Catching Up

 Hello!

I'm back, after a very long and unplanned hiatus. I just didn't have the heart to keep going after Pete passed away though I appreciate the condolences that were left in the comments. And then, when I had new inspiration to blog again (in the form of a new puppy!), I didn't have the energy. Because puppies, man.

Her name is Dixie. She's a German shepherd. She's two years old now, but still full of non-stop energy, although she's begun to calm down a bit. I'm very sorry you missed out on her puppy years, but training her and keeping up with her didn't leave a lot of capacity for non-essentials.

But here she is:

We got her in March of 2021, and if you think going from a senior dog to a puppy was a challenge, going from a Chihuahua to a German shepherd was complete culture shock. Like going from a Mini Cooper to a Ford F-150. We spent the first couple of months with her sleep deprived, utterly exhausted and dazed, wondering what on earth we'd gotten ourselves into. I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't discovered Robert Cabral. He has a free YouTube channel, which is how we discovered him. But we went ahead and sprung for his monthly membership site for full access to all his training videos, online community and weekly AMA sessions, and it was worth every penny. This is not a sponsored link -- just a very grateful and heartfelt endorsement. He helped us survive her puppyhood.

Needless to say, we learned a LOT, much of which I'll share in future posts.

2021 was a pretty big year for us in terms of animal acquisitions. In early September of that year we got ourselves 15 baby chicks -- one of which, sadly, only survived a couple of days. But the remaining 14 have since grown into 13 very productive hens and one rather obnoxious rooster. We brooded them in our bathtub for the first two weeks, and then moved them into a large cardboard bin in our warehouse after they outgrew the tub. All the while, we were racing the clock to build a coop from scratch out of scrap materials we had around the property. We finished in the nick of time, just as they were getting big enough to fly out of the bin.

Sadly, it wasn't all gain. We had some loss, too. Last summer, our kitty, Boudicca, passed away. She was a stray we took in way back in 2009, so we don't know how old she was, but we'd had her for 12 years. I wish I could say she passed peacefully of old age, but that wasn't the case. She had been coughing for a while, which she'd done before from swollen tonsils due to allergies, so we assumed it was that. When her appetite started to go as well, we took her for a check-up and found that her tonsils were normal. Nevertheless, they gave her a cortisone shot and told us to keep an eye on her and bring her back for tests if she didn't improve.

And then she did improve! That's what's so heartbreaking. The next day, she was getting stronger and her appetite was improving and it looked like she was going to recover and be fine. But then the next morning, she was vomiting violently and her back legs were no longer working. She vomited up a pine chip that we had apparently tracked in from the chicken coop, which she ate without us knowing. It turns out that pine sap is incredibly toxic to cats, and she was displaying all the symptoms of pine poisoning.

Of course, this happened on a Sunday. Our vet was closed and there are no emergency vets anywhere near where we live, and all the info I could find online was pretty much useless. All we could do was stay with her and keep her as comfortable as we could until she passed away in my arms.

Needless to say, it was completely heart wrenching. I think the worst part was, at least in terms of trying to find something that would help, all my searches for ways to help your pet pass away only turned up article after article written by moralizing vets who insisted that vet-administered euthanasia was the only humane way to help a dying cat. Okay, fine, Dr. Karen, but what about when you live in the middle of nowhere, your cat is dying painfully and unexpectedly and there's not a vet around for a hundred miles who can perform euthanasia? Then what are you supposed to do? Those articles were nothing but infuriating, and they added insult to injury.

At any rate, we were heartbroken to lose her, especially in such a manner. She was an excellent cat.

And thus ends our trip down pet memory lane. Currently, our little family is made up of just the two of us, Dixie, our two box turtles and the chickens. We have no plans to get another cat, but we'll gladly take one in if the Lord sends one our way -- all the best cats I've had were ones that just showed up in my life. Every now and then, we talk about getting another puppy to help keep Dixie entertained, but we're about to go through a major living transition, so that will likely be a while yet.

Now that we're all caught up, I'll be posting here with more pet-centric content along the useful/helpful info vein. And sometime soon I'll try to get my husband's help to shoot a video for all the folks who couldn't understand my DIY dog sling pictorial.

I'm glad to be back, and ready to get back to it!