Waiting

This was supposed to have been the weekend that Gabi had her puppies....but nature has chosen not to have that come to be. She is looking rotund, but according to people "in the know" still has a little bit of a tuck up suggesting that the puppies have not moved back.

Dogs, like humans, have a slight variability to the length of gestation -- that accompanied by the fact that sperm can live in the reproductive tract for a few days before ovulation occurs makes for some variability that is "normal."

Last week, she had many of the signs. A temperature drop which got me excited but did not persist. Discomfort, and inability to sleep at night (which translated into my inability to sleep at night. When I left work on Friday, I knew those little puppies were coming soon. Last night. I was relatively confident that they weren't coming, yet. Last night, she seemed to sleep better than she has in ages. I, however, can not sleep.

Yesterday morning, all of the girls went into a chewing fest (btw, Gabi has yet to do a nesting thing). It was kind of amusing -- the girls all lined up and chewing on something....aggressively.

But back to Gabi. I joke that she isn't having the puppies until she farms out the unpleasant aspects to Mati. Somehow, she got Mati to have the morning sickness. Proof to my theory is the the last picture which was taken last night. Note how she is lying on the couch with her legs UP in the air. Yup....she's trying to keep those puppies in until she makes Gabi appropriate arrangements. Sad thing: I don't think Mati is signing up for this one....

Today, I was out just taking fun shots of the dogs and I got this one. It is far from perfect, but somehow, catching old man Darby from behind appeals to me. I thought I was going to lost this dog when he was 5 years old. He went into liver failure, and on biopsy had extensive cirrhosis (scarring of the liver). The liver failure was an acute process on top of a bad chronic one. Interestingly, through some dietary and supplement adjustments, he is doing better now than he was last year....and he is now 9 years old.

Gabi continues to grow. She looks a little bigger every day. Right now, comparing her to friends whippets at the stage she isn't looking HUGE. I am hoping that she has 4 puppsters inside....but only time will tell.

Sometimes.....

You know, I always thought that I would grow up, get married, and have 2.5 kids. Somehow, in the midst of going to school, being shy, going to school, being shy...that just never happened. I am OK with that. I have replaced the concept of husband and children with a bunch of very lovely dogs who love me unconditionally despite my hellacious work schedule. Sometimes, you just have to adjust.

Sometimes, the lack of a man around the house does have it's disadvantages though. Although it would be nice to have a trailer to use as I travel the country with my dogs, I have always maintained that I don't want to have more vehicle (or attachments to my vehicle) than I can manage. This philosophy on life has served me well..

Now that I have the property 12 miles from my house, I do need a utility trailer to transport my 1000 lb 48 inch mower (read mower from hell....but that is another story). This weekend, Atwoods, a local home and ranch store, had a sale on utility trailers. Four different flavors were available : light weight and heavier, 5 x 8 foot and 6 x 10 foot. After much measuring, and the advice of a good ol' boy waiting in his truck, and I chose the "heavy" construction 5 x 8 foot trailer. Although the trailers were all chained, I had picked up the hitch and rolled the trailer. It seemed light and manageable, and the good ol' boys warning about flimsy tires had me very worried about the lighter weight trailer.

Buying the trailer has actually taken days and days. There are so many things that I didn't want to admit that I don't know/understand. Simple things like how to use a hitch. But I had done my surveillance, nonchalantly examining the trucks in the parking lot at Home Depot and Atwoods. I came prepared with the appropriate size ball on my hitch, I knew where the electrical connections were. Who said that this city girl can't figure stuff out?

I bought the trailer. Although I have never towed a thing in my life, I drove the thing home without cutting anyone off or mis-gauging a turn. My plan, until I get a storage shed, was to keep the trailer in the garage, next to Daisy, with the wagons and mower stored on the trailer. I cleared out the garage....everything seemed to be going well. But all plans like this have to have a flaw.

1. The driveway. It has an incline. It may be mild but it is there.....

2. The garage. The floor has no traction.

I was pulling the trailer up the driveway, when suddenly, I just didn't have enough weight to pull it up. I tried to stop, but the trailer was slowly dragging me towards my brand new pick up truck. In desperation, I manage to turn it so that it lost momentum. While trying to hold onto the trailer so that it won't start moving again, I reach for some bricks to put behind the wheels. Sigh. I went inside,to let my quaking muscles stop quaking and tried again. Sometimes, despite my determination, I just don't have strength for some activities. Cursing myself for being the weaker sex....I was stuck. What to do? Call someone? Possibly, but I don't want to do that every time I need to use the trailer.

Hmmmmm.

What does any woman do when there is really a problem?Change shoes!! That's the ticket. Sometimes, it is OK being the weaker sex.... (OK, I am using some literary license here...this is not the way I deal with most problems in my life).

Yup. When the tough don't way enough, just change shoes.

I was wearing old running shoes. No traction. I changed into my newer running shoes -- they have these columns that give nice cushioning when I run, but they also gave just enough traction for me to haul the trailer up the driveway and into the garage. It's all about having the right shoes....or is that the right equipment. Without a lot of sweat, some not-so feminine grunting, and acquisition of blisters across the palm of my right hand, I did get the trailer IN the garage. Everything fits!

Of course, right now I am having some pretty crushing chest pain. I figure my ribs have separated from my sternum in protest of the heavy labor (believe me, it IS musculo-skeletal pain).

I'm thinking that shed that will allow storage of the trailer and mower without an incline....that needs to happen, soon. The other option would be to back the trailer into the garage. But this is one girl that knows her limitations....and backing up trailers is not on my list of approved procedures.

Sometimes...it pays to have the right shoes. Really.



For anyone who is interested, Gabi probably is in whelp (or is having the worst false pregnancy, EVER. Pups are due in two weeks, but she has started writing in her blog, which she gave up last spring (something about me being too busy and hogging the computer).

Introducing

Some of the guys. The whippets are still banished from the land as there are cow-types roaming. However, I must admit that the cow-types are handsome in their own kind of way. Introducing Mr. 370. Is he not just a HUNK?

Then, there is poor Mr. 836. He's having a bad hair day.....and nose day....and, well, he just wasn't thinking he was going to do a photo-shoot when he got up this morning.

Despite the ruffled look, he is kind of cute, no?

Poor Peanut

Peanut was here for a purpose, which he achieved....maybe. Only time will tell. He was here to breed Gabi.

The whole breeding process scares me. I have never bred a litter of dogs. Gabi is accomplished on the race track so despite her lack of eye pigmentation, I think she deserves to be bred. I fear something happening to my Girl Goober. Because I believe that waiting too long likely makes pregnancies more difficult, I am breeding her this year (age 4). Now, the breeding of Peanut to the Girl Goober....well, I caught that one. This will be a litter of nuts.

Poor Peanut had to make it through this to do the deed:
The faces of Gabi can be quite interesting during "that time." M-hmmm. Quite interesting.

Peanut pined. He refused to eat for a few days and then would eat only hand fed food for 3 days. I was embarrassed to send him home. He was a shadow of his former self. I think he should bounce back quickly, though.
There are a lot of different reasons for choosing him. Although he hasn't been a runner, all of his littermates who are running have excelled. He is Mati's littermate, and I have lived with 3 from this litter for various periods of time and they all have incredibly similar, sweet personalities. Finally, there are some genetic reasons for going with him rather than his brother Stoli, who has been running.

So, if puppies happen they should be here in November....the nuts, the hurricanes (the first tie occurred on the weekend that Ike blew through our 'hood), the giving of thanks......so many themes. But are there puppies? At this point, if there are puppies, I will be happy. If there aren't puppies, I think I will be relieved (although a little disappointed).

I have never bred a litter before now. I am not liking this process. This is day 35 post breeding, but I still can't tell that Gabi is pregnant. According to this on-line calender that i found two weeks ago, I should have been able to palpate the embryos. Not. I just got a bundle of muscles. There are signs like nipple enlargement that mean little to me as my girls usually have this with their false pregnancies. This week, I am supposed to see waist thickening. I THINK we might have it, which is why I am finally posting. Maybe. But, I am not sure. So if you see a picture of Gabi in two weeks and she looks like she always does: false alarm!

Things that make you go, "hmmmmm....."

As I have written previously, I am trying to go "green." My attempts have been modest: I purchased a car that gets 35 mpg, I am recycling my paper, plastic & glass (which has decreased what I put curbside by about 75%). As I consider getting ridden of my allergen permeated wall to wall carpeting, I am probably going to go with carbonized bamboo. It looks nice, is renewable (believe me, I have seen how hard it can be to get rid of that bamboo), and has an excellent hardness rating.

Recently, I was reading an article in Science magazine about biofuels. I had heard, what I believe is likely an urban legend, that biofuels burn less efficiently and that they tear up gaskets in cars. This article suggests that they burn more efficiently. However the very disturbing information was that grain-based biofuels, under their current form of management, may be causing more environmental harm! Due to tilling crops, with the burden of soil erosion, the need for fertilizers, etc. this may be a source of increased global warming.

PEOPLE! We need, no HAVE to start thinking in this country. The incredibly detrimental impact of fossil fuels on our environment has been well documented. Why would we choose to up-ramp another fuel source, that will potentially increase the global warming effect? Oh, yeah. It's easy.....fail.

The article goes on to describe cellulosic ethanol. This is a type of biofuel produced from the structural material that compromises the "mass of plants" -- the corn stalk, grasses, woodchips can all be starting material. This has great promise since the starting materials are potentially in much greater supply than that used for grain based ethanol. For reasons that are beyond my brain this morning, although this material takes more processing to get to the sugar monomers that are needed to ferment the alcohol, cellulosic ethanol is predicted to reduce greenhouse emissions by 85% over reformulated gasoline. Also, it can be made from sources that be grown without annual tillage, thereby reducing soil erosion and helping preserve soil integrity (without the need for toxic fertilizers). Actually, it sounds like something that might be grown on the less fertile land that we have in my area.

As we go forward, we need to think about our choices. As I watch the current financial debacle, I see a panic response to something that was predicted over 9 years ago when the subprime mortgage business started (there was an interesting article in the NYT written in 9/99 predicting the bailout that is now underway; I must admit that they didn't envision the magnitude of the bailout). It seems that there is a panic patch being applied to something that many were writing about and suggesting for the last several YEARS. We can not afford to apply the same panic response to our environment. That being said, we also can not afford continue to stick our collective heads in the global sand and do nothing....which seems to be the approach that our government has perfected.

Just my 2 cents...probably shouldn't be writing in a sleep deprived state, though.

I tried to poison the dogs...

Obviously, not really. I would never poison my dogs. But I was a bad owner. Very bad.

I had taken the girls (Gabi and Mati) into work to take care of some last minute business before the weekend. I left them in the truck as temperatures were cool. When I came out, they had chewed into a container of fire ant bait and eaten bait..... my heart stopped. I drove home as fast as I could and gave them each a big dose of hydrogen peroxide. In dogs, that will induce emesis (unfortunately for us, I know this from other experiences with not-dog appropriate ingestions). Both girls threw up a moderate amount of the bait. I called my vet, who told me that they should be fine....not believing that, I called a friend who is a vet and works at veterinary school. Unfortunately, we were beyond the bewitching hour, when most had gone home, but she was able to access some articles that I had been unable to find. After a frantic series of calculations (I just can not do math when I am freaked out about my dogs), we determined that they dose that they had received, assuming that they hadn't thrown up was quite small and would not hurt them in a one time exposure.

Still....it had my heart going. I think the ant bait is made with corn meal as a carrier, and dogs love all things corn (at least mine do). I try to keep my home and yard safe....it's always that time when one just happens to let their guard down (or forget about that 3rd container of bait).