Let Sleeping Dogs LIe

With all the maladies at our house lately, there has been little activity and lots of sleeping going on.

Beau has enjoyed a few hours outdoors soaking up the sun. Since he has trouble jumping these days, we put the cushion from his chair on the ground for him.

The sofa is always a favorite of the big dogs. Most of the time, they take turns. Sometimes they share, but Sunny gets as far into one corner as she can...."Don't touch me, Jackson".

She prefers having the sofa to herself, but will consent to sharing it with me. If I don't sit with her, she uses my pillow for a chin prop.

The kitchen is always a gathering spot. Since we finished the remodel, I spend more time in the kitchen. Jackson has claimed a spot under the table in front of the air conditioning vent. Now that it has been redirected, it blows horizontally and is the perfect spot for him. That will change when we turn the heat on.

Sunny, on the other hand, has to be right under my feet. She has discovered the best way to do that is to sack out in the corner of the work area.....and her hair matches the floor. That's not by design, but it sure keeps my house looking cleaner.

Beau's bed is in the family room under a table. It is his spot; his den; his refuge. Being 'the middle child', Jackson sometimes tests who is Alpha by trying to take over Beau's bed. Beau's not having any part of that; he just joins Jackson for a nap.

........and of course, there's the Princess. Her foot may be hurt, but she can still jump up on the bed. Our dogs don't sleep with us, but they do get on the bed to say good night and good morning.

What's OTN???????

I have been so focused (self absorbed) on my dogs, I have posted nothing about my knitting in a while.

I have 3 projects OTN. This is my Herringbone Rib Scarf by Li Boesen. It is one of the most fun patterns to knit! It is easy to memorize, portable; great for watching TV or sitting in the doctor's office.
This gives a better look at how pretty the pattern is.

I am using Malabrigo Fingering weight in Africans Violeta. I'm on a 'purple roll' lately. Every yarn I see that I am attracted to seems to be purple. I am making this for Sunny's vet tech. She is Dr. Mike's right arm. She used to be in charge of the ICU at the NCSU Vet School but thankfully, went to work for Dr. Mike several years ago. She has always dearly loved Sunny and makes over her every time we come in. Cindy has come in on days off and before her shift starts to take care of Sunny during our nightmare. She has also been great to provide me a shoulder to cry on and truly understood what I was feeling when I said "Sunny is my heart." She had a 'heart dog'; a dalmation named Molly. Cindy gets it. I wanted to do something nice for her. Her favorite college team's color is purple. Cindy is not a 'frilly kinda girl' so I chose this pattern and am making a scarf to keep her warm when she walks her dogs or goes to a football game.

Next OTN is the Hyacinth Leaf Cardigan I'm making for my mom for Christmas. Mom told me she wanted a yellow sweater. I took it as a hint she might like me to make her one, so here it is. The body is knit in one piece, a first for me. I think I like that technique, but the jury is out until I get the neck finished.

This is the lacy border around the bottom of the sweaterand this is the Leaf Lace on the fronts. It will be pretty when it is blocked.Last night, I discovered a problem. Apparently, while knitting the boring stockinette stitch back, I dropped a stitch. The good news is that it didn't run. The bad news; I discovered it about 52 rows (literally) after I dropped it. How could I be so freaking dumb. Nevertheless, I picked it up all the way back to the live stitch row. Yippee! Then I discovered that that column of stitches is extremely tight.

It doesn't seem to want to pull out to even the tension very well. I am knitting the sweater with size 5 needles so I took out a 9 and poked it thru each stitch in that column. I also pulled the sweater in every direction. Thankfully, Reynolds Soft Sea Wool is tough enough to tolerate that abuse. It got better but is still obvious to me. I have no idea if it will even out a bit more when I soak and block it. I can only hope. If anyone has a better idea (other than frog the sweater down that far) let me know.

The husband and I have spent way too much money on everything this year; remodel, Beau's bladder issues, Sunny's fungus......so I chose to knit him something for Christmas. Since he is a molecular biochemist and director of the gene expression department at a pharmaceutical company, I thought the DNA cable pattern would be appropriate. I didn't like the whole sweater pattern, so I did some heavy modifications to the pattern. After I got that charted out, I knit it up about 20 rows, decided it was too wide, reworked the pattern, frogged what I had done and started over. I can only work on it when he is not home, so I haven't gotten very far, but I should be able to finish it by Christmas.

Sunny's Phaeohyphomycosis treatment is going fine so far. She's not really fond of the fishy smell of the EFA supplement she gets on her food with the Sporanox but she does eat it. When we run out of that, I'll try something else, but a friend gave us this bottle and I'm going to use it. Her paw looks a little better every day. Dr. Mike says he isn't sure if the wound on the paw is all simply the healing process from the surgery and the pseudomonas infection or if some of it is the fungal infection. Time will tell.

Beau is improving a lot. Poor guy! He gets so very anorexic when he takes Cipro. He has been on it now for 4 weeks. We need to give it to him for 8-12 weeks this time. Dr. Mike says we will stop it if he gets to where he simply refuses to eat; but so far, we have been able to be creative to make various foods for him and come up with new ways to disguise his pills.

Jackson....Thank you God for keeping him healthy! I don't think I could deal with 3 sick dogs right now. Then again, I think we are given these challenges to make us stronger.

Not to be Outdone by my sister.....

After my dad saw the boots Sunny got, he thought I should get some for when it gets really really cold or if it is icy and snowy. (don't I wish. we haven't had snow in 3 years)

I think these boots make me look really silly. Walking is a real challenge. I don't know how Sunny does it.....guess it's like high heels. Real men don't do that either. Sunny puts her boots on and just goes right on like nothing happened.

A Girl's Just Gotta Have Shoes

A Happy Ending

Wow! After a day of being Kennel Girl I think Sue is SuperWoman. How she takes such wonderful care of a houseful of Porties every day is beyond me. By the end a day of exercising, walking and feeding my dogs and the lost dogs in shifts I was exhausted. I told my husband he could rest assured that I would never ask for a 4th dog. The other side of that, of course, is that when they all live together, the shift aspect of feeding and exercising goes away. As time was slipping by, I was becoming more and more apprenhensive that we were going to have to find a new home for them.

After dinner, I crashed on the sofa and let my husband take over the kennel duties. He and Jackson had gone for their walk, while Sunny and I were relaxing, when the phone rang. Caller ID shows a number I don't recognize. Could it be that the 'lost girls' were found? The woman's voice on the other end of the line said, "Yvonne, I think you have my lost dogs." "Hallelujah!", I exclaimed. (hmmmm....how did she know my name?????) She described them and asked if they were here and they were. She was so happy. As it turns out, they only live about 3 blocks from here. They had taken the flat collars off the dogs to put their pinch collars on for a walk, but one of them opened the door before the girls were tethered and off they went. They did go looking for the dogs but just missed us by going in opposite directions. For some reason, they didn't see our signs. ???? After she got home from work, she looked on the county animal control website and saw my ad.....That's how she knew my name. (they don't let you post an ad anonymously.) She had to wait for her husband to get home, before she came for the girls so we chatted a few minutes. As it turns out, the lab is microchipped, but for some reason it didn't read. My husband says one of the readers that the emergency vet used didn't have any indication of power at all so perhaps it was not reading. The other dog, pitbull / lab mix (do I know my breeds or what?) is not microchipped. The owner swears the girls are going to the vet today to get the one chip checked and the other dog chipped. We had been correct in thinking that they are used to being crated. They sleep in crates every night. Everyone was happy when the couple got here and were reunited with their dogs.

My husband and I high-fived each other and went back into the house to enjoy our pack. Would we do it again??? You bet! Yes it is a P.I.A. but what comes around goes around. I would hope someone would do the same for us.

Lessons to all. If you find a dog you need to act quickly to get the information out there. I (being old) would have never thought of Craig's list but was told that is a primary place to post lost and found dogs. The local authorities, such as SPCA, county and city animal control will take the information. In our area (and I'm sure most areas) they have a website to post lost and found pets. Despite our signs not being the solution, signs do make a difference. Check for microchips. Vet's offices will gladly scan a found dog at no charge.

You do have to proceed with caution. If there is any question about the health or social behavior of a stray, call authorities. Your own health and the health of your pets depends on your using good judgement. In our case, the girls came up to us like long lost friends. They were clearly well cared for; clean, nails done, in good physical condition. That, plus the fact that the one girl was a pit bull or stafforshire, made us make that decision more quickly to protect her. People who are not 'into dogs' don't understand that it is not a breed name that makes a dog behave badly but how they are raised from puppies. This one (as with several I have known over the years) was as sweet as any of our 3 dogs. I had visions of her showing up in someone's back yard and their having called the police saying "There's a pit bull running loose in the neighborhood" only to have the authorities show up ready to confront a mean dog. Her name is Annabelle and it fits her perfectly. What a neat girl. I am so glad we had a happy ending to this story.

Today, my pups and I are chilling out at home in the rain with my knitting, a cup of coffee and Sunny on my lap. Life doesn't get any better.

(sorry I had no pictures of our guests. I tried but they are solid black and wouldn't stay far enough away from me to focus the camera...I tried.)

Running a kennel

We are running a boarding kennel these days. We found 2 dogs yesterday morning. They came off the greenway into our back yard. They are clean, with shiny coats, aren't shedding, have clipped nails. They are very sweet and snap to 'sit' as fast as you can say it. Of course they came with no tags...not so surprising as mine don't wear their collars at home (unless we are gone), but mine are microchipped. We took these sweet girls to the local emergency vet clinic to check for microchip but nothing. We spent the day, yesterday, contacting emergency vet clinics, newspaper, TV, local animal control, SPCA, online classifieds, Craig's list and today I called about 30 vet clinics within 5 miles of here. We really thought someone would come home last night, find the dogs missing, see our signs and call us. As each hour ticks by, I become more worried that we will have to place them. If we had a farm, my husband would like to keep them, but for me....3 of our own are plenty. I am feeding and exercising dogs in shifts to keep them away from our dogs. Jackson isn't happy we have 'intruders' in the yard. They are clearly a woman's dogs as they prefer me to my husband (who is usually a pied piper of dogs) One of them has particularly bonded to me. We cannot seperate them if they have to be placed because they become very unhappy when separated.

As you know, Sunny got some of her stitches out last week. The remainder came out this morning. She has progressed enough to go without her dressings. Her wounds were looking really good Friday, but today, we have taken the proverbial 2 steps forward one step back, in that she has developed a bit of ulceration in the wound on the back of her foot. Dr. Mike thought this was to be expected since he had to pull that wound together under pressure.
The wound on top and between her toes has started draining again, but the wound is closing nicely, so Dr. Mike says at this point, licking is good and to continue with no dressing. The skin on her toes is looking healthy without any post-infection sloughing.

He says this is most likely nothing but could be either infection or fungal. We are continuing on antibiotics and hoping for our order of her Sporanox to make a swift trip thru customs. We really need to get her started on it quickly.

Happy Birthday to our Portie friends. They are 3 years old today and are having a big celebration.

Get Well Present

Sunny received a get well present from her Aunt Chan yesterday. She loves cheese and these treats are great for her. They are made with rice flour and cheddar cheese, no salt. The are made by Sammy Snacks. She started making treats that are intended to share (but I'll let her eat them). She did share with her brothers.

We went to the vet this morning for a dressing change. He decided to take all the sutures out of the top incision.

He left some sutures in the bottom wound to let that tissue heal more. She had quite a bit of tissue breakdown from her infection. Dr. Mike told me she can go 'nekked' and she can start walking again.

I must be as OCD as Sunny is. I can't stand the thoughts of a wound like that going outside in the dirt. Cindy (the vet asst) agreed with me that Sunny needs a sock or something over it both to keep it clean outside and to keep her from licking constantly. Sunny is a licker anyway, and really is a bit OCD so she would never stop if we don't cover it with something. We have ordered boots for her so she will have foot protection in the wet, cold or running in the woods. This tissue will be fragile for a long time and we don't want to do this again.