO program, TrueBlood takes full advantage of a sub-genre of horror, the vampire romance.   There is sex, betrayal, monsters and demons of the night and a lot of Cajun country atomspherics.  The one  true Cajun speaker in the first year turned out to be a fake, however, and a murderer.  There was an audio tape, Cajun dialect for Actors, in his affects.


    Dogs Myth and Story 📎and tagged