And more firedrills

SUMMARY: Continuing the timeline.

I'm wiped out, crushed, bruised, stabbed, thoroughly broken-hearted, and struggling to even breathe. Still in shock and grieving 20 ways. I can barely believe any of this.

I've gone from losing my wonderful Tika a month ago, to the diagnosis of stage 4 cancer 3 weeks ago in my Dad (for whom I've attended some oncology appts), to finding that I'm losing my wonderful Boost to cancer.

A week one wouldn't want:

I went from Friday
--Boost has some things going on that are odd but doc can't find a thing wrong with her so let's do some tests--
to Saturday and Sunday
--Boost eating slower and slower and acting slower and slower--
to Monday
--Boost's liver, kidney, pancreas, and blood numbers are bad--
to Tuesday
--Boost definitely has liver disease that can be eased somewhat depending on the cause but it's not good, oh and the chest X-ray shows some things that could be bad or maybe not--
to Wednesday
--yes she has cancer in multiple organs but her blood clotting is too bad to take a biopsy so it's my choice that that's the end of it--


to Thursday.

First thing in the morning, a friend through agility who's a vet offered to look at Boost's info if I wanted. So, sure, of course I would (grasping at straws, indeed).  I called my vet to ask them to fax Boost's info to my vet friend. Late in the morning, i called her to confirm that she'd received the info. She thought that there's a chance that it could be lymphoma rather than the other bad thing that's been diagnosed (and everyone's guessing w/out a biopsy). And lymphoma--if Boost can tolerate the treatment--she says can be slowed way down with an excellent (yes excellent) quality of life for maybe 6-7 more months.  Which is a good percentage for a 10-yr-old life.

So I call the recommended oncology place. They can't get me in until Monday without a vet calling them.

So I call my vet friend, who calls them, who then calls me back, and I call them to confirm the appt that she set up for 9:00 tomorrow morning.

All of that takes me to about 1:00.  And I'm having periods where I'm having trouble breathing.  This is not asthma.  I tried to work but couldn't. Sat in the car and did some deep-breathing relaxation exercises, some mindful meditation (OHHHH that was hard to do) and finally slept for an hour.

Then, to wrap up the afternoon, a visit with Dad and his oncologist where they're going to up the chemo dose since it's being tolerated OK at a minimum dose.

I'm useless for any purpose. Play with Boost, who still drives to the ball but wants to stop and rest quickly and often.

I barely slept.  Mind whirling around my choice to go see the oncologist. I had said that I wasn't going to. And then gave in to my own despair, and I'm not sure that's the right choice. But I'll go. And this makes me clearer--if it requires too much medical commitment for Boost, we're not doing it. She's not going to spend a lot of time in vet's offices or hospitals. And I don't really think that I want to spend many thousands of dollars for that little return for her or me. This actually is helping me to clarify my feelings and thinking.

Friday.

This place's parking lot has a lovely, peaceful setting with benches and lawn. 

And, Chip wants to mention, many, many, many trees.

The specialty vet place has more very busy receptionists
 than my vet has employees in his entire practice.

A very nice other patient who was waiting for her cancerous cat said
she loves taking photos, too, and would I like her to take a photo of both of us?

Another vet visit? When will the inhumanity end?

Met with the oncologist, who reviewed the records and Boost's history and symptoms up to now. We talked for a while.

Basically, she came back with what I went over with my vet--Boost's clotting factor is too low to do a biopsy without the risk that Boost would bleed out and die right there. She added this-- that they'd have to do probably 2 platelet transfusions just to get to where they could do the biopsy.  She also confirmed my vet's feeling that anyway Boost's condition is pretty far advanced, so it's likely that the treatment wouldn't be effective at this point.

Because, not only everything else, but Boost's body is breaking down more all the time, as now she has some jaundice which she didn't on Wednesday when my vet checked, and now she has a heart murmur (likely result of low red blood count) which she hasn't had with both of my regular vets checking her Friday/Tuesday/Wednesday.

Oncologist wasn't enthused about doing transfusions or attempting treatment, and I was absolutely not even interested in doing that. We left with a prescription for prednisone. This is supposed to actually ease some of the problems with and symptoms with the liver and her appetite. For a while.

In other words, essentially she's in hospice care. Besides the prednisone, I have that prescription for tramadol (same as me) and famotadine (pepsid) and the antinausea drug. And that's it. Might or might not take her in again if some specific thing seems to go awry that might be something they could ease or fix, but I'm leaning towards not.

Today, I cannot work or do much of anything. I'm going to try to sleep and do more relaxing and meditation.

MAGIC.

Over the last week, smooth floors have suddenly lost their evilness.  Apparently feeling ill leaves one with no energy to concern oneself with demon-spawned floor coverings, since obviously they can no longer hurt you more than you're already hurting. Dammit demons of all kinds.

Lobby--evil floor? Not. But Boost would like to mention that there is
a perfectly serviceable exit door that seems to be available for immediate use.

Examination room--evil floor? Not. But Boost would like me to notice that there is a perfectly serviceable exit door that we don't seem to be currently using at its highest utility value.

Scared Border Collie Bingo

SUMMARY: A treat from Team Small Dog

I laughed out loud at this Border Collie Bingo, now that Team Small Dog includes an actual border collie. I've had so many discussions with people about their over-sensitive BCs! I guess this is the dark side to their amazing ability to notice and respond to the slightest change in a sheep's path or an agility human's body language. So they respond to the slightest change in anything, or the slightest unfamiliar thing.

And oh Boost had SO many things that she had to bark at in a scared way when she was younger. The rock in the yard that I moved earlier, that I moved earlier and she watched me move it. The chair in the yard that I moved earlier while she was there. The table in the yard that I moved earlier while she was there. The big black garbage bag of leaves whose edges were blowing in the wind. A branch blowing in the wind. Plastic bag in a shrub. Plastic owl on the shed! Yes! Anything driving by and hitting a pothole. Pet stores. Dead things in vendor stalls (e.g., "rawhide" is a thinly disguised dead thing). Remote control car in the street. Footballs not being caught and hitting the ground. The cartoon drawing of a dog above a door!

And as you likely know, she saved up until she was 3 or 4 to become scared of Evil Floors.

Team Small Dog sez -- "Play along with me. Border collie bingo! Click-n-print version over here!"

Evil Floors Part 27 Or Thereabouts

SUMMARY: Finally got a little video of Boost freaking out about a surface.

This is a new bridge over a culvert at Martial Cottle Park. Ten minutes later, she walked back over it like it was nothing.

Silly but cute girly.

Here's the bridge in question:

Nature vs Nurture plus Evil Floors

SUMMARY: Who's her daddy?

If you haven't already read this short article about nature vs. nurture in dogs (USDAA posted it in its news feed), you should. It's easily read and has nice diagrams. It clearly describes how both nature and nurture affect a dog's behavior, but that even the best nurturing can't overcome genetic flaws in behavior (and, vice versa, the worst nurturing can't completely overcome genetic strengths).

It's All in How They're Raised (not)

Here's my response:

Thanks for this article; just read in in the USDAA news. I particularly liked it because it followed a discussion with a friend about human children. I commented that she'd done a great job raising her kids, and she said that, no, she was just lucky. I said that I believed it's a combination of nature and nurture, and she said it's almost all nature, because she's seen good kids in bad situations and vice versa. Your article captures the answer to our discussion quite nicely. Thanks.

My border collie (Boost) abruptly developed a fear of unfamiliar flooring (especially if it was smooth, although it could be the exact flooring that I have in my house, just in a different building) when she was maybe 3 or 4. She'd always been concerned about changes to her environment, but this stunned me, because it also included floors in houses in which we had previously spent many days during her life or even weekends visiting. This manifested with the toes splayed out, the legs splayed out, hunkering down for a low center of gravity, and preferably hugging the walls and furniture as if somehow that made the floors safer. Fast forward to when she's 8 years old--still does it, although not quite as much and she can get used to the floors given time and patience. Talking to her breeder one day about border collies in general and reactivity, and I mentioned the floors thing. He said, oh, yes, her father did that his whole life, on *all* smooth floors, even in his own house--hugging the walls, toes spread out. Funny thing is that in looks and attitude, she's so much like her mother (whom floors never bothered).

Previous posts about Evil Floors (some with photos):

• Evil Floors 
• Vicon weekend in Point Arena (scroll down to Evil Floor Syndrome)
• Evil Floors and Working Dogs
• Evil Devil Floors (the very beginning)

Evil Floors

SUMMARY: Genetics.

You know how uncarpeted floors suddenly became evil to Boost about 4 years ago? (The same kinds of floors at home remained OK, but anywhere else--even ones she was familiar with--suddenly became evil.)

Boost couldn't walk on them at all without complete panic, toenails scrabbling, all hunched up, legs akimbo and lowered towards the floor. If it were absolutely desperately necessary for her to get across an evil floor, she'd hug the wall and stay low and fast and then it was apparently almost OK, if she stayed right next to the wall, to get across the floor with more or less normal walkage.

Even unfamiliar surfaces that weren't really smooth but that *looked* smooth became impossible to walk normally on.

Sometimes she'd get stuck on a small carpet and couldn't get off.

Gradually, over a year or so, we discovered that, if she kept her rear feet on the carpet, she could move her front feet around on the evil floors with no problem. That was pretty funny.

Then she got to the point where, if her rear legs were stretched out and CLOSE to the carpet, her front legs were fine. That was pretty funny, too.

But then she advanced to where she'd stretch herself across an entire room like that--rear legs as if there were a carpet, but in fact none were in sight.

The relatives and guest dogs are even amused.

(And then she'd have to back up to get back to the carpet--no turning around and walking normally!)

That's about where we are these days. After a day or so being around an evil floor, she occasionally forgets that it's evil and walks normally, but no guarantee that that will last even the whole evening.

So, anyway.

Found out Friday night that her daddy, Coty, ALWAYS hated smooth floors and spent his entire life hugging the wall when in a room with evil floors, hurrying and staying low to quickly get back to safe footing.

INNNNNteresting.

Oh, realllly?? FASCinating!

If It's Not 115F, Is It Vicon? Yes!

SUMMARY: Vicon moves to Point Arena.

Even the familiar can change, and yet remain familiar.

Since 1985 or 1986 (the records are murky), since my sister became serious about the guy who's now my brother-in-law, I've been attending "Vicon" (for Visalia convention as a joke) in Visalia in August--a giant sleep-over party for family and friends for a 3-day weekend.

If you're not familiar with Visalia (as many aren't), it's a "small" community of merely 124,000 people that takes about 3 hours of mostly smooth freeway driving from my place to put you smack dab in the middle of California's Central Valley. The average high temperature for the month of August is 93.3F (34.1C) and overnight low average is 64.8F (18.2C). Believe me, it's been plenty much warmer on many years. The big appeal to counter the heat is that we've slept on the in-laws' huge back lawn in the shade of glorious old trees and plunged into the clear blue swimming pool as needed.

So, yep, for all those years we've learned the routine--how to get there, what to bring, where to set up in the yard, what to do, how to keep cool, which Hawaiian shirts to wear, where to buy more ice and drinks--everything to have a comfortable and familiar routine.

Oh, except one year it didn't happen; one year my sister was in the hospital producing my niece so it was an afternoon-only party locally; and one year we tried it in another sister's yard with a swimmming pool but it wasn't quite the same without being out of town and REALLY hot.

However, last year was Visalia's last year. The in-laws can't host it any more. A sad thought indeed, especially for the bro-in-law, so we weren't sure that it was going to continue in any form.

Luckily, we found another location: A 22-acre site with four cabins, a kitchen, a dining pavilion, and a living room, privacy, quiet--more expensive than the in-laws' yard, but still reasonable--in Point Arena.

If you're not familiar with Point Arena (as many aren't), it's a truly small community of 449 people (down 25 from the 2000 census) on the coast 3 hours north of San Francisco. Its temperatures--well, f'rinstance, the forecast high for August 11 (when we were there) for Visalia was 110; for Point Arena, 72.

From wondering whether we'd be too hot or have enough ice, we went to wondering whether we'd be too cold and have enough of anything we could possibly need--because this is the general store (groceries, hardware, and anything else you need) in Point Arena:

If you need to shop more, you can drive an hour north on the curvy Coast Highway to Fort Bragg. But if you really need to shop, or need anything substantial, it's probably an hour south along the snaking Coast Highway and another hour inland to Santa Rosa.

But look at the color of that sky! Plus-- zebra?!

We still had over 20 people (including assorted offspring); the weather proved coolish to warmish (Sunday was definitely shirt-sleeve weather at the site way up on the ridge, but fleece weather down on the beaches); the accommodations were almost perfect (this is the first time it's been rented out and there were some, er, issues with the self-contained water, power, and sewer Sunday morning, but nothing that we couldn't work around); and we still managed to have a great time.

The drive was a bear Friday afternoon; awful traffic, plus 2 hours of twisty windy roads on the cliffs of the coast. Beautiful if you're feeling leisurely but not if you want to get to where you're going and relax. 5 hours there; 4 hours back on Sunday evening. But--as I said, still managed to have a great time, but very tired!

I've attended 27 or 28 Vicons now, and this sign has come with me probably 20 of those times:

(Plus someone hung a Hawaiian shirt on the fence as well--with the familiar sign and familiar shirt, ya couldn't hardly miss the entrance.)

The owner had a fire going before we got there and said, "keep it burning all weekend; the smoke keeps the mosquitoes down."  From the kitchen porch, looking up at the four cabins (and Mutt Mvr poised to unload.)

The huge difference for me was that, for the first time in those 27 years, the Merle Girls got to come along. What an experience for all concerned!  Some of the small children couldn't get enough of throwing the frisbee or the ball for Boost, who was sometimes a little discombobulated at the distinctive styles of throwing and kicking utilized by two-to-eight-year-olds, but somehow survived the trauma. (From the cabins looking down at the bar pavilion, the huge kitchen (it extends to the back), the dining pavilion, and a storage shed).

I got one of the cabins--apparently the Nautical Room--because I thought that would be easier for corralling the beasts while I slept than in a tent (because at Vicon, activities seem to go on almost around the clock).

Half the crew slept in tents.  My sister and her spouse know how to do it in style.

 The Merle Girls loved being off-leash all the time--Tika, in particular, identified the center of food activity right away and could be found there at any time of day, giving cooking tips ("add rice, drop one cup on floor..."). She checked in with me periodically, but mostly wanted to be where the food was...

Or, if no food, where the snugglies were--

Boost started out as the complete Mommy's Dog, staying close to me at all times, but as the weekend went by, gradually daring to take her eyes off me from time to time and even to snuggle up to a couple of friendly looking strangers once or twice.

I knew that amazing progress in independence had been made by Sunday because, when I headed off to the restroom, she just looked at me, then continued playing frisbee with the child du jour.

She also was intrigued by the smells in the kitchen, and although it took her a while to get over the Evil Floor Syndrome--going over a period of less than 48 hours from not going in, to scrabbling frantically in,  to racing hurriedly across it, to walking allll the way in in slowly and backing allll the way out quickly, to just wandering around and cleaning up spills--but although the bath/shower building had the identical floor, she never got over the scrabbling frantically stage there. She did, however, want to follow me into the bathroom and, after a couple of suggestions the first time, just automatically would hit the floor in a Down as soon as we got to the place where I sat down. Quick learner in  some ways, not in others. Dogs. Weird.

But the Merle Girls were on their feet the entire time from when we arrived Friday night around 7 until bed around 10:30, then from when I got up at 8 the next morning until bedtime and on Sunday until we left around 1:30-- oh, at least, Boost was. By Saturday afternoon, Tika was up for lying down to guard the food supplies rather than maintaining an active patrol.

And by Sunday morning, poor dog could barely stand up and spent a lot of time sleeping. In the kitchen doorway, of course.

Saturday evening, as we sat around the conflagration neé campfire, when I made them go into their x-pen next to me, they both protested that they were FINE and wanted to come OUT and didn't NEED a nap, MOOOOooommm! Three minutes later--

Still, it was a very unusual situation for them--I don't know whether they've ever been off leash in an unstructured outdoors situation (offleash on hikes, but that's not unstructured), let alone with complete strangers around. They both did very well. I knew Tika would--she likes people and small children and exploring--but although Boost has been good around the very few small children and occasional stranger that she's encountered briefly, I wasn't  sure how she'd act. Her confidence grew amazingly, I think, although sometimes the unfamiliarity of it all was a little too much: The dog who *hates* getting into my lap would just jump up there and need a hug for a minute.

There were little trails here and there, so we could go on mini-hikes around the 22 acres, by ourselves or with others. Dogs liked that.

Boost was tired enough to lie down sometimes on her own, but basically the energy reserves never drained. Bored Sunday morning, found a stick to chew up, which the smallest offspring-type found interesting:

Oh--right--and there were a bunch of other people there, too.

Hmm, didn't realize until just now that red/hot pink was apparently the official Vicon-in-Mendocino-County color! Happy 31st anniversary, Vicon!

(I'll post the rest of the photos, including those w/out dogs, later and add a link here.)

Six for the Price Of--

SUMMARY: The Careful Shopper's Diary, plus Who Hates Pet Stores?

So, it's not only people-related stuff that can be subject to goofy pricing. At Pet Club, you can buy one individually wrapped Savory Prime 4.5" pressed rawhide bone for 69 cents:

ORRRRRR you can buy the 6-pack for a mere $4.49.  Wouldn't you think it's cheaper to package 6 at a time rather than 6 individually? Guess not. Am I paying extra for the convenience?

To be fair, there are places where it's an extreme in the other direction. For example, I can buy a single 12" Cadet Bully Stick for--$4.99?!? Holy steerpizzle! My dogs sometimes get 2 or 3 or 4 of these a week! EACH. That price would kill me!

Fortunately, you can buy a one-pound bag (usually 9 to 12 sticks) for $19.99. (And I cut the bigger ones in half.)

Boost likes these at home, but she hates pet stores. HATES them. Tail down, ears down, miserable terrified little Border Collie. I keep trying to take her into these places briefly so she can see the wonders of all the food and toys, but she HATES IT MOM LET'S GO RIGHT NOW. On the way out a couple of months ago, she suddenly hunkered down,  went into growling mode while I tried to figure out what she was looking at, then into full-scale alarm barking. I realized she was looking UP.  A cute little flop-eared cartoon dog on a sign, fer pet's sake!

Tika, like all my other dogs before her, loves pet stores and would spend all day there finding little scraps of food and chew toys and bones in open bins that someone left there JUST FOR HER. However, since no pet store is immediately at hand--same bed, 12 hours later--she rests up for the coming weekend.

Evil Floors and Working Dogs

SUMMARY: Boost copes and National Geo show.

Last night, in the pouring rain, the Merle Girls and I drove an hour up to Alameda to watch the National Geographic Video And Man Created Dog with friends.

The Other Ellen and her wife live in an interesting one-story Victorian ("the second story burned, so they just knocked off the charred remains and added a roof to what was left"). This means, naturally, that the floors are all naked wood.

Boost stepped through the door and froze: Evil Floor Hell! She managed to somehow leap from the entry all the way onto the back of their couch, scrabbled her way to the seat, and tried tried tried to figure out how to leap from there to where I was standing without ever actually touching the Evil Floor.

She summoned the courage to leave the couch and started the first defensive method for traversing Evil Floors, which is half crouched, toes splayed, and hugging the walls and furniture as closely as she can (because apparently they make it safer somehow, like maybe if the Evil Floor begins to consume her, she can just climb up the wall).

Then The Other Ellen got out some string cheese and started feeding Boost every time she was brave enough to come into the middle of the floor. Boost started with the second defensive maneuver, which is to keep her back feet stretched out wayyy behind her to remain in contact with--uh--somewhere behind her (no longer has an edge of a carpet to hang onto, for example--it's just something that she apparently picked up from hanging onto the edges of carpets in past experiences with Evil Floors and determined that it must be a good safety device). She'd take the cheese and quickly back up to the wall again.

But within a few minutes, she had completely relaxed and was walking around the house like a normal dog. Huh. Maybe I'll have to take string cheese with me wherever we go in case there are Evil Floors.

She even found a tennis ball and started dropping it incessantly for me to throw. One thing about old houses is that sometimes the floors tilt, and this appeared to be slightly the case here, so I got some reprieve in that every time Boost dropped the ball, it rolled away from her into the room, so she had to go get it and bring it back. When I continued refusing to throw it, she went into her usual PAY ATTENTION TO ME mode by noisily dumping the entire box of tennis balls. (In other words, this was all completely normal.)

I discovered that i could just hold the tennis ball in my open palm and she'd stand there staring at it for several minutes, and that was a good distraction for a while.

We had a tasty dinner and snacks and dessert and watched the video. It mixed perhaps unintentionally amusing moments with intriguing dog facts. (This segment [sorry--have to wait through a 30-second ad first], talking about flock guardian dogs, had us almost in hysterics with the bad guy at the beginning, but then goes into modern flock guardians and it's pretty interesting, especially if you didn't already know how they work.)

It's a 90-minute show and worth a watch if you haven't seen it. Lots of Border Collies in it, and none, that I could see, having problems with Evil Floors. Maybe Boost just needs a real, outdoors, floor-free job involving sheep. Or maybe I could just hold one in the palm of my hand for several hours. Whatever works.

Dogolio

SUMMARY: Socks, shoes, tunnel kludge, digging, ribbons, movies, calories, scary footing.

• Socks: The best-dressed agility handler always wears socks that matches her shirt. (I made that part up to justify my lifestyle.) The best-dressed agility handler wants to know why stores have decided that you must buy *their* selection of colors in packages of 3, 4, or 5 pairs at a time? If I want a green pair, I also have to buy navy and light blue? What's the deal here? And where can I buy one-up solid color women's socks? (I've tried half a dozen or more stores.)
• Shoes: Agility has also transformed my life in subtle ways. It always used to be tennis shoes and flip-flops. Now I wear these casual slip-on shoes, whose existence and utility I originally became aware of because many agility people wear them when they're around agility areas but not doing actual agility. I love 'em! Comfortable, convenient. I wear them to the bone. Here are the pairs I just tossed; bought two more exactly the same, and they follow many others exactly the same.
  
  
• Better than duct tape in some situations: Remember a month or so ago when my tunnel started to unravel--er, hmm, was that during the winter sometime? Maybe the end of last year? Holy rollover, batdog, it was a full frigging YEAR ago! Time flies. Anyway, this weekend I suddenly thought of a solution, raced off to the hardware store, and voila!
  
  
• Saw Robin Hood this weekend. "None shall pass!"?!? Give. Me. A. BREAK! Is this a medieval action/adventure film or is it a Monty Python pastiche? But neato-cool-out for the scene in which Russell Crowe snuggles with the Irish Wolfhound.
• Tika isn't usually a digging dog. Now, at 9, she's apparently become a dog with a mission. She has started working furiously digging out the soil from behind the compost bins. Doesn't appear to be any rodent-like thing, not that kind of intensity, but more like she just wants to make the biggest hole in the universe. When it started to show from around the left side of the square bin, I walked over and looked at it and asked what she was doing. She came out from behind, walked around the bin, looked at it critically, grabbed two branches on the overhanging shrub , one after the other, twisted them until they came off, threw them to the ground, went back around behind the bin, and continued digging. (Note pile of discarded diggings to the right of the square bin.)
  
  
  
  
• OK, you bag of peppermint salt water taffy, let that be a lesson to you! You too, you mint swirl fudge from Miles Kimball made with fresh cream and butter! Tempt me and you get EATEN!
• Friday, walked with  a friend around a nicely landscaped percolation pond on Water District property. There was a little pier-like thing going out of the water, so there we went. You could see water between a couple of the boards. Boost went into her Evil Scary Footing mode, even though the boards weren't at all slippery or loose. Not sure whether it was simply because it was a wood floor or because it was surrounded by water a couple of feet below. (Note stretched-out body, bent elbows, rear feet splayed to the sides and straight out behind her, tail down. Bonzo dog)
  
  
  
• Judging by Tika's collection of ribbons so far this year (11 days of trialing), she's having a spectacular opening season.
  
  
  
  
• Judging by Boost's collection of ribbons so far, hmm, well, maybe not so much.