Dozer's Post

Seems I post about once per year nowadays. My job contributes to that, but I've also kept busy during my time off. I notice that many of my old blogging friends have slowed down somewhat, too, so I don't feel too bad about neglecting the blog. Life is busy and exciting, and I try to step away from the computer whenever I can.

Today I share news about Dozer. After almost 14 years, his finish line is in sight.

You can rather see the problem in the photo. He's skin and bones, but has a potbelly. He's not eating much, and not walking around much. Everything he does exhausts him. Even standing.

This was a rapid decline, starting about three months ago, an obvious problem in the last three weeks. He's been to the vet several times since, but kept getting diagnosed as "just an old guy." Today I scheduled him with our long-time vet, who has known Dozer since a puppy, and he quickly agreed: something is amiss.

Dozer has always been a hyperactive patient. He gets really anxious being away from home, even though he likes the people at the vet's office. I often have to force him to sit down so he doesn't squirm around while being examined. But today, when Dozer crawled into the exam room and laid himself out flat on the floor, and didn't get up for the rest of the exam, the vet knew right away that this was not normal. Halfway through the visit, Dozer closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep. It was one of those moments that kicks you hard in the gut, without warning, because it feels so horribly... wrong. The vet made a strange face. I started to cry.

We suspect his heart. We'll know more in a few days, after a sonogram and an x-ray. I don't think there's much we can do for him, though, except to help him be comfortable and content until he's ready to leave us.

 

Love you, buddy.

Back in the saddle

You might have noticed that I took a pretty long hiatus from blogging.

After graduating last summer, I started a new career. As a public auditor. At a Big Four accounting firm.

It's a great career overall, but it's the type of work that can require some very extreme hours. During the worst stretch of busy season, I was putting in over 80 hours a week (and weekends) for six weeks in a row. I worked over 100 hours near the end of one job.

At any rate, when I finally close my work laptop at the end of a 12-hour day, the last thing I want to do is go home and get on the computer again. And to add to reasons not to blog, my company--like many companies, but particularly because of the type of work we do--would prefer that their employees maintain a fairly low profile (or no profile) in social media arenas.

So blogging has been at the very bottom of my priority list. And I probably won't post very often, as long as I'm working at Big Four.

Mind you, I knew what I was getting into, going into this career. This is why I stepped down from stopbsl.com and pulled out of all of my volunteer activities last fall. I would like to say that I miss those activities, but thus far I've been so busy, I barely have time to do laundry, much less lament the death of my social life.

Moving on to more positive things!

At long last, Dozer's terrible allergies are almost entirely under control. He hasn't been to the vet for over a year (aside from his annual checkup) and he did not need a cortisone shot this spring. Miraculous!!

The key has been to limit him to Instinct rabbit flavor dog food (and NOTHING else); to bathe him WEEKLY without fail with a vet-prescribed chlorhexidine (antiseptic) shampoo; and to give him one cetirizine hydrochloride (Zyrtec) pill EVERY evening. Additionally, we keep his living areas as clean as possible, by washing his beds and vacuuming the floors once a week; and we call pest control to treat the yard at the first sign of fleas.

Dozer is turning 13 this year. He has lost most of his hearing. It's been more of an adjustment for us than for him, because he knows signed commands just fine--it's just that we have to remember to use them! He's quite good at reading body language and facial expressions, though, so the only real trouble has been when he's not looking at us or he's not in the room. We have to remember to go find him and tap him on the head to get his attention.

He had to wear this inflatable "tire" for a while because he wouldn't stop licking a bump between his toes. At first he didn't like it much, but soon he discovered that it made a great pillow no matter where he was. No complaints after that.

Star is doing great. She LOVES Dozer. Even though he's a grumpy old fart.

Star knows how to cover herself up with a blanket. She actually can disappear entirely under a blanket, which has led to more than one instance in which Byrd and I couldn't find her anywhere, and we both started to panic.

As you can see in the photos, she also likes to sleep with Dozer's head in her stomach, and her head hanging off the edge of the dog bed. I have a lot of photos like this. These two photos were taken several weeks apart.

Since Byrd and I are working so much, we hired a pet sitter to come by during the day to play with them and walk them.

And, though I don't have time to foster dogs right now, we are "fostering" butterflies again this summer.

Both the Eastern Black Swallowtail and the Pipevine Swallowtail are our guests this year. So far, we've "grown" about two dozen butterflies. The caterpillar castle has been pretty busy.

Well, until next time-- I hope all of you are doing well!

Homecooked Meals

I'm in a short recess between semesters, and of course, I can't actually take a break for some stupid reason, so I've taken on a bunch of projects. One of which is my new plan for feeding the dogs: homecooked meals.

You may remember that last year's raw food experiment was a failure, for a number of reasons. For example, I'm a germ-o-phobe, and it bothered me to no end to watch the dogs put their paws all over raw chunks of meat, then walk around our house. I was baby-wiping their feet after every meal.

Also, Star hates raw meat. Hates it. When offered raw meat, she runs off, hunched over, head down, tail between her legs—as if we just offered her a beating.

But commercial kibble has its share of problems too. The recent food recalls. The mysterious shortage of rabbit that makes it impossible to keep Dozer on a rabbit-only diet. The 25-lb bag of food that costs nearly $60.

So I'm compromising. I'm cooking.

I bought six chickens at the store last weekend.

It's really difficult to cram six chickens into the fridge. I got three in the meat drawer, and three where the milk should go.

Waaaaiiit a minute, you're saying. Isn't Dozer allergic to most meat proteins? Isn't that the point of the special, expensive, impossible-to-find rabbit-based kibble?

Well, here's the thing. We didn't experiment much with the food allergy. The dermatology/allergy vet started us on the rabbit-based food, and things improved, so we assumed that rabbit was the key.

• Dozer was originally eating Natural Balance Limited Ingredient kibble of various flavors, and he was reacting to it. The meat proteins varied, and the starch/binder was usually rice or potato.
• With the derm vet, we started him on Royal Canin Veterinary Diet, which is rabbit and potato. He was still getting staph infections, but it was much improved.
• Then we switched to Instinct—rabbit and tapioca—and the staph infections cleared up.
• Instinct then ran out of rabbits, so Dozer currently eats Natural Balance Alpha, which uses a combo of lamb, chicken, and rabbit, and the binder is chickpeas. He's still doing great.

So I wondered, why isn't Dozer reacting to the chicken and lamb in the Alpha?

Perhaps, it's not actually a meat protein allergy, it's a starch/gluten problem. That is, perhaps Dozer is allergic to starches like grains, rice, and potato, but does fine with gluten-free binders like tapioca and chickpeas.

Makes sense to me.

Under this theory, I could switch Dozer to some non-rabbit-based, gluten-free dog food, which would be easier to find. Trouble is, most of the foods made with gluten-free binders are still RIDICULOUSLY F-ING EXPENSIVE. But, yes, I am considering this possibility.

In the meantime, I'm testing the theory that home-cooked meals might be a cheaper solution.

I cooked four of the chickens at once. I wanted to cook all six, but my pans weren't big enough.

These chickens are nothing fancy. Wash them off, rub some olive oil on them, put them in a 425-degree oven for about 1.5 hours.

Don't they look good?? Yeah, we thought so too. So we ate some chicken for dinner! In fact, it was kind of awesome, because with only one chicken, Byrd and I would fight over the dark meat, but this time we could each have our fill of legs and thighs.

Dozer stood next to me in the kitchen and drooled while I pulled all the meat off the chicken bones for storage. (Cooked chicken bones are NOT safe for dogs to eat.)

I got a total of 8 pounds of meat off the 4 chickens. And that was after we ate at least a pound ourselves for dinner. The chickens were $5-6 each. It comes out to about $2.50-$3 per pound.

I think the kibble probably costs just a little bit less. :(

But then again, I've never seen the dogs so excited about their dinner.

Recently, we also found a new dehydrated dog food that is gluten-free and rabbit protein, and it smells delicious when you add hot water. It's about the same price as kibble. But storage is much easier because the bag is smaller, yet it still makes the same amount of food as a big bag of kibble. Modern technology!

Currently, we're doing a hybrid sort of meal. The dogs get kibble as a base. They get a serving of re-hydrated food, some cooked chicken, and a supplement. They also get various snacks during the day, like cottage cheese, egg, or chicken livers. I won't pretend it's a balanced meal, but at the moment, it's an experiment to see what they can eat without Dozer breaking out with staph and Star running away like a coward.

The grass is always greener...

... in Texas "winter."

Holy cow, that grass is green.

We plant rye grass every fall, to cut back on mud during our "rainy season." It's cool, soft, and gorgeous. And sort of ironic that I have to mow the lawn every weekend in January. (We don't mow in the summer because the grass is dead.)

"Throw the ball!"

"MY ball!"

"He's kind of a jerk, but I love him."

This was our weekend project. Since we now have a garage, we can tear down this old shed. In three "easy" steps...

One

Two

Three

A little later, we moved into the new garage to do some work. Dozer made himself at home in a large plastic tub that had some old blankets in it.

"If this isn't my dog bed, why do I fit just right??"

He fell asleep in the plastic tub.

OMG ur home!!!1

When saying "Welcome home" with ONE toy in your mouth just isn't good enough...

"HI!!! These are for you!! To throw. For me."

"More people?? Sweet, I gotta go get more toys."

Holiday Work

One awesome thing about the holidays is that Byrd gets an entire week off work. We didn't waste it! We finally moved stuff into our new garage, and... organized it! The result was the best Christmas gift ever.

We started by buying and assembling industrial-strength shelving.



 Then we started hauling Byrd's tools and whatnot into the garage...

Four circular saws, three drills, two brad nailers, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Can't forget all the stuff in the back office, which is still torn up 3 years after we started remodeling it, in part because we can't put it back together when it's being used as a storage room for construction items.

Oh yeah, and don't forget all the stuff in the garden shed...

The 5-gal buckets on the right were FULL of random items, from screwdrivers to PVC joints to electrical outlets.

As we pulled stuff into the garage, we went with a "Clean Sweep" kind of strategy: one spot for "keep," one spot for "sell," and one spot for "toss."

Then came the hard part... sorting the "keeps." The first day, Byrd reeeallly wanted to keep every little loose screw and nut and washer.

It was hard to even know where to start.

My sister K and my mom helped out a lot!

By the second and third day, Byrd was too tired to care as much. We threw out a lot. The garbage men probably cursed us when they emptied our heavy, overflowing trash cans.

The shelves are full, but everything has a place.

The three multi-drawer boxes (hanging on the wall) turned out to be invaluable for sorting the loose tiny items Byrd wanted to keep. And boy did he have a lot. We used ALL of the small size drawers (total = 90)!

We also got this nice wall-hook system for the opposite wall. Turns out we have 4 extension cords, 2 air hoses, 3 ladders, and 31 long-handled tools (shovels, rakes, etc).

Now, if you don't work in construction, you probably don't know (and don't need to know) that most hardware you buy in construction quantities, such as nails and screws, come in flimsy cardboard boxes. Cardboard is really not a problem normally because you use up the hardware quickly and then go get new boxes. If you are like Byrd, however, you're not organized enough to know where your box of nails is, so you go out and buy a new box of nails for every project. When you attempt to organize, you discover you have six half-empty, rotting, torn cardboard boxes with nails falling out of every rat-chewed corner. In some cases the nails aren't so much "in a box" as they are "in a pile, with some bits of cardboard for company."

So I went and bought about 30 plastic boxes to hold the hardware. And labeled every box, so there won't be anymore "I can't find it so let's just buy a new one." There is no longer any question how much we have, and of what.

I love the end result, which is a garage where both our cars still fit.

Unfortunately, we still have a storage unit to clean out. It's about the size of the garage. (I'm hopeful that we will be able to sell most of the stuff in it.)

Lest you fear that all my dogs got for Christmas was a stupid cardboard box, don't worry! Auntie K came through with a literal feast of squeaky stuffed dog toys.

"Stuffed" turkey, potato, corn, dinner roll, and greens.

Star shows off her own fat little "drumsticks."

(By the way, Star had her annual checkup yesterday, and got a totally clean bill of health. I was like, what, that's it? No medicine, nothing to keep an eye on, nothing to treat?? She's just completely different from Dozer... so easy.)

"The corn-on-the-cob seems overcooked."

Whereas the other stuffed items went to the trash within twenty minutes, Dozer took a strange liking to the dinner roll and has refused to destroy it.

This was our Christmas gift to the outdoor birds: a birdfeeder!

Apparently, this type of birdfeeder is not typical in our neighborhood. If it was, I would expect the birds to start using it easily. But it actually was very difficult for the birds to figure out. On the first day, the birds were just hopping on the ground underneath it and staring up at it. By the second day, they would fly into it and beat at it, trying to knock the seed out. Finally, a few of them tried to sit on the ledges, but they had a lot of trouble coordinating it, and three or four birds would try to get on one ledge at the same time, which always started a big fight.

It took about three days for them to get a system in place so everyone was using the feeder in an organized way. It was very interesting to watch them adapt. I suppose a birdfeeder is a pretty unnatural way for birds to eat, especially when they've never done it before.

Merry Christmas!

The dogs' Christmas gift was cheap this year, but they loved it anyway. :)



Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

"Super-hive" mystery solved

FINALLY! I know what's causing Dozer's insane hive outbreaks.

Two weeks ago, I took Dozer to the regular vet to treat staph lesions that were popping up here and there. The weekly baths and occasional Zyrtec just weren't cutting it. The vet prescribed a standard round of prednisone (to stop the itch) and cephalexin (to stop the staph).

Today, as soon as I saw the telltale pinpricks of oncoming urticarial vasculitis, ("super hives") I called the dermatology/allergy vet. (Well, first I screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo!!!" and then I called the vet.)

What urticarial vasculitis looks like in the first few hours.

After looking back through his files, the derm vet confirmed what we'd already suspected but now seemed pretty conclusive: cephalexin allergy.

Ironically, today, after I reviewed some historical blog posts about Dozer's hives (like this one in 2009, this one in 2010 and this one earlier this year), I saw that he'd been taking cephalexin, an antibiotic, in every case.

Why wasn't the allergy deduced years ago? Because the hives never happened at the beginning of a cephalexin course—only at or near the end. Dozer could go two weeks on cephalexin and completely finish the course without a reaction, only to break out in hives a few days later, while taking no medications at all.

This mystery was also solved today, because the derm vet noted that Dozer usually gets prednisone or a cortisone shot at the same time that he's given the cephalexin. Although the point of the steroid is to cut down the itching from the staph, these steroids stop all allergic reactions. Period. Including the reaction to the cephalexin. After the short steroid course tapers down, there's nothing stopping the hives anymore. Thus the delayed reaction.

Six hours later--not looking too bad this time!

Prednisone and a much larger dose of Zyrtec were the order of the day. I'm loving the Zyrtec (over the Benadryl we used to give) because it knocks Dozer right out. I know the D is loving it, too, because he goes right to sleep. No itching, whining, panting, tummy upset, or any discomfort.

Sleeping soundly... with his face inches from the space heater.

Well, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

First thing tomorrow morning, I'm calling the regular vet to ask them to flag this allergy in his file. No more cephalexin!!

It's Cold!

Well, cold for us, anyway. I reckon you northern folks have something to say about real cold.

But still, it's cold. Star recently learned how to cover herself up with the dog blankets...

And we broke out the space heater, much to Dozer's pleasure.

Star has been somewhat unsure of the space heater (it makes noise, moves, and blows—creepy!) but she's learning to love the free heat that comes from it. As long as she doesn't have to look right at it.

Semester finals are over! I have a short, badly-needed break before next semester.

Photo Shoot

Armed with my trusty tripod and camera, I was determined to get a good family photo for this year's holiday cards.

First was the setup... Getting everyone in place and figuring out where to put the camera.

"Why are we sitting in a corner? Were we bad?"

Looks good. Okay, let's see how it goes...

We appear to be choking the dogs.

Dozer's totally feeling it, but the rest of us...

Oh, man, the dogs were perfect in this picture.

Dozer relocated mid-shot.

"Oops, that wasn't the timer button. Sorry, hang on..."

Aaaand Byrd was officially out of patience!

I did not hear the camera beep.

And then Star couldn't take it anymore:

"I'm..."

"... so ..."

" ... done."

We couldn't get her to stand up again. Dozer totally gets the whole photo shoot thing—he'll look at the camera and smile and everything—but to Star, this was clearly some insane exercise that we had devised to punish her, and she sure as heck wasn't gonna take it anymore.

Nevertheless, with 39 shots to choose from, I managed to find a decent one.

About halfway through the photo shoot, I learned that my camera has a self-timer multi-shot function. Omigosh! It really sped up the whole process. What a life saver!