Most places have vet discounts if you ask. Autozone, ace hardware, lowes, home depot, almost every hotel.

Stranded on 160 in la veta pass right now. Need to be in denver and parked by 230 and im worried. 18 wheeler went off a mountain. I like how it says use detour but there are only 3 ways out of the valley 1 is the wrong direction, one is closed for construction and then the accident.

Just saw this never sent.... i HATE denver

It's gonna get hot again today!  We've been hitting 105 Mon-Wed and at 10:30 today we're already at 102 so it's gonna get blazing by 3:00 which is our normal hot spot for the day.  Wunderground is saying 109 and they're normally low by a few degrees but I'm not so sure today.

Just went out to fill the doggie pool, I've had birds looking for water (also had cats looking for birds - not sure how this is gonna work out)

It'd take another $1600 worth of batteries to be able to run an A/C or swamp cooler and I'm not sure I can afford that or that an A/C would work (I really dislike swamp coolers for the humidity they put into the air)

Rambling - I'll go take a nap here shortly - to be correct, it's called a siesta ...

ETA after siesta: I think about an A/C every time it gets warm but the few times I'd use it are really few and far between. I like having my windows and doors open - but when it's this hot, I really, really have to reconsider. Then next week we'll be back to our normal, comfortable 90's ...

<Gross out alert>  One of Sasha's 'little' idiosynchocies is that she'll eat any handkerchief she can get her teeth into.  I haven't been overly concerned about a blockage since they're all either linen or cotton but ... Wednesday I saw her chewing on something in her crate - a handkerchief, of course - so we played "trade" (a dog biscuit for a piece of a handkerchief.)  After she's chewed on one for a while, it's hard to say how much is really left but I thought I had a goodly piece of this one, until she barfed up a good sized chunk yesterday morning.  So today we go out for a walk and she takes a dump and my thoughts were "that looks really odd ..."  of course it was more of said handkerchief.  If wasn't fairly certain she'd only gotten one, I'd swear there were at least two in total.

---

Ah, cooler today, we just broke 100 - that's a nice reprieve from 107+  I don't mind the 90's, in fact I'll leave windows and doors open to catch the breeze but when it get much over 100 all the breeze is is a blast of hot air - like opening an oven door!

---

The Galliprant seems to be helping a lot with the pain with few, if any, side effects.  Taking her out for any kind of walk is getting to be difficult 'cause she'll trip over 'most anything (the leash, her feet, a cat) and it's taking her longer to get her back legs under her again.  We went out last night and she missed her footing (I'm thinking she doesn't see as well as she did) and went down.  It was probably only 30-45 seconds before she got back up but it's getting to be longer.  At least she can support herself when she takes a dump, she display pain when I try to hold her or lift her so I'm not sure she'd let me support her.....

If she weren't such a PITA, I'd probably put her down now.  But she'll come over to tell me it's supper time and then stand there and look at me till I get it (and it's that time and yes, she's waiting!)  She noses me 'most every morning; I don't know if that's "Daddy it's time for breakfast!" or maybe she's just checking on me ... who knows

If she isn't in pain (much) when doing basic duties and is only weak then I would just keep on keeping on. They can bumble around a while. Before I got kenzi's diabetes lined out she was super weak in the rear and would hesitate with stairs and getting on the bed or in truck. It was frustrating for her and sad for me but overall she wasn't a detriment to herself or in pain, just weak and wobbly. Kenzi has hip pains and doesn't like her hips messed with. I think she would benefit from a massage but she indicates discomfort so I don't push her. Can't decide if a hip massage hurts so good or just hurts her.

Sasha and pain, there are times it's obvious she's hurting - sometimes at bedtime she tries to curl to lay down and whines (this is a different whine than "Daddy, I want ...")

I've run onto this scenario a couple of times - she'll trip over a bowl (food bowl / water bowl) and end up with a front elbow in the bowl and can't get it out.  She can't put enough pressure on the out-of-bowl leg without ending up putting pressure on the other leg so she ends up whining and I can imagine, easily, that that hurts.  I try to remember to take her food bowl out of her crate ... but sometimes I forget ... what doesn't help is that when I move her leg to get it and the bowl apart it hurts, pressure on body parts that shouldn't be under pressure.

Well, putting water in the pool didn't work right, it held water for two nights and then drained itself overnight the third night. I don't see a hole to repair but the water had to go somewhere (and there's enough water on the ground around it that I know I didn't get visited by a bunch of thirsty gremlins. One of the seams on the side panels has started to split at the top so it was a good effort but little used. Probably not worth replacing for the dogs ...

I'm thinking I lost a cat last night, I was setting here watching a movie when I heard what sounded like a pretty vicious cat fight.  Avalanche beat me to the door since I stopped to pick up a "flashlight"  absolutely nothing out there when I looked.

There's enough scrub around back that even a "sneaky" predator normally gets heard before it gets close.  I'm thinking this was probably an owl.  Nothing set off my motion sensor light - the cats do that pretty regularly - so I'm not sure.  During the day the males tend to wander at random (and I can't tell them apart).  I've seen my female and at least one of my males ...???

---

ETA: All day long I've seen my female (she's smaller and more golden) and one of the males ... figured I was right and had lost a cat. Not so ... looked around and saw three cats!! (( YEAH!! )) Didn't see any damage to any of them so now I'm really wondering what I heard last night - I know what I heard was a cat (cats?) that was really unhappy. Possibly I had a visitor last night that got sent off since they didn't belong. (( Both males are "orange" with tiger strips (an orange tabby?) which makes them almost impossible to tell apart. Actually, all three are orange tabbies ... duh! ))

I felt sorry for Sasha last evening. She'd gotten herself "trapped" across her crate (hind end against the bars to the left and front end to the right.) She was whining, which is what first got my attention, so I tried to move her front end closer to the door - which would let her stand up. (( Not touching the "other end" I already know that that's apt to hurt. )) Well, the silly girl snapped at me ... not a serious "I'm gonna bite you!" but a "Don't do that!" snap. (an air snap really since she didn't even come close)

Well, shoot, I wasn't sure whether she was in pain or jut uncomfortable but I hate listening to any whiny child (two or four legged) If I can't move her, let's see if I can get her to move herself, thinks I. Picked up the side of the crate by her behind (maybe an inch?) and dropped it. She moved a little so I figured this would work without hurting her, too much, or me! Did that twice more and she moved enough to stand up ... and out of the crate and gave me such a look ... "kinda slow there guy, what took you so long??"

Silly dog!!

---

I now know what's outside at night. I was standing in the back doorway enjoying my warmed over coffee and the scenery when two bobcats run past in the edge of the brush (one went left, one went right at the same time so I know there were two.) Wonder if I have a breeding pair out there???

Poor Sasha. At least she can make her...self known. Even if not exactly specific wants/needs.

So. Hosting a bobcat family to be, are you?

When my first cat went through her first and only heat she managed to call in a bobcat. Her thing to do was to sit in the window and yowl. The dogs were restless one evening and I went out and the bobcat was doing its growly bark sound and the huffing that they can make. It skirted around from the back of the yard to the side of the house Khali was on. Had to go close Khali's window. Didn't need any of that ruckus going on. Got the dogs all worked up. Hubby had never heard a bobcat before so was an education for him. We have a pair on the south farm I see when I'm out hunting sometimes. Our current house has foxes and a large coyote but haven't seen any signs of a bobcat, though a bear sighting not too far away.

First cool morning out of the past several.  Too many days that were well over 100 (109 was the top temp and they can stop NOW!)

Sasha's holding up - as are the other two - but I watch them closely.  They all object to any attempts at lowering their temps.  Avalanche, in particular, will RUN away if I bring out the hose - even with it set to mist he wants NOTHING to do with it.  Sky and Sasha tolerate a light misting but nothing beyond.  I put a damp towel in Sasha's crate so she laid down in front of it.  Seems my huskies have indeed become 'desert dogs' they sleep when it's hot (for that matter, when it's above 100, I'm apt to be sleeping as well) and don't want out unless it's cooler than 90.

---

It looks like my bobcats have decided to head on to other places - their moving around at night really upset all our sleeping.

---

Silly pups! Just turned around and Sky's on the floor behind me; when she's there Avalanche is normally on the floor in the middle of the room - oops, not so! He's in Sky's crate! For a dog who won't willingly go in a crate, he seems to have decided that it's his when he wants it. (( What's mine is mine; what's yours is mine too!! ))
Sasha, of course, is crashed in her crate - ate breakfast but didn't want to go out so I'll have to watch her to tell me she wants out.

I have swamp vests for my dogs when we go west next month. They seem to work decent for them. Though I need to come up with a very large zip bag for water to dunk the vests in sometime in the next month. In the past we were hiking places that had water sources more handy than arizona and i would just dunk the vests at the creek. Not going to have that luxury on this trip.

While it sounds interesting - the swamp vests - I think I'll pass.  Anytime I've tried *anything* with water my dogs look at me like "Say what? What it is this??"  

I have four fans, one I keep on me and one that I've kept on Sasha - she keeps her belly pointed at it so I presume it's doing her some good.
Avalanche is behind me so he gets the draft going to the fan that cools me and poor Sky doesn't like the wind (or the water!) at all.

Only 97 so far today - but we've got another three hours before it stops heating up so we'll probably make our 105 today. Stupid humidity is up to about 30% which is high for us ... feels muggy!!!

Poor Sasha,  we've gone from several days where the temp was around 100 to a day where it might have broke 80.  Had a norther come through, kinda late in the year but it was 59 when I got up this morning ... no wonder I was cold!!

Zack, my vets son (who is also a vet) said that the pressure associated with fronts might cause her pain ... and it does.  She's eight been sleeping or wandering around whining all day long - and that's with he pain meds.

For some reason, maybe associated with the rain clouds and thunder, Avalanche has been right under foot (well, right under my chair).

Overnight forecast is for a low of 74 ... wonder what it means that we're at 72 now ....

Since I seems to be just me rambling here ... I went into Alpine today to the Farmers Market where a lovely (married, damnit) lady had some trees for sale.  I picked up a Red Maple (actually a Japanese Maple) and two Monterrey Oaks.  The oaks are native to Mexico with a group over in Uvalde county so they should grow here ... if I can keep them alive till it's cool enough to transplant them.

I figger I'll plant the two oaks out in the center of my circular drive ... maybe, with a lot of luck, they'll eventually shade the trailer from the morning sun.  The maple I'm putting out back ... with luck, it'll shade the back wall from the afternoon sun. I have the water catchment that shades it during most of the day but sunrise can get warm and sunset can get downright vicious!

Both of these types of trees are supposed to be fast growing - maybe, again if I'm lucky, I'll be around to see them get a little height to them.

Had to tell the woman who sold them to me that when I heard Red Maple the only thing that came to my mind was the sugar maples we have up north ... don't think those would grow at all down here.

I have a mix of soft maples and a couple hard maples on my property, then a dotting of box elders (invasive maple). I've been eying the mr maple website for japanese maples since we moved. Haven't decided where to go with one. Where I was intending to go with one of the smaller ones became home to an unexpected hydrangea. We have a large ash tree in the backyard that has the borers in it and it's on it's way out because of them. Hubby wants to replace it with a Sycamore but too close to septic system. Already having issues with the cottonwood sprouts. Thinking Ginkgo. Nice shape. Lots of leaves easy to get for my compost. Less water hungry than a Sycamore.

I'm actually hoping to gain two things from the oaks. Since they tend to exclude other plants immediately around the (that's a reaction to the tannin??) I'm hoping that they'll suppress some of the native scrub. Obviously I'm hoping eventually for some shade.

The maple is heading for the spot in back where I had intended to put the fig tree since the sun seems to be too brutal for the fig - looks like it may spend its life in a pot. Stupid fig, after it tried to go belly up on me when I moved it from the house to the patio it eventually leafed out and NOW, completely out of cycle it's putting on some fruit - let's see if I can get anything edible????

All I have to do is keep them alive for a few months so I can transplant them ...

One of my LSU Champagne figs is putting on it's second batch. it tried to do a breba crop earlier but aborted those since I chose to up pot them. I'm going to make them stick out their current pots until next spring this time so shouldn't need to disturb it this attempt. My Celeste fig struggled with the cold spring so no crop out of it this year but at least it's still alive. That -11 couple nights we had could have been its end fairly easily. I'm hoping next year to get figs. These varieties I'm expecting should be ready to pick around September. They are in greenhouse so if we have early frost it should be fine at least.

I've not noticed any of our oaks keeping back brush but boy Walnuts sure can. The juglone in their roots is a big turn off to many things. Not much for shade trees though.

Supposedly this is a Texas Black fig (no such animal) and is supposed to put on one crop early and then another crop late summer/early fall. This might be a mission fig or brown turkey (most common traded fig out here) maybe if it'd develop and fruit I might have a better idea. (( Can I even find the tag that came with it?? Hmmm,,,, ))

Because we're so very, very dry out here we typically don't have any pests. The cockroach gave up - unless someone is a really bad housekeeper and the area under the house remains wet (fat chance!) I only know of one place that's been infested and thankfully they moved (they also live something like 10 miles away.) I've occasionally seen a roach crawl out of a grocery bag - very rare! - but actually don't worry about them because "they gonna die!" We do have some carpenter ants (that everyone insists are termites) that cause problems - I'm thinking I have an infestation in the back bedroom and really don't want to have to take it apart.

BUT Everyone I've talked to has mentioned that the flies this year have been driving them nuts. First brood this year were the small biting flies - I hate those things, they're just too blasted fast to swat. Now we've been invaded by an infestation of common house flies. I have fly strips hanging in the kitchen and living room (yeh, the fly strips we used to use in the barns up north.) I thought they had to have some place to lay eggs, breed maggots and then flies - and I thought that place had to be at least moist - but I can't find any breeding spots around.

Flies have been rough here off and on. Odd thing this year are my wood bees are down. Not sure why. They haven't completely dismantled my window boxes yet. and there are some but not anything like we had last year where they would mob you on the way to the front door. Between them and the hummingbirds it was a bit dangerous on the front of the house.

Well, if they keep this up for very long it's gonna be a cheap month for dog food.  Don't know what's up but Sky, who's a picky eater and often doesn't eat all of her food - left everything last night; Avalanche who seldom misses a meal also left all of his; Sasha who gets a different food decided she wasn't hungry either.  She's been an on-again off-again eater for a while now - but when she didn't object when Sky went in and finished off her bowl - well I have to wonder.  ... and no I'm not really sure who got Sasha's morning meds ...

The weather's been odd lately, fronts going through and some rain out of them.  Sasha will let me know she's hurting when the fronts come through but if they're really drastic I already know.
Avalanche is my big scaredy cat when it comes to lightening and thunder and we had a beautiful light show Sunday evening /night, so he's been as close to me as he can get.
Sky isn't concerned ... rain well, sorta, thunder, lightening ... so what, no big deal.

ETA: We were talking about figs and the tag on my fig tree reads Ficus Carica (the common fig ...) now that's a real big help.

it looks like a common fig is potentially a hybrid of Celeste and brown Turkey. Would be decently hardy and not need extra pollination.

Everyone decided to eat yet? kenzi gets some indigestion and may try to go off food but pepcid seems to help. Would be odd for everyone to go off though.

Oh yeh, they're all happily eating whatever they can. Almost three days of not eating - ALL OF THEM - really had me wondering!

Wednesday morning Avalanche hacked up a bunch of what could best be described as thick egg whites (clear mucusy stringy) - which of course led me to think that they were sick with something but Thursday morning Avalanche was standing over his food bowl (and they normally get fed once a day in the evening) so I gave him breakfast and he ate most of it (well, most of a cup of food.)

God sometimes I wonder about these dogs, I think they sometimes do things just to see how we're going to react.

I've enjoyed reading about your adventures with your animals, Al. Did you ever think of writing a book?

We have a female husky called Yuki who can't be let out without a lead as we have no husky proof space to keep her in. Unfortunately, I doubt if putting her on a tie-out lead would work as she would soon pull herself free. She has pulled me off my feet on more than one occasion when she suddenly spied something and launched herself at it when I wasn't paying attention. Two of our sons do the main walking these days, but I take her round our front yard in the mornings. She likes to go out to the front gate and look up and down the road, but when a large vehicle like a lorry or a farm vehicle comes near she turns swiftly round and rushes back into the yard, then stops and goes back towards the gate just far enough to see the vehicle in question from a safe distance. She got spooked as a puppy by a muck spreader coming rather close to us one day on a narrow lane so she likes to make sure she is at a safe distance from any of those scary vehicles.

80 miles seems like a long way to have to go to visit a vet. Thankfully ours is only about 5 minutes drive away and close enough for one of my sons to walk her down for her jabs once a year.

Gillian

It's been too quiet here lately so I'll just comment, I either have a cat that's eaten a watermelon or she's maybe just a little bit pregnant.

When I was about 13 we were gifted with a Samoyed.  We lived in the country and were able to restrain him - chained to a small tree!  Seems as if he'd pulled down his previous owners porch ... tieing a big dog to a porch column didn't seem to work.  We had to pass him on when he killed one of our neighbors sheep ... we payed for the sheep rather than having him put down but we still had to get rid of him.  Biggest lovable / loving monster I think I've ever met.  What brought that up?  Beats me - they tell me that people with Alzheimer just remember the old times ( glad I remember yesterday, too!! )

ETA Friday the 13th:
Well, not a great day for Sasha. We went out this evening and as we were going down the ramp she decided she was in a hurry and tried to go past me ... lost her footing and fell about 2 feet. I'm afraid that one of these days she's going to really hurt herself ... as it was it took her a couple of minutes to "collect herself" before she got her back legs to cooperate.

I'm getting more and more ready to "call it" not for her but for me. She just seems to keep on keeping on; trips over nothing and gets up and toddles off again. I'm just not sure anymore ... it hurts me to see her like this but, as I said, she just keeps on going.

I think I was ready for things to end long before Keno was. Between the meds, the special diet, mounting costs for meds and diet and vet checks, then there was the no going out the back door to pee anymore. We were having to take him out the front on a leash every time he needed to go to the bathroom because he couldn't do stairs. It wore me out. Luckily I was home because of covid which made it logistically possible but it was so mentally taxing. Letting them go and getting used to life without them is mentally taxing too though.