Notes on the Run

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Nor, of course, have my dogs. We have been enjoying the occasional sunshine (what is this business of one day of spring, one day of rain and cold, one day of spring...? We are being teased by Mother Nature. It is most frustrating!), getting my little patio retreat planted with flowers, preparing for the SPCA garage sale, catching up on some chores around the house and yard, catching up on emails, celebrating my friend Else's 65th birthday (great party, Char!), and generally keeping too darn busy.


And today, I am off to the mainland for a day to visit my mom - likely my last chance until the end of June. And since this neglectful daughter forgot to send her a card or flowers for Mother's Day (though I did remember to phone her!), I can pretend it is a Mother's Day visit and all will be forgiven. Enroute, I'm transporting a dog for one of the rescues, so my own girls will stay home by themselves, with Mary and Else dropping by to feed them and let them out as needed.

Hey, what about ME?

(photo by Deb Strong)

Keep checking back - some time this week I WILL put up more photos from Deb and Sharon's visit. Meanwhile, island people mark your calendars for the BIG annual Cowichan and district SPCA garage sale, May 28-29, 8:30-3:00, 7550 Bell McKinnon Rd, Duncan. Tons of great stuff - tons!!!

Gotta run. Ferries and dogs don't wait for bloggers.

Crazy weather, crazy vet bills, and a few smiles

Well, the great hurricane-force winds never happened, at least not in my neck of the woods. There were high winds on the water, though, enough to cancel a day's worth of ferries back and forth between the BC mainland and Vancouver Island. News reports suggest some parts of the island were hard hit, but here in Crofton, all we got was about ten minutes of strong wind yesterday morning (just enough to knock the power out for a little over two hours) and that was pretty much it. There might have been a bit more wind that evening - I was at the theatre and came home to find all the clocks I had laboriously reset were once again flashing from yet another power failure.

Lack of strong winds notwithstanding, it was a strange, strange day as far as the weather went. We had it all - brilliant sun, torrential rain, sleet, hail, snow, wind. At one point, I looked into my back yard and the sky was a beautiful blue. Charley wanted to go outside to lie in the yard, so I let her out. Ten minutes later I looked out my front window to see sheets of rain washing horizontally across my windows. It was raining so hard, I didn't even take the camera out to get a picture of it. I did go to rescue Charley from the back yard, only to find this:

Whaaa??? I'm fine, leave me alone!

Literally, the dividing line between sun and rain was the end of my driveway. In the backyard, sunny and dry. In the front yard, dark clouds and driving rain.

Blue skies in back

Dark skies in front

I started out to take the dogs for their walk several times when the sun shone - by the time I got their harnesses and leashes on, it was pouring or hailing or snowing. At one point, the sky looked promising so we headed out. A block later the wind was blowing hard enough that I thought we might head back. A block after that - down on the sea walk - it was calm as could be:

I'm betting the people with boats at the marina were glad the high winds weren't as predicted - the marina is undergoing significant maintenance, and as far as I can tell, boat owners didn't have access for the past couple of days so may not have had the opportunity to adequately secure everything for hurricane force winds!



Today was more of the same. Sun, gusts, cloud, sleet, snow, rain....weird, weird weather for the island for March! Even the birds don't know what to do. There is a field near here where the trumpeter swans stay over the winter. They disappeared from the field about two or three weeks ago - as they typically do at this time of year. Yesterday, I noticed they have returned! Guess wherever they were heading was cold enough to make them change their minds.



It is hard to do anything when the weather changes so much - the sun calls me to get outside, the rain/snow/sleet drives me back in again. Maybe spring is waiting for Easter?



Meanwhile, in other news....

I thought Sadie's eye had pretty much completely recovered - she had gone 48 hours without any sign of anything wrong. Then I'm eating my dinner tonight and look down at her to see the eye has sunk right back - just like before - and there seems to be a ridge along the edge of the iris. An hour later and it seemed back to normal again, other than the ridge. I have learned from other collie people that this phenomena is not all that unusual, and seems to correct itself in four to six weeks, so unless it continues to change or looks worse, I shall wait it out a bit more.

I did have Charley to the vet today. She has been excessively thirsty lately, and there has been an incredibly foul smell emanating from her mouth every now and then (and her breath would never win her any kissing competitions to begin with!). Ketosis/diabetes comes to mind, as does kidney trouble, so in she went for blood tests, which should be back Monday. Meanwhile, because her teeth and gums aren't great and there could be an infection brewing, we've started her on antibiotics as well. At nearly fourteen, putting her under for dental work is not something I will choose lightly. We have also upped her pain meds for her arthritic hips - she has a lot of trouble walking now.

My beautiful gray-faced girl

So.....$400 for vet care in the past week (and I saved over $50 by getting Charley's prescriptions filled at the pharmacy rather than buying the drugs from the vet!); plus $200 for their dog food, supplements, and some cat grass and litter for Allie; and I'm not done with the animal-related expeditures yet for this month. Heck, it's only March 3rd! Taking good care of animals doesn't come cheap.

Not animal related, but I did have a great tears-down-my-cheeks laugh this morning, when someone drew my attention to a website called Damn you Auto Correct. It contains snapshots of text messages gone awry when autocorrect changed the words they wanted to type to something completely different - or so the authors claim. I've bookmarked it for my daily chuckle. Some are a bit - ahem - colourful - but check out the tab marked "Best of DYAC". One more reason I don't text message. I have enough trouble with typos in my blog without having a piece of technology make crazy auto-corrects for me!

And for my fellow bloggers, a friend told me of a website called Blog2Print that can take your blog and turn it into book form for you. With my distrust of technology or anything internet-y, it has often bothered me that my blog has the potential to just disappear. It also drives me crazy that I can't easily thumb through it from beginning to end. I will never be an e-book or kindle fan - I like the feel and weight and texture of paper. So now I can print off each year's postings (in correct order)as a complete journal, pictures and all, and have them bound for my shelf. (Note: this is not the book I am working on for publishing purposes, which is a book of short stories about the animals in my life. Too much in this blog would have little merit without drastic editing - I'm just looking to preserve it for myself in a form that I am more comfortable with). I am a happy camper to have been directed to this site .

I'll leave you with a photo of Charley, fast asleep, that made me smile today:

Charley dreaming she's a lion?

Winter's back!

Looks like a good day to curl up with a good book and two good dogs.

Hmmmm....I wonder what this chicken one's about?

I think you should read this dog one to us, mom!



I just finished this one - a great read for anyone who has ever vacationed with an elderly mother!

Guess what de Easter Bunny brunged us!!

He brunged us DIS:



Our mama sez he brunged it fer us dogs, not fer her, cuz if it waz fer her it wud be a little blue sportscar.

He knowed us dogs needed a minivan cuz it waz very, very hard to climb up into the pathfinder and the ramp doesn't work wiv that vehicle. And besides our old car was breakin' down and had a LOT of kilometers on it from all the trips to the parks wiv us dogs.

Actshully, de Easter Bunny told us about it, but our mama don't get to pick it up until tomorrow cuz ...well....fer sum stoopid reason to do wiv not havin' time to wait fer the insurance peoples today because she had to get home to let the little leaky dogs outta the house. Me 'n Charley, we can hold our pee fer a loooooong time, 'specially if it means we's gonna get to go fer a ride in our new car!

Anyways, tomorrow we gets our new van! Our mama sez her old car better not get stolen tonight, cuz she's already signed de paperwork.

Love Sadie

Making a house a home

It’s raining. The dogs are bored. Oliver is chasing the cat around the house, doing his little bunny hop dance and attempting to snap at Allie’s tail whenever she jumps up (thank goodness his reflexes are slow and Allie only threatens to swipe at him with her claws without actually connecting). Sadie and Charley are arguing over who should get to lie on the bed – at the moment Charley is the winner, and Sadie is sulking on the cedar chest at its foot. She is, I suspect, waiting, waiting, waiting for Charley to hop down so she can stake her claim.

"This sucks. I want the bed. Move, ya dumb ox. Grumble grumble."

The Princess Belle follows me from room to room as I move about cleaning this, or moving that…..in each room she settles down on the best available cushion or bed, only to rise with a sigh when she sees me move to another room. Poor Belle – she just wishes her mama would sit still for a bit! Perhaps it is a good day to read a book. But other tasks call to me – little things I am working on, little changes I am making to my house.

"Would you PLEASE stay put??!!!"

I am in love with my house. When I first bought it, it was a “good enough” house – right location, right price, right size but nothing exciting. This past week, I have found myself wandering around thinking “I love this house. I just LOVE this house.”. Slowly I have been transforming it to match my tastes – a bit of paint here, a bathroom reno there, new light fixtures throughout (oooohhhhh the sunshine ceiling in the kitchen gives the whole house a brand new feel – I love, love, love it!), a couple of new closet doors, rearranging this and that, surrounding myself only with things that give me pleasure – good books, some pieces of family history, bright and warm artwork, real wood. Yesterday I brought my beautiful patio bistro table in for the winter – a brilliant splash of colour to brighten the dark winter days.

"Hmmm...needs cleaning...has rain spatters..."

"Waiter, clean this table....and bring me a half litre of cream!"

An interior designer would no doubt have a heart attack looking at my place, as nothing is particularly modern (or uniformly antique, for that matter) and the furniture is a mish-mash of woods and fabrics and styles – but it is MY place, a comfortable place, a place of peace and solitude and yet a place to welcome friends.

And, because I am not worried about having the Home Beautiful image, it is a place where my dogs and cat are welcome everywhere, in every room, on every piece of furniture and on every rug.

And my critters, of course, are what make my house my home.

Still Here, Just Busy

When I begin to get phone calls and messages saying "Jean, are you okay?" I know it's time to take a moment to sit down and blog.

Things are a bit chaotic around here - I took a three day trip back to the mainland, cramming in a thousand errands and visits, and came home to find my bathroom renos were to begin the very next morning instead of a day later. And my dogs are taking turns having the runs (Charley and Belle), feigning weakness or mental incompacity (Sadie and Oliver), learning new tricks AKA "countersurfing" (Sadie), stealing each other's food (Sadie and Belle), developing new lumps and bumps that send me scurrying to the vet(Belle),and being generally upset at the extent to which renovations disrupt their lives and constrain their freedom. However, a couple more days and we will have a nice new bathroom with a new soaker tub and tub surround, new flooring, new sink, new counter, new faucets, new paint....and all I will need is a new supply of bubble bath and a lottery win.

The trip to the mainland was primarily to return my university computer and to archive my gradebooks and exams from my last semester. But I also stopped by Hearts on Noses to finish off a grant application I'd been working on for Janice and to deliver a ton of apples from my tree for the piggies.




The vehicle was full of crates of apples - in the back cargo space and on the back seat - over 200 pounds of them, and that's not counting the two cratesful I kept for myself or the 1/2 boxful my daughter took home, or the several dozen more still on the tree. In fact, I only picked what I could reach without a ladder - and I'm only just over five feet!



It was great to see the piggies, though I didn't have time to do much more than feed them a bunch of treats and give them all a little luvin's. I didn't take any pictures - I was going to do that after we'd finished the grant proposal, but time ran out on me. I had dinner out with Ellen, but didn't get to see the Whippet Boyz. I stayed with my friends Ann and Ken, then next day ran around doing other errands - the university, returning a phone that didn't work, picking up things I can't find here on the island, visiting with my Emma, and then back to Ann and Ken's for a scrumptious dinner. Day three was a visit to my mom, taking her out to lunch and then to the beach for a while, before heading back to the island.

On the ferry home I finished up some financial tables for Hearts on Noses, and then took a few minutes to just enjoy the surreal blue-hazed mountains on the horizon.



I came home to a warm welcome from my canine and feline crew, who had been spoiled rotten by Else while I was gone, and the message that renos were to begin in the morning so please clear and clean the bathroom......

And that's what's going on in my world.

The week in review

I haven't had my camera with me as much this week, though I did take a funny video of Allie balancing precariously on the top of a door - two paws on the top of the door, two on the top of the door frame, as the door slowly swung open. Unfortunately, in the business of transferring materials from one computer to a another, I seem to have lost or deleted it. Darn!

The new couch was finally delivered and before I could even remove the tags, Sadie gave it four paws up, the Canine Bark of Approval.

Allie also gave it four paws up. Unfortunately her paws had claws extended as she practiced her yoga stretches on the most accessible corner. She felt it should become the next Ratty Chair, so it now has double-sided tape all around the corners to dissuade her from using it as a scratching post. She is reconsidering the couch's function, and seems to have agreed that it is better for sleeping on than ripping apart.



The new computer is finally fully operational, thanks to my friend Chris and computer guru Andre - everything is safely saved or transferred (except that one video, which disappeared into cyberspace), and my wireless router means I can now take my computer anywhere in the house. Of course, no matter where I go, Allie promptly plonks herself between me and the screen - what is it about cats and computers???



(By the way, you can blame Chris for the lack of blog entries this week - she put a bunch of games on the new computer for me and...well.....can we say A D D I C T I N G? )

Sadie, Charley and I did go on the Wednesday Walk - six people, sixteen dogs this week. We went to Swallowfield again - it is so beautiful there, with the view over the estuary and the lovely clear pools of water.

Karen tossed treats in the water:

( I love Dolly's ears in the forefront of this picture!)

You get it! No, you get it! (Photo by Mary - thanks!)

Drew just wants to swim, swim, swim! :

Ker-splash!

River dog rising (Photo by Mary)

Drew doing the butterfly stroke?

Vimy agrees the water is nice, but a quick dip is enough for him:

Ha ha ha! That felt good!

And Charley and Pearl think water play is just plain silly:

What ARE they thinking?

They're just plain silly!

Quinn and Vimy take a break and retreat up the hill a bit to watch the action :

Then Dolly checks Vimy's dental hygiene:

Vimy! Your breath is baaaaaad! (Photo by Mary)


And to end the week, Charley and Sadie and I had a lovely evening walk just as dusk was falling:

Living the Simple Life

I have been simplifying my life by disposing of lots of items I have been dragging from house to house to house for much of my adult life.

But "simplify" took on a new meaning last night, when one of the key electrical circuits in this old house gave up the ghost. Fortunately all the kitchen outlets are still intact, but everything else is kaput.

And so I am living the simple life until an electrician can get here - hopefully tomorrow. I have run a power cord to the rest of the house, but only to run one item at a time so I don't overload the kitchen circuit - and with temps in the very high twenties (celsius), that one item is usually a fan.

So, I'm limiting myself to a quick morning and evening check-in on the computer. Of course, my digital housephone is also down (the hazards of new technology - even the phone requires electricity) - so if anyone is trying to reach me, please call the cell.

Update on Mama

By Sadie, Charley, Belle and Oliver

We thought we might hasta call the vet to come euthanize mama today, cuz that seemed like the humane thing to do. Instead we tooks her to his office and he decided she cud be saved. We is happy to hear that, cuz we loves our mama and she’s only a little over eight in dog years so shud still have lots of livin’ left to do.

Mama knows not all bugs need drugs, but in this case her bugs does need drugs, so now maybe we will soon see some improvement and she will stop keeping us awake all night with her barkin’ an’ whinin’ and complainin’.

Hoomans are such wusses!

Its a boootiful day out. We thinks we will see if we can take some pictchures with our mama's camera. This blog is getting pretty darn booooring!

Love, Sadie an' crew.

Our Mama is LEAVIN' us!!!!

By Sadie

Our mama is goin' away! Well not for good, just for the weekend. And Auntie Ellen and the whippet boyz are going to stay at our house to look after everyone.

Allie is not pleased because the whippet boyz chase her so she has to stay up in the attic room. And Charley will be pissed if the whippet boyz steals her beds or crates – there’s a lot of competition for the favourite beds around here as it is. But Kinley, Whippet the Younger, is usually more interested in booting Belle out of her basket than tangling with Charley. And I don'tz mind sharing the couch wiv a whippet or two.

Our mama hasn’t spent a night away from the critters in years and years and years. Charley says a long time ago, Charley and Emma used to go stay with a friend on a goat farm when mama went away. And the only time mama went away in the three years she’s lived here, she took Charley with her (that was to meet Caleb, before Oliver and Belle and I came to live here). But since the piggies arrived 18 months ago, she hasn’t spent a single night away.

She won’t admit it but I think she might secretly be looking forward to having the whole bed to herself, and not being woken up at 5:30 AM by four dogs and a cat, and not having to trudge out to the barn to scoop poop and haul water and feed piggies and ‘pacas. But I’m betting she is going to miss us something terrible!

Why is our mama going away, you ask? She is goin’ to the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island to look at the place that might be our next home when she retires later this year. Charley has been there before, because that's where Caleb came from and she got to go over there to meet him before my mama adopted him. Charley says there are some great off-leash parks and beaches and places to go for hikes. I thinks I would like that!

Oh, and Auntie Ewwen? Just in case mama forgot to tell you, we dogs get alllllll the treats we wants - at least six or seben cookies each, sebenteen times a day.

Love Sadie