My Lawn Ornaments

The whole fam damily, ‘cept for Gemma who is too lazy to come outside, ever.  Maybe cuz she’s old, maybe cuz she’s lazy, or maybe cuz she’s a diva extraordinaire.  The other thing she is … cancer-free!  At least, as far as we can see.  She had an ultrasound yesterday and there were no lying-in-wait lumps in her liver, abdomen or lymph nodes.  I would have taken photos of the very cool ultrasound experience, except I was too busy holding her tiny, evil little head in a vice-like grip to prevent her from biting me, the ultrasound doc and anyone within in a 15 mile radius because of the HUMILIATION of being held down on her back with some loogan rubbed gel on her belly.  Gemma no like.

Next week, we are going to ultrasound Tweed’s heart, because we can!  Sometimes my job is awesome.  A traveling ultrasound vet is training students how to do ultrasounds, and they come to the shelter every week to practice, so I’m gonna see the insides of all my dogs.  We’re tight like that.

Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

Don’t need an ultrasound machine to see through Ender.  He’s just plain see-through in every day life.

Speaking of Ender, can you see what’s wrong with his ears?

That’s right homie, you can’t see nuthin’.  Because they are almost totally perfect!  When Ender arrived, he came with a condition called vasculitis, an auto-immune reaction to his rabies vaccine back in November.  It caused the blood vessels in his ear tips to die off, making them uncomfortable, so he’d shake his head and break up the ends of his ears, and they would bleed all over the place.  He arrived in a crate covered in blood splatter, poor guy.  He also had little cyst-ish bumps all over his body.  He’d had laser therapy with no real success and the next step would have been prednisone, but I wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

So shortly after he arrived I started giving him a Vitamin B12 complex every day (promotes circulation and increases red blood cells), and I made him wear a snood when he went out in the cold, to keep the ear tips warm (because the cold made it worse).  I also switched him off the less-than-stellar kibble he was eating and put him on raw.  In just a few short weeks, one of his ears is 100% scab-free, and the other is almost totally healed.  All his cyst-y bumps have vanished as well.  He looks a heck of a lot better and almost never shakes his head anymore.  Splatter free since February 2014!

I also discovered the secret to keep him from fighting with the other dogs when they are playing, which is to give him a tiny little ball to hold in his mouth whilst running around.  Shades of Piper … he shakes the ball violently and this seems to satisfy his need to bite-and-kill something.

Of course, Piper gets a little squirrely without the ball …

She’s a little squirrely anyway.  She always was, and old age is making her weirder.  Her latest thing is to growl in escalating cadence during meal preparation time.  It drives me CRAZY.  And apparently it drives Ender crazy too, because this morning he ran over and – dear doG – tried to tell her off.  I thought I’d be picking up pieces of Ender for the next week if he reached her, so I dove in with a sliding tackle and got there just in time.  The IG clearly has a death wish!  Keeps my reflexes sharp though ;-)

Who thinks Ender is on a suicide mission?

I do!  I do!

Not sure if he is volunteering to enable his death or not.  Actually, TWooie is surprisingly tolerant of Ender.  I hear that sighthound dogs have an innate knack of forcing other dogs to tolerate them in close proximity, even dogs that don’t generally tolerate close proximity.  This is apparently true, as otherwise this would not have happened:

or this:

He may be a pointy little pain in the patooty, but he definitely has a way of worming into the thick of things.

This must be where the terrier/sighthound mixes get it from.

Spring and Winter are so alike, right down to their Snoopy dance.

They definitely share some sighthound traits, but are Extremely Terrier also.  They are both sharp, quick to learn, and consequences-be-damned about life, but both also extremely sensitive and needy.  Spring has more confidence and better bounce-back than Winter, maybe because I got my hands on her sooner.

I am trying to talk my bestie into training Winter for agility.  I think he would like to play, but I know he’s too soft for me, and too “I’MAJACKISMELLEDSOMETHINGINTHEMIDDLEOFWHATIWASDOINGGOTTAGOBERIGHTBACKMAYBE” as well.  I also have two dogs I am trying very hard to concentrate on – yes, I continue to hold out hope that everything will come together one day for my ginormous HellBeast.  He is finally maturing, and practice is no longer a nightmare for us both … he’s learning to control the spinning plates in his head and understanding sequences, and most importantly, that I’m out there too and I might actually have *some* idea what we’re supposed to be doing.

Hai Food Lady!  I can haz agility partner with you?

In fact he and Spring are both entered in a trial next weekend, and for once I am looking forward to playing with my Bullet Giraffe :)

Now I am off to find reclaimed hardware for my mudroom, which is almost – FINALLY – finished.  Just needs a coat of paint and some shelving and coat hooks.  But before I go, I want to share with you the Glory that is Wootie’s tail.  He may be fat, he may be lazy, and he may have spent the entire morning covering himself in mud as he frantically buried the bone he found in the back 40, but by doG his Flamboyance ™ is spectacular!