ONCE A HOUND....

Of the four dogs three are hounds and have noses. The fourth also has a nose but I don't think he pays as much attention to smells as the hounds do, which makes sense since noses are what these hounds are all about.

So yesterday I let the dog that had accompanied my son and his girl up from Knoxville, a delightful Aussie named Koda (I think that is how she spells it) use the backyard.

We orchestrated it so that my dogs would be eating and would not even know Koda was in the yard. My dogs are not a pack: they're a Gang Of Four. I don't know how other people handle guest dogs, but I have never even tried it. I have a feeling my dogs would not greet a stranger in their midst with open paws.

Anyway so Koda came and used the yard and left without my dogs ever getting sight of him, but of course, his scent was all over the place. It was really funny. I wish I had a film of the hounds hitting the back door, shooting out, screeching to a halt, noses up, whirling around and attacking the gate. From there they put their noses to the ground and began an in-depth study of the trail that meandered about the yard --THEIR YARD!!!--- and the pee spots and so on, and the longer they tracked the more excited they got. Sometimes they would stop and peer around as if expecting a dog to materialize behind them. (Talk about a "hot track").
As they nosed their way through the grass they first began to mumble, then broke into shouting, tails going like mad they bellowed and stomped and bayed as they raced around Koda's trail. And ended up back at the gate, yelling and hollering, daring Koda to come out of hiding and show himself. He was of course, long gone.

During this time the Belgian, with his excellent but hardly comparable nose, stood and watched in amazement. (He often does this when the Bassets are on one of their Missions.) Cooper probably could smell Koda also but it never occur-ed to him to charge blindly about the yard telling the world about it. He would be more likely to sit quietly by the gate and wait to see if Koda returns.

It took quite awhile for the boys to settle down. At one point they came back into the house, ran to the front door and looked up and down the street, then ran to the back door to go out, and began all over again. It is interesting that they were able to understand that Koda had come from the front and that if they came in and looked out the window, they might see the interloper. That requires some reasoning ability, something many experts don't think dogs have. Clearly, they do.

THIS IS COOPER

This is Cooper.
Ch. Midnight Acres High Noon, HCT.
Born Nov 3rd, 2000 I think. Or 2001. He is 11. And now, he is failing.
He is my heart dog, my soul dog, my constant and enthusiastic companion.
He is an AKC Champion of record.
He was born in the country but is a city dog at heart. He finds horses, cows and sheep to be things to avoid.
He rides in cars, he does elevators. He has stayed in many motels in many places. He travels well. He guards his flock. He watches the house, he alerts to things that are a block away. He waits every day for the mailman, the UPS man, the Fed Ex man and anyone who looks suspicious--- which means anyone outside the immediate family.

Cooper is ill. A year and a half ago he lost a front leg to Osteosarcoma. Now he has some kind of lesion in his  belly, at the pyloric valve. He has trouble eating. He has lost a lot of weight. He is bleeding somewhere inside. Nevertheless he barks at strangers, guards the house, wags his tail, grins his silly Belgian grin.
I cannot bear the thought of losing him, but I will.

I am trying to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the nights without him, for the days that I do not feed him, for the afternoons that he does not lay in the sun on the deck.

I am trying to prepare for his empty collar and his put-away dishes, For the toys he doesn't need anymore, and the silence when the mailman comes. I am trying to brace for looking in the back of the Van and seeing --- no Cooper. Because this is coming.

I am not ready. I hope he isn't, either.

LIVING WITH NIGEL

This is Nigel.
He is not spoiled.
Every dog should have someone willing to cover them when they are chilly, to feed them whenever the urge to gnosh strikes, to carry fresh water to them 30gazillion times a day and to take them out and in and out and in and out and in when they cannot walk by themselves.
Every dog should have a 4 foot pen in a main room to stay in when he is not on the bed or the couch or lounging on the floor.
Every dog should be able to roust his keeper at 4:30 in the morning to go outside. Especially when the keeper has to be the back legs.
Every dog should have his own transport cart with his own license plate and DL and someone to walk along beside in case of trouble.
Every dog.
Every single dog.
And I have to wonder if Nigel would return the favor.
I suspect he would be available to assist with naps.

NOT VERY REGULAR

Don't worry it's not an ad with Jamie Lee Curtis.

I have not been very good about writing. There is nothing very exciting to write about.

April 20 I am going to Iowa and then to Omaha for the International Horse Show, one evening of it at least. I am not sure what it is we are going to see- whether it is jumping or not. I believe it is. I haven't ever watched show jumping in person so am really looking forward to it. I am going to have to board Nigel. I hate to do that but I know that it is too much for one person. Cooper is staying home as well. Another thing I do not like doing, but there will be 3 people in Susie's little Prius and I just don't think it would work...LOL.

(from google)

I cannot imagine show jumping. When I was riding all the time and still relatively brave, I would take my horse over fallen logs, and it terrified me if you have to know. I had a lot of close calls riding, but jumping was the only time I was afraid on a horse. I didn't, I think, have a lot of faith in his ability to jump, he being a kind of clunky quarter-horse type. In truth, he never put a hoof wrong, and was considerably more athletic than I.

Horses are funny animals. It is easy to forget they are prey animals and therefore very paranoid. Paranoid horses live a long time, unharmed by wolves and snakes, cougars and little girls who ask them to do very stupid things.

Horses are good teachers. Mine was, anyway. While it gave me a sense of power to get on that big old horse and get him to do what I wanted, he never let me get any further than that. He constantly reminded me that no matter how big my britches were, he outweighed me by a good thousand pounds, and he was doing my bidding only out of the graciousness of his soul and his un-ending good humor.

(Percheron Congress)

I know Cooper would not have approved. Horses are too big and too dangerous for Cooper's taste. He's a lot like my Mother was, in that respect.

SPENDING TIME

A lot of my time lately has been spent trying to get the PR out for my son's glass exhibit here in town. He is going to be here for several days with his lovely friend, Stacey. Stacey is also my daughter's name so this is getting complicated.

Aside from the PR there is the house to think about. Or not. We have four dogs one of whom is fairly incontinent. I say fairly because he does exhibit some degree of awareness and control but he still tends to dribble a bit. With the onset of summer and humidity (even tho it is March it feels as if summer is imminent--the temp right now at 8:44 on a March morning is 66 and humid.) the smell from the dribbling is reaching stench level.

Poor Nigel. Blamed for everything.

Nevertheless our failure to adequately cover his weenie (a medical term) when he is out and about is responsible for the smell. I still cannot get anything to stay on him, and diapers are simply out of the question. If we fasten the belly band with a strap around his chest (like a doggie suspender) he freezes and will not move, will not move even his head. So he goes without. (No pun intended, but that's not bad.)

I have to get a steam cleaner and clean my rug, for it is my room in which he spends the majority of his time.

AND he needs a bath. They all need baths. I read in wonder of those of you who bathe 4 or 5 dogs every week. Can you walk normally? Upright? I would not be able to. I barely can now. But Nigel in particular, of course, needs a bath since the rug is not the only thing that is dribbled upon.

Meantime I am trying to roust the local newsy people into putting an article or at least a freebie ad in their "Local Interest" places about the glass exhibition. It would help enormously if he were going to be blowing glass, but transporting a furnace that heats up to 1500 degrees.....

At an art fair in Des Moines, Iowa, there is a glassblower from Ames, Iowa, who brings a small portable furnace and sets up at the Fairgrounds and blows glass. It takes 24 hours for the furnace to get up to temp and he has to watch it all the time. It is not quite like picking up your sketch pad  and paintbox and moving to a different spot.

So I have the paper PR-- postcards and posters and banners. And I have been tormenting the local news people. I do not have the $$ to take out a big display ad.

We have the music arranged for the opening and are working on food. Two of us are bringing wine. Heheheheheheheh.
Last year I got little goodies and cooked them at home and transported them to the Gallery where they became cold, gelatinous, greasy gobs of inedible garbage. Not trying that again.

I don't mind doing it for Christopher but it is a lot of work and now I know how those people who plan "events" for a living make a living. Next time...

Gasoline is up to $4.39 here having dropped a bit in the past day or two.
I hope this helps all those starving Oil Magnates....

RENEWING MEDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

Where do you go to meet old friends and acquaintances? Apparently for me, it's the Veterinarian's office! This is really depressing. It is similar to the period of time when I knew the phone number to the small animal clinic at the University of Illinois by heart, and could (still can) give detailed instructions on how to get there and exactly how long it would take.
(It never takes me as long as everyone else.)

So today I had to go get more meds for Cooper and a couple of shots for Nigel who has diarrhea and while I was there leaning on the counter the door flew open and a whirlwind came in. I glanced over and it was my friend Pauline, the ultimate dog trainer, the Person Who Never Stops: who I have not seen for---ever?

 This is Pauline awhile ago with one of her top-winning obedience Goldens. It might be Caper. I am not as good at knowing her dogs as I am at knowing Belgians and Bassets and I apologize, but Goldens are outside my realm of experience.

I met Pauline when I had Quiller. Quiller was a bit of a problem child. He had a bad habit of grabbing the leash and pulling, facing me. The trainer I first employed nearly destroyed this dog, and I was too stupid to know that the old methods of punitive training were definitely contra-indicated. By the time I knew we were in trouble, we were really in trouble. Quiller never got over the holding the leash thing, altho we channeled into something else. But it ruined him for show or almost anything. As soon as he became anxious (and he was an anxious boy) he'd grab for the leash.

Anyway this is when I met Pauline. She is so good at what she does that it is frightening. She can watch you heel your dog and suggest you lower your hand a quarter of an inch, and suddenly a sit with the butt sticking out is perfect.

On top of that, she is a good sport, a dry wit, and a great person to have as a friend. I'm glad I saw her. I had forgotten how much I miss her company.  (Because I am not showing, I rarely see her.) So I guess I need to spend more time at the Vet's office, altho that hardly seems possible.

Hello Pauline. It was great to see you for those ten seconds that you were actually standing still....

LLEWIS

I never write about Llewis.
LLewis's full name is Bonsai's Gravity Storm (aka Lewis Lewis. Shortened for convenience in writing to Llewis.)
Llewis was named after my husband's Grandfather--Lewis Lewis. Yes. Really.

Llewis was born in this room. Almost in the spot where his brother Nigel's pen is, now.  His Mother was Zelda, his Daddy some hotshot show dog from Puerto Rico, a dark and handsome dog who was top Basset in PR for two years, and was here on a lease. Llewis was, I think, the fourth of five. He is older than Nigel by several minutes.

Shortly after his birth, when the buppies were starting to really try to move around and walk (ho ho) we noticed something was wrong, really wrong with Llewis's rear assemblage. I was told (not by the Vet) oh no he's fine: he's a Basset. Vet said well maybe he is a swimmer, and so we hobbled his back legs together to help him stand, but after a certain point in puppydom, the hobbles didn't work anymore.

Those rear legs just didn't work right at all. Puzzled, the Vets took another look. One, Dr T, after watching him "walk"-- he could but not well or easily-- probed with her hands and said "I don't know whether he has a femur!"

So it was off to the U of Wisconsin with little Llewis, who was by then at the absolute cutest of the cute basset puppy stage. He was an "ahhhh" Buppy, friendly, waggy, stumbly in the extreme. Off he went with the Vets to be figured out.

And back they came much later. The Vet clutching a wagging, licking, sweet Llewis to tell us: he has not enough femur to reach the hip socket were there a hip socket to reach, but there is not. He also has some definite neurological deficits, very very poor conscious propreoception. Don't breed him (oh yeah-- he had no testicles descended) and don't repeat the breeding (as if).

I said "Would you put him down?" (Not that I had any intention of doing so.)
The Vet pulled Llewis closer to his body, shot me a look of pure rage, and said "NO!!! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??" (If I had actually been considering it, I never would have gotten Llewis back.)

So home he came and I began taking him to a re-hab place, where they did acupuncture, chiropractic work, fed him frozen peanut butter in a cup, massaged him, and built him a very expensive state-of-the-art brace for his
rogue back leg which now was beginning to be locked in a straight position. They wanted it to be flexible. And eventually they suggested we have an ortho Vet look at him because they had done all they could. Naturally, they could not make bone grow, which was what he needed.

The Ortho Vet roared WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Get that brace off of him: he is not using the muscles and that is all he has going for him. Get that silly thing off and let him be a puppy!!

So we did.
And here we are 6.5 years later with Llewis now and then needing laser treatment or a couple of days on Rimadyl, but running and playing and being a nuisance. He cannot counter surf. He cannot go up steps. He steals food if he can, he laughs a lot, and he is VERY verbal.
Llewis, of the three Bassets is possibly the most active and easiest to deal with. We ask nothing of him, and we get everything.

STUFF

For several years  I followed the Iditarod very closely. I am not one of those people who believe that dogs doing what they love to do are being abused. I find PETA's efforts to tell me what is right and wrong about my having purebred dogs and doing things with them to be frankly offensive. Not to mention their long-term goals of ending my relationship with domestic animals altogether. Nevermind. I don't want to start a rant.

(photo from Google)

These do not look like unhappy dogs to me.

Anyway, I kind of gave up this year. It was fun for awhile, when Susan Butcher and Libby Riddles were running, but Butcher is dead and Riddles probably my age or a little less, she may still be running. It is Susan Butcher I miss the most.
*******************************************************
On the homefront Nigel is still improving in his functional skills. The tail wag is definitely back. The rear assemblage now is almost back to his pre-illness stage so that when we take him out without the cart he can help us a bit if we position his feet, to stand and pee. He still needs a lot of support, but he tries. We have not been out in the cart for awhile. Conley and Llewis are fat as ticks. It is disgusting. I need to get Conley out and moving too. Llewis....I am not sure what to do with him.
********************************************************

I opened an Etsy store and anyone who is interested the address is:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/bszaton

John brought me a Smith & Wesson T-shirt. I can't wait until it is warm enough to be comfortable in a T-shirt again.Heh Heh

BODYGUARD

We have four dogs. Three are Bassets. One is a Belgian Sheepdog, Cooper.
Of the Bassets, two are brothers. That is, actual littermates: Nigel and Llewis.
Conley, as usual, is the odd-man out, from another line altogether.

Llewis was born with major orthopedic and neurological deficits. I'm not going into detail but he has one leg that doesn't work (a rear tire) and is frozen in an awkward position, and he has slow conscious propreoception in the other back tire as well. So, one rear tire is flat and the other has lost some air.Consequently, he cannot climb, jump up, run correctly or even walk right. He moves like Chester, from the old Gunsmoke if any of you remember. Nevertheless, he runs (as best he can) and plays hard, and of all the dogs is the most willing to play long and hard. He has no idea he is disabled.

Nigel and he were buds for many years. Well ok, they're only six now. Not tight, but they kind of hung together. But despite what people seem to think, Nigel is not the sweetie pie they would believe. He has a temper. He has aspirations to top dog. He has testicles. He likes to cuddle now and then but he does not give kisses and his is not a warm and cuddly personality. He growls a lot.

Occasionally, but not often, all three share limited space.

Somewhere along the line, way back, Cooper must have noticed that Llewis was different, if dogs are capable of that, and I think they must be. He became a little intense about Llewis. If Llewis went out, Cooper went out. If Llewis came in, Cooper came in. God help the snarly bastard that went for Llewis, because that dog was going to have Cooper to contend with. Aspirations notwithstanding (both Nigel and Conley want to be topdog but as long as Cooper is alive, they are not.)

A bit ago, maybe a year ago, I noticed that if Cooper and the others came in, and Llewis took too long to respond, Cooper wanted out again. So I let him out and he went to the corner of the sidewalk and looked, quite pointedly, both ways and not seeing what he wanted, went on out into the yard, found Llewis, and came back with him, a little behind, making sure his whole flock, flat tires and all, were in. Particularly THIS one.

Even now, with a missing wheel, Cooper continues to play Bodyguard to Llewis.
The favor is not reciprocated. I do not even know if Llewis realises that he has a
powerful agent watching him. I don't think he does. I think he just believes this is the way things are.

But three-legged and sick, Cooper is right there with Llewis. A little advice:
Don't smack Llewis in front of his Bodyguard. I think it might be risky.

(Llewis never gets smacked: none of them do.)

BEEN AWHILE

It has been awhile since I have written. There is not much going on to write about, in truth. Nigel is Nigel and continues to make little puppy steps towards getting back some of the function he lost when ill: his tail does wag now with much more frequency than last week.  Sometimes outside he can help brace himself to take a pee, but he still needs a lot of physical support.

Cooper is doing all right on our regimen of liquid meds and processed food. He eats a lot of ground chicken and a lot of Morningstar Farms Soy Sausage patties.
He is not so nuts about mashed sweet potatoes anymore and so I am going to try punkin.  He's a carnivore. He likes his meat. The Bassets are Omnivores. They like their meat but will happily eat fruits and veggies, sticks, rocks (Oh Conley says that is fiber.)

I am making jewelry and have opened an Etsy store. I made one of the most hideous necklaces ever, and last night I tore it apart. I don't want my name on it. Agh. This is maybe the 8th time I have tried to pair this pendant with something and failed. The pendant is all white and has a skull on it, not my usual type of focal point. Eventually I will come up with SOMETHING.

The yard is a mess, what with the rain and the ground still frozen. The wind has been howling for two days.

50% of my time is spent taking care of dogs and 45% making jewelry and 5% taking care of the house. I barely leave the house. I have made plans to go to a horse show in Omaha in April, and of course my son is bringing his glass up for an exhibition at the Gallery.

I did the paper PR for the exhibit--posters, postcards and a banner for the Gallery window. The first time I got the date wrong so had to correct it, which took forever but when I got the order I realised THAT date was wrong!! And I had paid for the stuff and now didn't have enough money to do it all again.  I had the money but it would mean emptying the account too early in the month and finally I decided I had to do it anyway.

So I called VISTAPRINT, which is who I use, and explained I had the dates wrong and needed to re-order with the correct dates, and all they charged me for was postage!!! Wow!! Whadda break! I made it clear the fault was mine. I have used them several times before but this time I had a tough go of it, trouble uploading the artwork and trouble understanding "Peggy" who answered my pleas for tech help. The first guy was not only incoherent but incoherent. That is, not only could I not literally understand him, but his directions were so confused that I could not follow them.
(This was when I was setting up the original art on their site.) The second guy made the fatal mistake, when we could not seem to connect on what I was trying to explain, and asked "Is there someone else at home who could help you?" and I exploded. I asked if there was someone else there who could help HIM and then said I was going to another company.

I didn't, of course.

Hours later I called back and got a wonderful woman who understood me and who I could easily understand, and who knew exactly what needed to be done, and we did it.

When I called back after I received the order and had put on the wrong dates, I called and got a guy who apparently knew more than anyone else I had spoken with, who instantly changed the dates from his end for me and then only charged me postage and whoever he is, wherever he is, I love him.

Maybe someday I will get out with my camera again. I missed the IKC this year because Cooper had his endoscopy that day.
Ah well.