It’s a dreary, rainy, overcast day where we are. In that spirit, here’s Carla. This is from the other night. She didn’t even let the laptop cord hanging across her head bother her.
The Four-Legged State of Affairs
Recent adventures in Pet-land:
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Hurricane’s End
Ten
UPDATE: I wrote this in advance, several days ago. Since then, we are unsure actually of what his medical diagnosis is, but…my tone of guarded optimism here seems to be turning in the other direction. There is an appointment with a different veterinarian coming up this Wednesday. We’ll see.
The Dee-oh-gee, referred to ’round here as Cane, is ten years old today. Here he is, from this past Sunday:
He’s had a rough time of it of late, as age is starting to catch up to him. The thing now is arthritis in his joints, which is making it hard for him to walk. He has a pronounced limp, favoring his front left leg quite strongly. It’s honestly hard to watch sometimes, for a dog who for all the eight years we’ve owned him (we adopted him when he had just turned two) has been up for walks and hikes and car rides and playing with other dogs and adventures of all kinds. This issue developed very quickly, so quickly in fact that we feared a certain dreaded kind of cancer that is almost always fast and deadly to dogs. That, fortunately, is not the case.
We’re still figuring out treatments for him and he has days that are better than others, as we all do. Otherwise, his mood and his appetite are certainly unchanged; he bothers us for cookies and gobbles his dinner and he comes to the kitchen when he thinks we’re making something he might like a bite of. And he gets excited when he hears a plastic bag rustling, because grabbing a bag for picking up waste is always the last thing we do before we suit them up for a walk outside. The other day he actually tried playing with a friendly dog who lives across the street. It’s not easy seeing him not quite able to live the way he wants, but he still wants, so we’re working on it. As in all things…we’ll see.
If nothing else happens along the way, you eventually reach a point with pets where you start having to wonder if the good days are still outnumbering the bad. We’re not there yet with Cane, but we know that time is coming. But in the meantime I’m gonna keep scratching his ears and feeding him cheese and hoping that maybe I can get him to a forest path again.
Happy birthday, Cane!
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And now, Carla. (Not awake.)
Sundays at Chestnut Ridge
Twice in recent weeks I have taken The Dee-oh-gee to Chestnut Ridge on our Sunday adventure-nature walks. Late spring and early summer are great times to go to this particular park, when things haven’t really started to heat up or dry out just yet.
From the top of the sledding hill, you have a wonderful view–if it’s clear–of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, ON in the distance.
(You can see the full-size version here.)
These are from a few weeks ago:
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First Spring adventure
Last Sunday, Cane (the Dee-oh-gee) and I went out for a Sunday walk in the park for the first time since December. Why no outings since then? Well, we got back from Oahu just in time for the weather to shift into a much colder and snowier pattern; where the WNY winter until the end of December had been very mild, it pivoted hard in January to being snowy enough and cold enough for Buffalo to take this year’s title as Snowiest City In America. Oof. Plus, there’s the fact that Cane isn’t a spring chicken anymore. He’s 9-and-a-half as I write this, and while he’s still got tons of spunk and energy, he’s not as springy as he once was, so I have to be a bit careful about our adventures. I can’t just throw his leash on him and go for a four-hour hike someplace.
But still…he was thrilled to get out!
We went to Knox Farm State Park, a favorite haunt of ours in East Aurora. Even though we’re over a month into spring, in this part of the country we’re only just now starting to see the first hints of spring’s awakening. We’re getting there, though. Today is May 1. It can only get greener from here. (I’ll spare you my usual rant about Spring being WNY’s worst season.)
And if you’re wondering why Carla rarely gets featured in these walks, it’s mainly because she really doesn’t like riding in the car, for reasons we’ve never been able to figure. That sucks! She loves being in new places and being outside, but she is so miserable in the car that we always feel terrible about that part of things.
She is enjoying the greening of our yard, though. Witness:
As I’m writing this it’s a sunny Sunday morning, but there’s rain in the forecast in the next couple of hours. Sigh….
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Tales of the Yellow Blanket, continued
You may remember that I recently bought a soft yellow blanket in my ongoing effort to shift Carla’s allegiances. It’s a work in progress, naturally, but The Wife used my blanket in her home office yesterday when she was babysitting Carla, and if nothing else, Carla seems to be really taking to the blanket:
Yup, the plan is working. Oh yes….