Here he is — Owen with his leg free for the first time in about six months. He’s a little freaked out, as you can see, and the poor leg is pretty irritated from tape and bandaging, but we think the achilles tendon repair is going to hold (knock wood). The bandages actually came off yesterday, but the vet and I are such chickens about it that he hung out there yesterday and spent the night in a nice, contained little crate. He’s still favoring it, but he’s cruising around the house and yard pretty well, and as you can…
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We had an unexpected visitor yesterday — it was early, about seven, and I was making tea when my dogs rushed the back fence, barking. I went out to shush them because it was early, we have neighbors — and who did I see on the far side of my back gate but Jacques! I let him in and looked down the alley, but there wasn’t any sign of the Mighty Hunter. That was weird. So after I got the three of them to stop barking, I got on the phone. Jacques has been known to go on walkabout every…
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Here’s my boy, back from getting his scary apparatus removed. He has a slick little lightweight cast and he’s stumping around like a champ. Poor guy, I didn’t realize those pins went all the way through his leg bones! The vet wanted to give me the pins as a souvenir but I passed — he was pretty sore that first night after they took the apparatus off, but he bounced right back. Yesterday my local vet cut it off to change the bandages underneath and as we were lying on the couch watching dopey TV, I realized that the cotton…
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Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita, Clearly saw emptiness of all five skandhas, Ray! What are you doing? Get over here! Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain. O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, Emptiness no other than form; Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form. Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness, Are likewise like this. Whoa! What are you doing? You’re not allowed in the street. O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness, Not born, not destroyed, Not stained, not pure, Without loss, without gain. So, in emptiness there is no form, No sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness, No eye,…
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So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh. Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was fine, but as the plants grew up through it, it became a pain in the neck. So this year, I went for more drastic measures. I ordered this fabulous sprinkler scarecrow from Amazon. You hook it up to the hose, and set the sensitivity level,…
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A big weekend of gardening — I dug the crabgrass and feral mint (I love my mint, but it was taking over everything) from the perennial beds. It was hard. There was digging, and pulling, and tugging, and sprays of dirt. I have an entire trash receptacle full of roots out there on the parkway waiting for the first yard waste pickup of the year. My perennial beds have moments of gorgeousness, followed by long periods of bedragglement, caused in part by the weeds. My lawn too, is plagued by weeds — not dandelions so much, I don’t mind dandelions,…
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We got up early this morning and drove over to Billings to see the orthopedic vet. He said it looks like the tendon is healing up quite nicely, which was an enormous relief. Then he knocked my poor Owie out and re-adjusted the pins so that he’s putting a little bit of weight on the tendon. The pins and rods will stabilize it for another three weeks or so, and then he’ll be freed from the aparatus and will get a soft cast for a few more weeks. And here’s what poor FrankenPuppy looks like beneath those bandages:
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Well, the dogs are on the mend — Ray’s stitches come out on Friday and I took Owen off to have his dressings changed today. I wish I’d had my camera with me — that external fixature is quite something. My little FrankenPuppy. His Fenatyl patch is also off, which is making him a little less groggy — thank goodness we have the mysterious “anaglesic elixir” because he’s still intermittently uncomfortable. In other news — the tomatoes are getting their true leaves down in the basement, although I didn’t have the germination rates with the pepper seedlings that I’d hoped…
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This better work, because while my boy was really happy to see me when I picked him up this afternoon, he’s not a happy camper. That big square thing on his leg is the external fixature — pins sunk into his bones, and connected to rods to immobilize the whole lower leg joint. Here’s a close up. He also came home with a bottle of “analgesic elixir” — narcotics — and thank goodness. I got him home, and set up in his little bed (which normally lives under the kitchen table, but the cone kept getting hung up so I…
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Yesterday I took poor Gimpy Dog over to Billings to the veterinary orthopedist. Even typing that makes me feel slightly ashamed of myself — we live in a nation in which an enormous percentage of our population doesn’t even have human health care, and I’m spending how much money on orthopedic surgery for my dog? So anyhow, I was really hesitant about this whole thing — not just because of the money, but because the effect of the first surgery, which was supposed to increase his mobility had exactly the opposite effect — he fell apart entirely. But this guy…