Goodbye, Scout

We were playing in the backyard, Scout, C and I, when C was the first to notice that Scout’s nose was bleeding, not a lot, just a trickle.

At first, I thought it might be a bad allergic reaction, but it didn’t stop. Maybe there’s something stuck up his nose? He does sniff everything and everywhere. We looked and looked but didn’t see anything, maybe it was lodged deep in the nose and we could not see it?

Ms J took him to our vet the next day. The staff at the vet’s office first also thought that it must be something lodged in the nose, a porcupine quill ? They used a specialized device to check his nose and didn’t see anything up there, but they did see that his blood was not clotting.

This is somewhat unusual for a 10 month old dog, but it is a symptom of having ingested rat poison. We didn’t see him eat anything that might have been killed by poison, such as a dead squirrel or mouse. The antidote for a dog who has eaten rat poison is a massive dose of vitamin K, which helps to clot the blood. This didn’t work. Besides he would have had to eaten ten pounds of poison to cause this lack of clotting, but at least that could be ruled out.

Perhaps he had a genetic disorder, such as hemophilia? A treatment of Prednisone would help with that. If it worked it would indicate that he was a hemophiliac, which is manageable with a variety of drugs, but that didn’t work either.

A tick bite ? Some ticks can cause this type of symptom. A blood test did not indicate a tick borne illness. A treatment of antibiotics was tried anyway just to be sure, but it didn’t help.

So they tried an ultrasound. That’s when they saw the tumor that is eating away his spleen. He just cant clean the blood and make the platelets to help clot normally. There’s not much to do to stop it.

One of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is tell our eight year old son that his dog was going to die soon. We won’t be able to take him to the beach and see him jump in the waves this Summer. We won’t be able to ride bikes with him running along beside us wondering what those strange wheeled things were. I had thought that C and Scout would grow up together, but that’s not going to happen.

So we took him home.

For the next few days he’ll eat his favorite foods.

He’ll sit in the sun in the backyard. He’ll sleep on our bed if he wants to. He can sit in his favorite spot in the garden.

Maybe we’ll play tug-of-war with his blanket.

I’ll scratch his ear as long as he wants me to.

And then we’ll have to say goodbye.

He’s been the smartest, happiest, most good natured dog. He loves meeting new people and he especially loves kids. He loves going to pick up C from school, seeing all the kids run around, getting a lot of attention from the kids who wanted to pet him. He loves meeting other dogs too, hoping they will want to play with him. He just wanted to be friends with everyone. The best dog I’ve ever had. And he’s only 10 months old.

Be yourself…or be Batman!

Mr. C: Hey Daddy, can you guess what song Killer Croc sings to Batman ?

Me: No, what is it?

Mr. C starts to sing………..

“Did I ever tell you that you’re my herooooooo?!!!!….

Me: Oh no!…

C: Everything I wish I could be!!!….

Me: No, no please stop…

Mr C: I can fly higher than an eagleeeeee!!!….

Me: No,no,no, please stop!… (puts fingers in ears) … La, la, la,la! I can’t hear you!

C: For you are the wind beneath my wings!!!!….

Me: Great, thanks for the earworm!

Flying Dog

Having an active dog can be exhausting. It doesn’t help that I strained a muscle in my foot last month, so I haven’t been taking him out for walks as much as he would like. So what to do to exercise the dog?

How about seeing if he can catch a cup of water?

Ready?!

Jump!

And here’s the landing. You can see how he’s been tearing up the lawn.

Again?

Makes my foot hurt just to watch him land.

Take a picture, Dada!

… and we’re back for more infrequent blog posts!

Mr. C loves our smartphones, with all their features, apps, and games. One thing he likes to do is direct me in how and when to use the camera. My camera’s memory is filled with pictures he wanted to take. He especially likes to take pictures of clouds and sunsets. Here’s a few. These were taken in Vermont, New Hampshire, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.

The Snow Shovel

This past week we had an early Spring snow storm that brought us a few inches of heavy wet snow. After the storm ended, I went outside to shovel the walkway and driveway, a bit reluctantly since it’s April and I know that all this snow will melt in a few days anyway. It was just me shoveling, as Mr. C and Ms. J were out taking Scout for a walk. It was an early Spring day, and the temperature was approaching 50, so I really wasn’t in a rush to finish the shoveling. It was already starting to melt, so why should I work so hard to clear it off the drive way anyway, I thought.

So I decided to take a break for lunch, and went inside to make a sandwich, leaving my shovel propped up on a snow pile Between making lunch and eating lunch, I must have taken about a half hour. Just as I finished my sandwich, the phone rang, which added another fifteen minutes or so to the time inside. After my break, I thought I would go out and finish clearing off the side walk. However, when I went outside, my shovel was gone!

I looked all over the front yard and there was no sign of the shovel. It wasn’t in the big pile of snow next to the driveway, not in the pile next to the sidewalk, not leaning next to the back of my car in the driveway, not leaning next to the front of my car in the driveway. It was nowhere to be seen.

Then I looked down the street and saw my shovel sticking out of a pile of snow in a neighbor’s driveway. It’s a very distinctive yellow color, with a yellow handle, and I remember the brand name was ‘Garant, and that the table had started to peel off the handle. Is that my shovel? Did my neighbor “borrow” my shovel ?

The house in question is four houses down, across the street, so I walked over to the shovel to check to see if it was mine. It had the yellow handle, the yellow shovel, and the label was starting to peel off the handle.

‘Hmmm… why would this guy take my shovel?’, I thought. Very odd. I knew that this was a new family on the block, so maybe they didn’t have a shovel, or maybe they didn’t know where their shovel was in the pile of boxes they must have from moving in. So I took the shovel back home and finished shoveling.

After I finished shoveling I put the shovel away, stacking it with the two other shovels I keep in the front entry way. By this time it was about 3:00pm, Ms. J and C had come back home from walking the dog, and it was still early afternoon, so we were able to do quite a few other things the rest of the day. I forgot to ask J what she thought of the missing shovel, we were just too busy doing other things and it didn’t occur to me at the time.

The next morning at about 5:00 am, Scout needed to go out. He doesn’t bark to let us know he needs to go out, he shakes his head until his ears shake around making a distinctive sound. It’s a fairly quiet sound, so often only one of us wakes up, me or Ms. J. Since it was still early, J and C were still asleep, and since I was barely awake myself, I decided to just let him out into the back yard. The back yard is fenced, so we can just let him run around out there if he needs to. This has been a great advantage on freezing cold Winter nights. We can just open the back door, let Scout out, and wait inside where it’s warm. So I put on my bathrobe and slippers, went down stairs to let him out.

I open the back door, Scout runs out, and just as I turn to go back inside, in the early morning light I see a snow shovel with a yellow handle next to the back door. My shovel. At the back door. I didn’t leave it in the front yard when I went inside for lunch yesterday, I went in the back door and left the shovel at the back door.

Now I had stolen my new neighbor’s shovel and it was on my front porch. What to do? I don’t even know who these people are yet, they just moved in. Should I wait until the morning and introduce myself as their neighbor down the street who stole their shovel ? So at about 5:15 am, I took the shovel walked down the street and put it back in the snow pile at the end of their driveway. I did change from the bathrobe and slippers to a shirt and pants before doing that though.

Daddy’s Crazy Music

I still have some old vinyl records, and among the vintage new wave hits of the 80’s in my collection, there are a number of works that I suppose could be called ‘experimental’. Mr. C just calls them ‘Daddy’s Crazy Music’. Examples include works by This Heat, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Dead C, Bailter Space, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Gilbert & Lewis. Some of this is ambient and some might just be called noise. As a Classical music fan, Ms. J does not prefer to hear any of this either.

Here’s an example from Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis. ‘Barge Calm’ from their 1980 LP, ‘3R4’.

If you do go ahead and listen to it, you can stop after a minute or so, it just continues like this….for another 17 minutes.

Here’s the LP. (I can’t believe it’s been 37 years since I bought this!)

Since I work from home, and I know this sort of music is not for everyone, if I do want to listen to any of it I will dig out one of these old LP’s during the day. When C is at school and J at work.

This has worked fine until we got our dog Scout. Something like ‘Barge Calm’ will make him howl. Hoooowwwwwwllllll ….owwwwwww! Owwww….Howwwwwwlllll! This continues until I take the music off.

Not an avant-garde music fan.

Looks like I will have to resort to listening to this in the car. Yes, I do own two copies of this, the other one being a compact disc.

Fixing the mixer

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that a project I’ve been meaning to get to is fixing my Mom’s old Kitchenaid mixer.

My Mother was going to throw it away because it was making a grinding sound and shaking when she used it. I’d like to try to keep it out of the dump so I said that I would try to fix it. It’s a forty year old machine, it probably weighs about twenty five pounds, and I doubt that newer models are as sturdy as this one. New models can cost about $500, so it could be worthwhile to try to fix it.

After doing some research, I found out that a common problem is that the gear lubricant can dry out, causing the gears to grind, eventually the motor will wear out if the old lubricant is not replaced. I bought some new lubricant, hoping that it wasn’t too late to save it.

The first thing to do is to knock out the pin that holds in the rotary. The little top pin, not the one on the stem below the spring. I almost knocked out that bottom pin, which would have been a big mistake as it’s very difficult to get back in.

Then you take off the rotary.

Then you remove all of those screws. I had to get some screw de-locker oil as those things didn’t want to budge after forty years.

That brown gunk is dried out gear lubricant.

I didn’t get a photo of the cleaned off gears as my hands were covered in that old gear goo. The new lubricant cost $15. The old screw de-lockenizer oil cost $2.50.