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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.
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.
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.
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....
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....
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.
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.
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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.
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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
