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By Chris, on March 21, 2010, at 4:31 pm Yesterday was the vernal equinox/first day of spring. From this point on there will be a bit more light than dark each day until summer solstice. It was an absolutely beautiful day, too. Joy had to work and I volunteered down at the shelter half a day, then afterward we took Paddy to the park, then to Wag (the new pet boutique on Main Street) for some socialization, and then we sat out on the patio at The Black Rose eating cheese fries and having a beer (Paddy did have some of the fries but had water in lieu of beer… he’s underage, after all  ) and enjoying the day. Afterward we sat out in the sun with the rest of the critters enjoying the weather. The cats are so happy to be able to go outside again, and Cricket enjoyed a bit of sunbathing. Lindsy even seemed to be doing a bit better than she has been lately.
Today it’s dark and rainy, and there’s rumor of snow on Tuesday, but winter has lost it’s grip on us, I hope.
Pepper, parsley, basil and oregano seedlings (the big bushy stuff is a batch of store bought cilantro I was keeping in water until I could get the dehydrator out)
By Chris, on March 16, 2010, at 7:08 pm Since the rest of the week is going to be pretty grueling, schedule-wise, I’ll go ahead and introduce the newest member of the family that I have been hinting about for days now:
This is Paddy. We adopted him from the shelter a week ago and things are going well so far. He is about five or six months old and is going to be a pretty big boy. Yeah, we were going to wait until Lindsy passed, but he had the personality traits we were looking for and he needed a home. He’s not had any accidents in the house, is doing fine with the cats, initially pestered Lindsy something fierce but has eased off on that, and he even managed to charm his grammy.
We have been kind of keeping quiet about his presence since what I’ll call the Arthur Nightmare (and prior disasters) while we made sure things were going to work out, but we got outed within five minutes of Joy’s mom coming over this weeked. Paddy made a noise in his crate… “What was that?” “Uhhhh…nothing?” “Are you guys hiding a new granddog from me?” And so the cat, or rather large red dog, was out of the bag. He’s still learning not to jump on new people but conducted himself very well with her.
Forty six pounds or not, he is a puppy, so there’s lots of work ahead.The big difference between him and his predecessor is that there really is two way communication going on, and he wants to do right. Arthur was like having some sort of alien in the house, he really was the most frustrating dog I’ve ever dealt with. Paddy can be a bit stubborn, typical for his age, but he’s also gentle and responsive.
Cricket showing her evil side
Having a bigger dog around the house will make us feel a bit safer (Lindsy was great when she was young but can’t hear the door now) and will be good to have on hikes. We picked him for his personality rather than looks, but also think he’s absolutely beautiful.
Calvin and Paddy, the day we brought him home to cat-test him
Simon and Paddy
Paddy just came over and signed this post himself–> H][=p[=[]
By Chris, on March 7, 2010, at 11:26 am A) Emptied anal sacs of geriatric dog #1 (a rather invasive procedure which involves rubber gloves and vaseline) after witnessing her moonwalk her butt across the living room carpet – check.
B) Traced strange dead smell to geriatric dog # 2 and spent 20 min clipping, disinfecting, scrubbing, and removing bits of dead decaying papilloma growth from her head – check.
C) Opened first beer of the day immediately after A and B – check.
By Chris, on March 2, 2010, at 7:02 pm
Lindsy turned fifteen this past month. The picture above is of her eating the last of the Pfeffernusse Christmas cookies from Trader Joe’s – we bought her a doggie cupcake from a local petshop but it was hard as a rock. She loves Pfeffernusse so that was probably a better ‘birthday cake’ for her.
She’s not doing real great these days. There have been several incidents where she couldn’t stand up, and she’s losing control of her bladder sometimes as well. She spends most of her time in a confused fog and it’s really sad to see that. She’s covered in huge lipomas and papillomas that keep getting infected and bleeding. Her appetite isn’t what it used to be, and we have World War Three with her over her ProIn pill (for the incontinence) every day. But she does still eat, and enjoys her bedtime cookie… I think we may be coming up on a hard decision soon, but we aren’t there just yet.
It just occurred to me that since we usually count our rescued animals’ birthdays from the date we adopted them, that Cricket had a birthday in January. Which one, is anyone’s guess. When we adopted her five years ago, our vet said she was at least ten — so I guess that makes her fifteen, as well. She’s doing pretty good, she got past that last bad spell and though her eyes are filming over now, overall she’s pretty spry, bad heart and all.
Simon will be nine this year… Olive will turn thirteen… how did everyone get so old?
Lindsy at a park in Garland, TX six years ago.
By Chris, on January 31, 2010, at 7:26 pm Well, actually it’s more like the ‘five and a half week mark’ at this point, since I have been meaning to post this for a while now. I had a pretty long week last week, driving over 1500 miles total, and getting home close to seven PM a few nights, and then the bad weather closed the shelter and made it impossible for anyone other than us to get to it this weekend, so we took care of all the animals both days. I also spent part of this afternoon making a futile attempt to clear a path through the ice and snow in the driveway for my van to get out in the morning (not looking good for that happening, at least not before noon) and am now sitting on the couch feeling every one of my forty one years right now. But at least I finally have a moment to give a report on how things have gone with Dandelyon this past month or so.
As I mentioned in the first post, we were a little hesitant to be optimistic about a new addition to the family, with as bad as things went with Arthur… and adding a cat was particularly dicey, given the aggression issues we’ve had with Olive, and between Olive and Winter. We’d hoped the right one would kind of balance things out, but it could just as easily have been a total disaster.
I’m happy to say that things have gone better than we could ever have hoped. By the end of the first week, we had him intermingled with the rest of the gang. The only problem we did have was him giving his upper respiratory infection to Winter, but that may have helped the transition in a way, funny as that sounds; she was feeling too bad those first few days to worry about being hostile to the ‘intruder’ in the house.
 Now, over a month later, Winter treats him like a little brother – sometimes she finds him amusing and she actually plays with him, other times he’s too much for her and she gets angry. He does pay attention when she gets mad and backs off. Simon also gets along well with him — we were worried he was being too rough with Simon but Simon seems to initiate the wresting at least as often as Dandelyon does. They sleep together and Simon even grooms him sometimes. Olive… well, Olive is Olive. She is OK most of the time but we have had some issues with her jumping on him when she’s having one of her off days. Still, overall things have gone well.
 Cricket was initially kind of snarky with him (in her defense, he does treat her as a chew toy) but she’s gotten over that and he’s showing a bit more restraint with the flying tackles. Lindsy snapped at him a few times, but she hates all of the cats and we didn’t really expect she’d be any different with a new one.The unfortunate thing is we now have two cats that love dogs, and no dog that likes cats, but we’re still hoping to find the right dog to add to the family some day — though ideally not until after Lindsy’s passed on.
 One thing I do need to explain is that Dandelyon is now his middle name, and we’ve been calling him “Calvin.” It just suits him more, most of the time. His full name is “Calvin Dandelyon Weasley.” Yes, not only have we confused things by spelling one name weird, but now we’ve given him a name from “Calvin and Hobbes” but not named him after the cat in the cartoon. At least the Weasley part is pretty straightforward, if you’re familiar with the Harry Potter books. His personality is very Calvinish, he’s funny, inventive, mischievous, and cheerful, but can put on a good pout when he gets tired. And he has yellow hair that sticks up all over the place.
He has been so much fun to have around, he really is like a little ray of sunshine. We really love him. He makes us laugh constantly with his antics, and he’s blossoming into a beautiful cat. The five AM wake up in the form of a five pound kitten suddenly pouncing on your face we could maybe do without, but I’m sure he’ll outgrow that.
How could anyone resist a face like this?
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