Meg was quite sick yesterday. She hadn’t been feeling quite herself for a couple of days, but things took a turn for the worse yesterday morning at 3:30 AM when we woke to the not-so-lovely sounds of Meg retching. It happened again at about 4:00. And again a short time later. I knew I wouldn’t be going back to sleep, so I took the dogs downstairs where Meg vomited again. And again. And again.
Not a happy camper.
It was obvious we needed to get her to the vet. To make a long story short, she has pancreatitis, a very painful inflammation/infection of the pancreas. I don’t know all the particulars, I just know she was feeling BAD. She wouldn’t even eat the small piece of raw ground beef I offered her before I started cooking dinner.
She’s got lots of meds, and we need to keep her on a bland diet. We also need to keep her water consumption to small amounts at a time until we know she can keep it all down.
I babied the old girl a bit last night. Want to see what recuperation looks like?
As I write this post, she’s giving me the “can I have a piece of your muffin look” that usually annoys me, but today makes me quite happy.
The old girl is on the mend! Woo hoo!
Thanks to all of you who expressed your concern and good wishes. My Meg has become a popular Facebook attraction. 🙂
I need to close now so I can take a piece of my muffin to Meg…
Those of you who have been following for a while will remember when Belle caught a squirrel in our backyard. That was almost a year ago. She hasn’t caught another one since, but not from lack of trying. She might catch another someday. She’s very fast. But being fast isn’t always enough.
Take K as an example. K is actually a little faster than Belle (she has longer legs). But I doubt K will ever catch a squirrel.
Here’s why… (your sound has to be turned on or you won’t “get” this at all)
We’ve been working on the squeaking thing. This video is actually a few weeks old. She’s gotten better. But she still squeaks.
And if she sees something out there to chase, she practically screams.
I guess it’s her way of saying, “I’m coming to get you nasty little critters that insist on invading my yard, eating all my birdseed and leaving little round poo pellets everywhere.”
She’d probably leave the poo pellets part off, though, because she, like every other dog we’ve ever had here, loves nothing more than sniffing out and eating squirrel poo.
As you probably surmised from my post the other day, Hubby and I made it back to the WV place. We hadn’t been there since the weekend after Thanksgiving. One of the reasons for the long absence was the holiday madness (so much to do, so little time in which to do it). Another reason was that we needed to work on training K to come when we call her. The girl is a hunter, so we knew if we didn’t teach her to come when we tell her to that, should she pick up a scent at the WV place, we may never see her again.
Belle and K Relaxing After a Long Walk
Well, we have actually been working with K. And she’s doing much better than originally anticipated. We do have a training aid, however, thanks to K’s foster family. It’s a citronella collar. If the dog doesn’t come when you call it, they get three levels of warning:
A beep
A short spritz of citronella, which dogs apparently find pretty offensive
A LONG squirt of citronella
The idea is just to get their attention. Dogs that listen under normal circumstances may not do as commanded when distracted by such stuff as bunnies, squirrels, deer, turkeys, etc.
Because K was previously trained on an invisible fence, which uses similar tiered warnings (beep, light zap, strong zap), she took to the citronella collar pretty well. She HATED the invisible fence. And even though it’s been a couple of months, she remembers the collar.
She did very well when it came to critter smells, but when she and Belle saw a deer late on Sunday afternoon, they both took off. K was out of collar range in a flash. Belle came back immediately, of course, because Belle never likes to get too far from Mama. K, on the other hand, was gone for about an hour. I was worried, of course, but not as worried as I would have been around the MD place, where it sometimes feels like we are surrounded by superhighways.
So we’ve still got some work to do. I did manage to get some good pics before that little incident, which I have shared below.
Here I imagine K is thinking, "This collar and jacket are so undoglike. I feel like a dork."
Back in December, I explained how K hates getting dressed, i.e., wearing stupid stuff like this Don’t-Shoot-Me jacket and seasonal bandannas. Well, Sunday was cold and rainy, so I decided to get the dogs all suited up before our walk. Not only was she not thrilled about wearing the training collar, she was a bit peeved at the jacket thing. But she got over it pretty quickly.
This girl LOVES to run.
As you can see, Belle doesn’t mind getting dressed. Either does Meg.
Meg moseying along.
This picture of Meg slogging through six inches of slush on Turkey Hollow Road, in the rain and fog, pretty much sums up Sunday’s weather.
Free at last.
It didn’t take K long at all to forget about wearing the jacket. She was thrilled to be able to run.
I’ve said this here before. Seeing my dogs run free like this, with the look of sheer bliss and delight on their faces, is what I picture whenever I see/read about dogs forced to live in a kennel, tied to a tree, etc.
Yay, we can play!
Belle was quite happy to see K off-leash, too.
Look at them fly.
It’s just not possible to play like this when there is a lead attached.
Audience of one.
Meg was quite happy to just watch.
What? We're playing.
The two young’uns would stop to catch their breath every now and then.
Back at it.
Those breaks never last very long.
My ears fly, too.
Meg does her share of running, too. She just prefers running without a rambunctious young Britt running alongside of her nipping at her rear-end, or her ears, or her neck…
K looking dapper in her jacket.
I doubt K will ever admit it, but she looks quite handsome in her little jacket, which, by the way, helps immensely when trying to spot a dog in the woods.
Look what Belle found. This is actually bone #2. Bone #1 was much smaller and she polished that one off early in the day.
Belle is pretty good at finding treasure in the woods. Meg is, too, but Meg usually consumes her treasures before letting us see what she has discovered.
All in all, it was a good weekend. I look forward to returning soon. There’s nothing quite as relaxing (yes, exercise can be relaxing) as tromping through the woods with your dogs.
Yesterday, I made sure I was outside at sunset so I could get some more pink sky images. But this time, with my wide angle lens.
I think I was a tad too late. The pink is really VERY fleeting. But I did get a cute dog pic.
Go ahead, roll your eyes and say, “More dog pictures?” My subject matter is limited. And I love my dogs. 🙂
All I have to say to those pesky solicitors is, “Go ahead, knock.”
As for the pink sky, yes I missed nature’s show. But I did capture some nice, wide-angle sky shots.
Missing nature’s show isn’t the end of the world when you have processing software. I just added my own pink.
The difference is quite dramatic, isn’t it? Just so you can really appreciate the difference, here’s another picture that’s straight-out-of-camera (SOOC).
I did not edit the above shot at all. I didn’t even remove the dust spots from the dirty camera sensor I am afraid to clean.
Here’s the same image with dust spots removed and a little color enhancement.
That’s what is great about processing you image after shooting. It can be quite time-consuming, however. I got a few more decent shots, but I didn’t feel like doing any more processing before writing this post.
