sun worshipper

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He loves the sunshine.

He knows where it is likely to be, at different times of day, and he moves around the house, following the sunny patches.



I've been showing lots of sleepy pics, but he feels great. Bright and lively.

He's been declining to run around like a mad thing when I have the camera, but he's been doing it at other times.

We are so glad he's feeling good.

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Nov 27

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Wibbles continues to be lively and happy. Yay, and whew!

I disrupted his busy napping schedule when I walked into the room. I liked the curve of his ear........



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now

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Sometimes, when I get way behind posting the days, it makes me itchy.

Here is now. A nice peaceful morning.

Thankful for nice secure varmint-proof caps on the chimney. Every time I see a squirrel, I wonder if it is the one we unwillingly hosted for all those days last fall.....

This one was enjoying the sun on the tulip tree outside our study window.





Wilbur is not particularly interested in happenings outside, unless it is dogs, or unless someone actually rings our doorbell. (you can see the squirrel in the upper left corner of the window)

He does love being in the sunshine.



You can see that he still has poodle-wrists. They were shaved for his IVs when hospitalized in September.

So far, knock on wood!, he seems fine. He will have been off the baytril for two weeks tomorrow evening.............

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Wibbles

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Wibler's last dose of baytril (antibiotic) was Wednesday.

So far, he seems fine. Still holding my breath.

After the first long course of baytril, he was Not Right within 30 hours of the last dose and "take him to the vet" Not Right after 40 hours.

We are at the four-day mark.............................

Please hope with me that he, and his buddy, baytril, have well and truly beaten that nasty bug, whatever-it-was.............................

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fascinating news items

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I got my flu shot yesterday. Seasonal; only "high risk" types are getting h1n1. (my better half got his at his job a few weeks ago) Wondering why some places have it for $24.95, some for $33.95, and some for $44.95........... Our insurance picks it up, but I wonder at the disparity. The difference between $24 and $44 is ... large.

I used up a glue stick last week. I think this is a personal first. I have thrown out lots of old dead glue sticks, over the years, but this is the first one I have used up. This morning, at the art supply/book store (buying two new glue sticks!) I looked for another of the really little skinny binder-ring "books," but they didn't have that size. Bummer. I can make my own, of course, but have decided that having someone else cut the pages is a Good Thing......

I changed the blade in my olfa sliding paper cutter. The old one was leaving a raggedy mess rather than cutting cleanly. I've been cutting cardstock for artist trading cards. Some of that glue I used was for ATCs, in addition to the two sizes of binder-ring "books" and the 4.5"x4.5" brown paper book.

Today is Wilbur's last dose of baytril (antibiotic). I am working on assuming he'll be fine now, rather than fearing he won't...........

It is a mid-50s clear blue sunny day. We savor these any time, particularly now, when we know each one could be the last until next year.

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Wibble

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He has 5 more doses of his baytril-and-a-half. I am a bit nervous......

I have, of course, been watching him like a hawk. He clearly feels great, but there have been some anomalies..........

I mentioned before that he has some red toenails. Bands of dark ("old blood"-colored) red in what would otherwise be clear/white. I should get some pics.............

Then a few days ago his left ear was clearly itching. Of course I thought "FUNGAL INFECTION!" Down in his ear it looked like very dark brown wax. Enough so that it took me a lot of qtips to clean it. Eight or ten, at least. It didn't smell funky (which I believe yeast infections do), and, even better, he hasn't been acting like it was itchy since I cleaned it out.

Best of all, the vet says he's fine. She says that I can clean out his ear(s) with half vinegar half water, and that if there is anything trying to happen in there, the change in pH will be good for stopping it.

She says that his nails are "a normal variation" and nothing to worry about.

I've never seen these red toenails in any dog, and have never seen him have itchy ears before, so I wanted to find out while he is in his current "I feel great!" state whether there was anything we had to address.

Whee! That's the first time I've taken a dog to the vet and gotten nothing but good news for about a year, I think!

Yay.


Please think good thoughts at us this coming week, that he not relapse (again!) when his antibiotics run out.................

.

Wibler

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I've been wanting to get video of Wibbles "runnin' round" for a long time. Yesterday he was pretty goofy when we got home, so I had the camera ready when he came in from outside.......



Unfortunately the stinkin' camera chip was almost full, which cut the video short.

He can't go a whole lot longer than this before he has to stop and cough (his chronic respiratory thing), but ... not bad for an 11-yr-old dog, eh? You can see he is feeling fine........

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updates

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Whew.

Spent last week at work in a Java programming class. This necessitated being there at 9:00, which I essentially never do, left to my own devices (SO lucky that I can come and go more or less at my pleasure, at work......).

Generally I am dropped at work in the morning by my better half who is off on his way to work at the same time I usually go.

HE did not have to be at work at 9:00..............

So I walked to work every day last week. Which is fine, but takes about three times as long as walking (10 min vs 30+ min). Which means I was getting up at about 7:20.

I know 7:20 is a lot later than a lot of people get up.

I do not do mornings well. Never have. Especially now that I wake up many times in the night WAY TOO HOT and have to fling off all the covers and wait to cool off before I can try to go back to sleep.

Anyway. Survived the week, learned a lot about Java. Walked home three of the five days, in addition to walking down all five days.

I'd been hoping I would die before they made me learn object-oriented programming, but no.



Ordinarily I stare at a screen all day long and then come home and do some more, but last week............ Couldn't do it.

Partly because our older computer takes Forever to boot. And you have to be really careful to let it boot All The Way, because ever since I put the U's virus protection on it it has bluescreened if you have the temerity to rush it by asking it to let you play solitaire while you wait for it to finish. Say.

So the notion of waiting forever for the computer to boot so I could check email or whatever was Just Too Much, and I went to bed and cut up magazines, instead.

Even if you have been with me for a long time, you may not remember this:



I blogged it back then, if you want to see more pics. Its plastic cover has the cleverest closing..........

Here and here are some of the first things I put in it.

(I decided rather quickly that I wanted the full page filled up, rather than leaving the top exposed. This meant, of course, that I had to acquire a paper punch that was about the same size as the holes in the cardstock.....)

I hadn't done anything with this teeny "book" for a long time, but last week....... Last week I filled it and then some. I can force it to close, but I think I would regret that if I did it.

(In the mean time I've acquired another couple of nearly identical items [they come in a choice of colors, of course!], and I'll start filling one of them in preference to taking a chance on hurting the first one by closing it when it's too full!)

Here it is, full.





Here's one of the images I collected last week.




Way back when I started this little "book" (April '07), I also acquired a much bigger :-) and more traditional book, which I blogged here.

I didn't like the woven paper, and haven't done any more...... Instead, I've been slowly filling that book with the same sort of extreme editing I've been doing with the other tiny "book." Find a section of a larger image which pleases me, extract same, and glue it onto the whole page of the intended size.

Here's an image collected last week.






I work this way:
Trace the size of my page (lay one down on a bigger piece of paper and follow its outline with a pencil). Cut the page shape from the bigger piece of paper. Use the resulting window to decide what part of a large image I want to keep.

I have a set of windows -- ~4" square for the little book, 2.5"x3.5" for Artist Trading Cards, the size of my filled binder-ring book, an even smaller binder-ring book I have just begun..........

Different images lend themselves to being cut up into different size/shape bits.....

I sit happily with magazines (often acquired from the freebie rack at the library) -- National Geo, Sierra Club, Martha, whatever -- and my set of windows, putting the windows over likely parts of larger images, until I what I see in a small window pleases me. Then I run my fingernail against the edge of the window to score the larger image for cutting. Only two sides; that leaves me a little slop room for imprecise scoring and/or cutting.

I cut along my scored lines (with scissors, usually, it ain't rocket science), smear the front of my page with gluestick (Uhu, usually), flip the image face down, try to put the page on it right side up!, try to get the page basically even against my scored-then-cut lines, burnish the page to the image with my fingers, trim the excess image around the edges of my page.................


Here is my newest "book" -- I think it's the same height as the other binder-ring "book", but it's narrower.





I really like this way of working.

Essentially no expense. You can cut sheets of cardstock into whatever size you want, or use cereal-box cardboard as your base, which I have done for *many* artist trading cards. Then all you need is magazines, scissors, and glue. Gluestick doesn't make your paper buckle the way liquid glue does, but I've been quite happy with collages made with liquid glue if I am verrrrry sparing with the glue...................

Essentially no mess. Paper scraps. I use parts of the magazines I don't care about keeping as a working surface when I'm gluing...........

Essentially no space needed for working. My bare pages are on a tray beside the bed (and that's where the scissors, gluestick, reading glasses) also reside. I sit with a big hardcover book (work surface!) on my lap, and spread a magazine I have already "used up" (desirable image wise) over the book when gluing.......

Reading lamp. Magazines. "Page"-size windows. Reading glasses. GO!



Next update -- Wibbs feels just fine thankyouverymuch. Perfect. Happy, goofy, lively. I estimate he has at least a week to go before he finishes this course of baytril. I need to look at his distressing-to-view red toenail, and probably take him in so they can look at that................ I didn't think it was an emergency, as it has clearly been like that for some time, so I let myself collapse after work last week instead of hustling off to the vet.........



Yesterday we scraped the newer computer's drive clean, and then commenced to reload it. The biggest fly in that ointment was that while Dell gave us all the disks they used to load the machine in the first place, the did not have the courtesy or kindness to make us a disk with the smaller drivers we would need. LIKE THE ONE TO THE ETHERNET CARD. That one is critical. It is your gateway to Out. You cannot connect to the internet without it. With no internet connection, you can't get any of the other drivers you may need, nor any updates to XP, nor anything else!

Without a second computer which is connected to the net (and without helpful colleagues at work who will answer your weekend plea for help and tell you your inability to connect sounds like a missing ethernet card driver!), you are hosed.

Dead in the water. Totally afu.

Dell could easily have burnt that driver onto a cd and included it for us, but did they? Not.

Shame on them.

We'll be burning one, ourselves, as a charm against ever (EVER) having to do this again...............................................

Feh.

Ok.

Cleansing breath.......................................

At this point, I believe XP is all updated, and has all the drivers it needs to do the things we are wont to do.

We have reloaded our data (set it up to suck all my 45,000! pictures off the external drive while we slept).

Itunes has been reinstalled, as has Firefox.

I haven't put any software back on it. Photoshop Elements, for example.

The one thing I lost was Photoshop's database of the tags I had added to pics. Where I had told Elements to keep track of stuff like "this pic was taken in Alaska," it has now totally forgotten all of that. Alas.

I knew I was losing it, but had no idea where that info was kept. Elements does, periodically, ask me to back that stuff up, but it takes F O R E V E .... R so I got lax about it. Not *entirely* sure how long-term useful all that is, anyway, as I'm not sure how long it will persist, over time, given software switches, etc, but still. A significant amount of work. I believe I do have some backups, but they are rather elderly. I suppose better than nothing.......

In any case, we are well on the way to being back where we were before the fateful day when I installed the U's virus protection..................... Huzzah.



And FINALLY -- even though it wasn't that nice a day yesterday, we went to the farmers' market. (We also raked the front yard. Almost all the leaves are off the front-yard trees, and almost none of the leaves are off the back-yard trees. A story for another day, but ... odd.)

Anyway. Farmers' market......

We got winesap apples, and russet apples, and the makings for vegetable soup.

I enjoyed this soup for the first time when my daughter was in kindergarten. Her teacher arranged 5th-grade buddies for the kindergarteners, and made use of the older kids' greater level of on-the-ball-ness and responsibility to do things like take walking field trips to the farmers' market.

Each kid had 50 cents, which they could use to buy whatever they wanted in the way of vegetables. They could pool their resources with others, or talk the farmers into selling them something for 50 cents (this was over 15 years ago, so 50 cents went a bit farther than it does now).

When we all (parental chaperones in addition to the fifth graders!) got back to school, we chopped up all the veggies, put them in a big pot with water, a glug of oil, and a lash of salt, and cooked until done.

I was very surprised at how good it was, and have been making it ever since.

This particular soup has carrots, turnips, rutabaga, potatoes, cabbage, spinach, and a can of tomatoes. I added some red pepper in addition to salt and olive oil.

Update, 11-2: I forgot the onion and garlic (which we already had at home). Onion, chopped, and plenty of garlic, put through the garlic press.

Yum. With the possible exception of the salt, totally good for you. And beautiful.



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I would just like to say...

...that one of the ways a dog is better than a kid is:

when you are trying to serve him up some yogurt to keep his immune system working despite major doses of antibiotics, if you inadvertently drop the yogurt on the floor rather than in his dish, he is not only *eager* to clean up your mistake, but he has eaten his yogurt when he is done.

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updates

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Wibble feeling fine.

Yay.



Computer not feeling fine. Its status hasn't changed; we haven't done anything. Comatose, it is. Not dead, but not responding in any useful way to any input.

Tomorrow is the day I'm going to do its lobotomy. Though, I suppose, technically, it's not a lobotomy, since I'll leave its brain alone and go after its memory bank....

Won't that be fun.

Not.

Hope with me that there is no thunder tomorrow. We don't leave the computers on when it's thundering.......

I want my little computer, with its handy-dandy camera-memory-chip reader, up and happy and ready to store and work on more pics!

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hosed

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The best guess at this point is that the computer is well and truly hosed.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. >:-(

We'll be removing its hard drive, plugging it in in the older computer, sucking off data we didn't already have backed up, and then replacing the drive, wiping it clean, and starting over from scratch.

How annoying.

I knew I didn't want to mess with changing the virus protection.................

Sigh.



In canine news, he seems ok, but was eating grass this morning. Over the course of his life there have been multiple isolated instances of more-than-desultory grass eating. I've never noticed any fallout (so to speak) from those episodes.

He wasn't as frantic about it as I have seen him other times, but more than a casual blade here and there.

We blocked him in the kitchen this morning, just in case.

He won't like that. He likes to move around the house, making sure he's napping in the sunniest spot. Not to mention you can't see the front sidewalk from the kitchen! Even if you are tall enough to see out the window..........

We'll hope it's a temporary inconvenience and he can be back to having the run of the house tomorrow.



My honey brought home a cd with music of the the 60s. I knew all the songs (even ones from before I was 10.....)

This one is my fave from the bunch. Love all the percussion (much of which cannot be seen happening in the video.....).




There's nothing to see here, but the sound quality is much better than the above....



Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.

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yesterday

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I am very sorry to report that we lost my canine niece Theo yesterday. Probably cancer, and it was sudden. Less than a week between the Something Is Wrong and yesterday.

She was named for theobromine, the caffeine-like substance in chocolate. She was adopted from the shelter when she was a young adult. A Boston terrier mix, she was pretty energetic in her day.

She loved her belly rubs, and would wag and present her belly for rubs whenever a likely sucker, er, person, walked by.

I'm glad I got to see her in August, and give her a bunch of belly rubs.

Good girl, Theo. You will be missed.


Friday is the weekday I don't work. I had plans. I wanted to get a bunch of things done that I had been procrastinating on.......

I wanted to bake my eye. We have one of those microwave bags with rice in it, and that works a treat. I need a towel between me and it, as it is hot, but it stays warm plenty long enough. Thank you, CB, for the suggestion, and thank you, D, for the gift of the rice bag!!!!!!!

I finished Tony Hillerman's Hunting Badger (vintage late Hillerman; much recommended), and all the other books I brought home that day are on cd. I *could not* figure out how to get the player to play a cd. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

(Update 3:20 pm: No controls for cds on the top, well, other than the rocker switch which decides between tape, radio, cd; cd controls on *front*, of course. Sheesh.)

So I thought "Ok, I'll do what I've been doing when in bed with the rice, and just listen to the weather channel for 15 minutes+."

And the fly in that ointment was that I don't know how to work the new tv. SIGH! So I took the rice upstairs......... I still know how to work that tv!

(Update 3:20 pm: Tv remote basically worthless; use cable company remote. Very unhelpful off-topic error messages when you try to use tv remote, sigh and argh. Surely we're not the only area of the country where the stinking cable company requires that you put their box between their service and your tv????????? So why don't the tv manufacturers mention that using the tv's remote might be a waste of time? Rather than some generic "you can't do that now" sort of message??????)

Then I discovered my eye was getting red again. So I went BACK to health service, and this time I decided I was going to see Dr. C., no matter how long I had to wait. He was at lunch. I checked in, and used the ladies' room right by the waiting area. I thought I heard him call my name while I was in there, and, sure enough......... Had I known seeing him so quickly was a reasonable possibility, I surely would have waited to see him last week. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He was surprised I'd been put on systemic antibiotics, and reported that last week's doc had written down nothing about conjunctivitis, but had put me on the azithromycin because of the sty, which was not bothering me at all.......................

He called up to the eye care clinic and spoke to one of his colleagues there, who came down to consult. (I think I looooooooooooooooooove Dr. C.............) She said she would give systemic antibiotics IFF the sty were huge and soft, or if the patient were in lots of pain, but certainly not for the little hard painless ball my sty is.

Neither she nor Dr. C. would give systemic antibiotics for conjunctivitis........

Sigh. So I've had a needless course of a systemic antibiotic, SIGH. My stomach did not like it. Just a general touchy and uncomfortable feeling.............. SIGH.

The eye doc said she thinks the conjuntivitis is allergic, and put me on antihistamine drops. OTC zatidor-generic.

The bad news was that once a sty is a hard little ball, it is likely to never go away. This is annoying. But, compared to bad news one gets from doctors, this is hardly worth mentioning.

Ok. Whatever.

Rather than waiting hours for Dr. C. as I had been prepared to do, he saw me before his lunch was officially over, and before I ever even sat down to wait! One regrets the necessity for learning how to work the system, but one is glad to know what to do if one does need to work it......................

Ok.

Later in the afternoon I finally tackled upgrading our virus protection on the newer computer. The U has a contract with McAfee and we can download the protection from the U.

There are a ton of steps. It begins with a warning that if you have a certain sound card, you'll have problems. Well wtf. How do you find out what sound card you have????? I found the video card's info, poking around in the computer, but the sound card???????? I called one of my colleagues at work, who deals with pcs all day every day, and she wasn't sure, either, short of logging in to Dell and looking at the computer's specs there (they remember the computers they sell you, and know what is on them).

I finally found something on paper for the computer that made me think there is no separate sound card; that the sound is integrated on the mother board.

Ok, fine, that only took 15-20 min. Now let's proceed..............

To make a long story short, you proceed to download the program, and then you have to disconnect from the internet and de-install any previous virus protection (which is why you have to be disconnected from the internet..........). Then you have to run the installer as "administrator."

The directions were to right-click on the virus-protection installer's icon on the desktop, and choose "run as" and select a user with admin privileges.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

Hah!

All our users are set up as administrator (computers behind router which refuses contact initiated from outside), but the program Will Not Run. The error you get is on the order of "failure to open zip file; bad file header."

Oh good.

NOW WHAT???????????????????

It seems imperative to have another computer, so one can look at faqs and use google, and .....................

Because this one surely should not be used on the net while it is totally unprotected.............

I disconnected it from the net by unplugging the cable from the modem.

So. Now I disconnect it from the net by unplugging it from the router, and plug the modem back into the net so I can use the other computer.

I go in the other room, and boot up the older computer, which has developed Issues.

For years it has thought it has hardware that it can't recognize, and every time you boot it up, it asks you if you want to go find drivers for this phantom hardware.

For years you have said "no," "no" and it has gone forward.

Lately it has gotten much more upset about this missing phantom hardware, and will bluescreen (requiring being turned off and turned back on again)..............

Yesterday it didn't bluescreen, but told me solemnly that it had recovered from a Very Serious Error.

Fine, ok, whatever.

At this point I don't know that the "failure to open zip file" error message means that it thinks I don't have administrator privileges.

(Digression on error messages. "Something is wrong" error messages suck. But lying error messages are worse. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............. End of digression.)

So I'm thinking from the error message that I need to do the download again, so I download the file to the older computer (did I mention that it's a big file and takes 10 minutes to download?). I come back to the study, unplug the modem from the net, plug the newer computer back into the router (so our two computers can talk to each other but neither can talk to the net), and the newer computer refuses to see the older one.

Argh!

Ok, I can take a blank cd in the other room and burn the virus protection onto the cd.

Fine.

So then in the process of trying to open the cd drive on the older computer (which is on the floor and all black), I push the "off" button instead of the "open the drive" button, and it turns off.

ARGH.

You'll recall this is the one that is likely to bluescreen when turned on...........

Feh.

Well, it takes its usual own sweet time to come up, but doesn't bluescreen.

Then I try seeing the study computer from that one, and I can. So instead of sucking the file onto the study computer, I push it there from the old computer.

OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But the virus-protection installer still won't #($)&^ well work. Same error.

I pull the new computer's cable from the router, plug the modem back into the net, and go hunt through the faq at the U. I discover that "failure to open zip file" actually means "this user doesn't have administrator privileges." It doesn't mean there's something wrong with the file at all. (booo, hiss, badddd error message!!!)

Oy.

Even I am growing weary of this story, so I'll cut short the tale of trying to find the administrator password. There probably IS NO ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD as you are not required to set one when you set up your computer..................

And my better half is off playing bridge so I can't ask him................

I write a frustrated message to the guys at the U who are in charge of this, and give up.

Later, after the bridge player returned home, triumphant, we tried double-clicking on the virus-protection icon, which is the standard way to get something on the desktop to run.

It worked.

It installed, it ran, it only found one issue (in a game, how rude! a game purchased on cd, no less!).

I *knew* I didn't want to deal with that whole virus-protection thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The guy at the U actually answered my email last night, amazingly enough, but what he said wasn't very helpful. He said it was Bad for our regular users to be Administrator, and he reiterated that any user who was Administrator could use the program. I informed him that while he might be right about it being bad for us all to be admin, he was not right that any user with admin priv could run the program.........

Feh.

At least the computer seems to be working correctly, after all this...........

(Update 3:20 pm: More email from guy at U confirms that double-clicking on the icon will work just fine IFF you have admin privileges. Good. And -- I #($*(*^ well WISH I HAD KNOWN THAT YESTERDAY EVENING. Sigh!)


For the good news from yesterday, my better half and his team had a Very Good Day.

They were playing in a team event. Each team is two partnerships. The event was stratified, which means the organizers pay attention to how many bridge masterpoints the team members have, and try to set things up so that people play others of like skill level.

Yesterday they broke at 3000 points. About half the teams had under 3000 points between the teammates, and half had more.

Only.

Our heroes had the fewest masterpoints of teams in the top bracket, at 7000, and the team with the next lowest number of points had over 20,000! They were the only team between 20,000 and 3000!

Luckily it is handicapped, sort of, so that if you play a team with a lot more points than you, you get some help, but the handicapping system doesn't take into account this large a gap.

It was, however, enough to help our heroes into the top four! Their first match was against the team with a guy who is probably the best player in Michigan, and they beat that team! Then they played in the evening, against two more very good teams, and triumphed.

So they'll play again today.

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I haven't mentioned Wibber -- he worried me by shivering yesterday. It has been cold, here, but the house wasn't that cold...................... I did walk him around the block (mid-40s out) before I went to Health Service. He seemed ok. If you didn't know him, you'd think he was fine, but he wasn't as lively as last Sunday.......

He has seemed ok since. Let's hope that trend continues. I'm keeping a close eye on him.....................

I need to buy that boy a coat.



And -- just to reward you for getting this far, an actual picture!!!!!!!!!!!!

This little red leaf caught my eye just before I walked into my office building.

I put it on the keyboard, where I would notice it, off and on, all day (not in the middle of the keyboard; on the number pad, which I do not use).

Lots of people have been doing self-portraits, of various kinds, and I thought this could be one of mine, after a fashion. So I moved the leaf to the part of the keyboard I do use, for the time it took to take the pic.

Hey. This is the first time I noticed that there is a ... euro-sign on my keyboard. Cool.

Ok.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Self portrait.


I'm not fresh and green as once I was. Beaten up a bit. But still bright and too colorful for some.

And I spend a huge amount of time with a keyboard, doing one thing and another......



.

Wib

.

I think he felt a bit better this morning. He ate his breakfast right down. He had his baytril and some pumpkin.

He didn't feel warm.

But he was shivering.

Last time, when he came home on baytril, he shivered right through the first day home.

Sigh.

I gave him 25mg of rimadyl.

My better half is going to play bridge all day, so Wibble will be alone most of the work day. I think he'll be ok, if not entirely comfortable.

I hope I'm right.

.

Wibbs

.

I debated giving him some of his leftover rimadyl to bring his fever down, but did not do it.

He's been very sleepy this evening, and still coughing a bit (but less).

We just took his temp, which was 102.2. Yay.

Gave him some yogurt and water (to encourage hydration), and then he went out.

His respiration is fast, but not labored (and, I think, not as fast as this afternoon....).

Surely hoping he's on the mend..........

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Wibbles

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He had his last baytril on Saturday evening. Sunday he was perfect. Felt perfect. Pulled us all the way on an almost-a-mile walk.

Yesterday, not as good. Sorta quiet, sorta off by himself.... Lots of coughing yesterday. His congestion problem (which he's had for years) has him coughing sometimes, off and on, but yesterday was as bad a coughing day as he's ever had. At least.

Yesterday evening he started to shiver. He has shivered off and on his whole life, which I have always put down to him not having as much hair as the corgis. But since shivering is what he was doing with the fever....................

We took his temp, which was only 101 (low side of normal, for a dog), and hoped that he was "just shivering."

This morning he was stiff and sore, and not very interested in breakfast (but did eat). He was hot; I was sure he had a temp, but since I knew he had to go in, we didn't take it (knowing they would take it again anyway).

Sure enough. Temp 104.

The vet said that there are some organisms that need 6-8 weeks of antibiotics to get rid of them.....

So we're back on the baytril, and the dose has been raised -- 1.5 tabs rather than 1.

I gave him the first dose as soon as we got home from the vet about 10:30 this morning. He spent the afternoon on the family room couch (SO lucky I have enough vacation time that I can take it for something like this). He is doing a lot of coughing, and it isn't exactly the same coughing he's been doing...... More sort of wheezy sounding and less gaggy sounding.................

He wasn't all that interested in his dinner (with which he got his claritin and some mucinex, in the hope of opening up his lungs), but he did polish it off more quickly than his breakfast.

Fingers crossed........................................ I don't think he's been shivering. He was covered with a blanket on the couch this afternoon, and had lots of dreams, complete with growling and woofing, but I didn't see any shivering.

Please hope with me that this upped dose of antibiotics doesn't mess up his gut.

We'll continue his pumpkin and his yogurt, hoping for a continued calm and happy gut.........

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Wibble

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Oooh, I hate the way "publish" is the default, so when I hit return for some random reason, it helpfully publishes............

Anyway.

I hadn't given you an update on Wibbs in a while, and I wanted to let you know all is well.

He has been a week without his nsaid rimadyl, and seems to feel just fine. Barking as usual, happy, up, eager to go anywhere, any time. Well, not out in a rainy back yard by himself, but you know what I mean.

He still has about five baytrils to go.

I was more concerned about taking him off the rimadyl than the antibiotic, but, well, we'll see.........

He is getting his prebiotic (pumpkin), his probiotic (yogurt at least once a day), and he is eating and eliminating normally, so I can't conclude his gut is unhappy.

Yay.

Whew.

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updates

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I'm sure I should have gotten a livelier pic of Burt, so you could see that he's still feeling good.

But this is what he was doing when I got the camera to take a pic of me.....





In the "it's always something" category, I seem to have developed a sty.

I read about swollen eyelids last night, and it said that a sty is "exquisitely painful," so I figured that couldn't be what this is.

It feels weird, but doesn't exactly hurt. You'd have to have a pain scale with a lot more granularity than 1-10 for this to register........

I went to Health Service, and saw the nice young doctor who always tells me everything is ok. He took one look at me, took me from the "office" room into the "examining" room with all the doctor goodies, checked that my eye itself isn't red, and told me to put hot compresses on it twice a day, and that it might take a month until it's gone.

So glad he's continuing his practice of telling me all is well, pretty much.



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Willard Burton

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Wibble continues to do well. I'd say he's about 95% of perfect. Not barking as much as I'd expect, but way more than last week......

He had his follow up appt yesterday. His temp was 100 (a bit low, but not a concern, I guess). She tried to get a look at his tonsils, and from the one peek she got, she thought it looked the same color as the rest of the tissue back there; not angry, not swollen.....

Because everything sort of got thrown at him all at once, she wants to take him off things in a gradual and staged manner, so that if he gets worse, we'll have a better idea of what was keeping the bad whatever at bay.

His baytril (antibiotic) ran out on Saturday. She put him back on it.

The plan is that his doxycycline (antibiotic) ran out with this morning's dose. He was on that for 2.5 weeks. We're to let that be enough of that.

He's to stay on rimadyl (nsaid) until Friday, and then stop that.

And he's now got baytril through Oct 11.

I'm to watch for any sign of relapse..........................

Surely hoping the baytril has done its magic and he's just all better and we don't have to think about this any more. Ever!!!!!

I took him for a walk, just a couple of blocks, when we got home. It was warm and verrrry humid, and he was definitely dragging at the end of that. A bit concerning. But -- he was pretty sick, not very long ago. I hope he just has a ways to go to build his stamina back up.

!!!!!

His output has been totally normal for days and days now, so I nearly forgot to mention it. I don't know if the pumpkin and yogurt are doing their work, or if it was the cephalexin (or the anesthetics, etc, he had when hospitalized....) which caused the extremely soft unpickupable we got for a few days..........

I will definitely keep him on pumpkin and yogurt as long as he's getting antibiotics.

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Wibbets

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He continues to do well.

Today is the last baytril.................

Surely hoping that he will continue to do well as we come to the end of the drugs.....

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Wibbles

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I accidentally posted two "regular posts with pics" yesterday, when I meant to save one for today.

Ah well.


Wibbs continues to feel very good. He barked as much as normal when we got home from work, and later in the evening he wanted to play.

The only time he ever puts teeth to human flesh is when he is realllllly eager for a treat. Sometimes he gets carried away and gives a small pinch.

He NEVER touches teeth to human flesh at any other time. But he likes to play "bites" -- where the dog playfully bites the human hand which is sort of functioning as a mouth and "bites" the dog.

This conundrum can be solved by covering either the dog or the hand. Apparently if he can't *see* the hand, he can (VERY gently) bite it.

Last night he looked very goofy indeed with a tshirt draped over his head and shoulders, but his wagger sticking out, wagging and wagging, as I gently grabbed his front legs, his muzzle, his nose........

After a while, he ootched his way under the blankets, and then continued to play with a hand that was outside the bedding.

We are SO glad to see him feeling so good!

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