The Haps Just Keep On Happenin’ With Herb

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23944 – 1327

Greetings to all of you Dear Readers,

Sometimes life just keeps on happening even if you had plans to follow a rather meager schedule of posting things. The last couple of weeks have been a case in point. We had a visitor from Wisconsin, a family moving out, and a sick dog who put the “sick” in the phrase, “Sick as a dog.”

Here’s the haps:

A couple of weeks ago my wife’s cousin came to visit. He’s a bachelor farm boy (By boy, I mean he’s 58), a nice guy with an easy-going personality, and he likes to go and do stuff. Twice a year he comes to visit, in summer and at Christmas. He drives from Wisconsin and through Yellowstone National Park. This year he wanted to take the children on a drive up to a different mountain, but that road was closed, and so he decided that we would drive up to the top of Pikes Peak again this year. The kids love driving up to the top of the mountain and had an awesome time. The two kids who lived with us with their mom also got to go to the Denver zoo with two of their cousins who live in Castle Rock. That was really great, and Alex got to see a komodo dragon!

You may have noticed I said lived as in the past tense, and that was also something that was going on. That daughter and her two children have now got their own place. That was, you know, obviously just fine except there was a lot going on.

As you may or may not be aware, dogs can be sensitive and high-strung creatures sometimes and such is the case of our royal standard poodle, Hey Boy. Now, normally Hey Boy is pretty mellow. He is absolutely awesome with children and babies, the smaller the better. He is just the most wonderfulest dog in the world. He loves his kids which causes stress when they’re away, so when they moved out and left an empty room where he expected them to be, that caused stress for him too.

As I said earlier, he put the sick in sick as a dog.  He came from his usual morning romp and had some bad symptoms. I don’t want to get too graphic, but to give you an example of the urgency that this presented itself with, he had bloody diarrhea. So he wound up going to the vet, of course.  He had just been in a week or two prior for his regular checkup and was doing quite well. One of the first things that comes up around here is a parasite called Giardia. It is very nasty. We have several wild animal species around here, bobcats, coyotes, bears, and raccoons, to name a few. Something killed one of the neighbor’s chickens and dragged the carcass into our yard overnight, and ate most of it, leaving the rest for our dog to find. This disease and several other things can be determined by a fecal sample, which they never seem to be able to get while he is at the vet’s office. So guess who had the privilege of following a sick dog around with a sample kit? Giardia is relatively easy to treat, so of course it wasn’t that.

Through a series of blood tests, urine tests, the fecal sample, x-rays, and ultrasound, they were able to rule out thyroid troubles, a hormonal deficiency called Addison’s Disease, and several other serious, potentially life-threatening problems. It added up time-wise, stress-wise, and if you have ever taken an animal to the veterinarian for any reason, you already know, money-wi$e.

We learned that dogs can have Irritable Bowel Disease just like people do, and it can be exacerbated by stress. Well, all of the happy and good events caused a lot of stress, and so Hey-Boy got sick. He has since had a fairly major change of diet and is doing much better and is back to his old self.

But, between the messes that he made in TNT’s room and the nightly runs when I would have to get up and take him out two or three times in the middle of the night to try to prevent some of these messes, it’s just ended up taking a toll. Blogging was not considered a high priority in my mind at that time, as much as I love you guys. It was a disaster that required immediate and constant attention.

Now that the critter is getting back to normal and we have made some changes to his food and his feeding schedule, he is doing much better.

Anyway, there was a lot going on the last few weeks and there was no time to blog. I’m hoping to get back on something sort of like a regular schedule soon, including a regular Meme-Day.

Remember, the Good Book says, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”  (Pro 12:10 KJV)

---

---

---

---