Introducing "H1LDA"

A Secret!

Beatles - Do You Want To Know A Secret
Jumping straight back into the blogosphere without so much as a by your leave, sir.. Beginning with the most recent news.. (and there is a lot!).  
Back in September, just before we went on the aforementioned train trip to New York, Ashley and Sandia had a not-so-secret assignation, which I was not quick enough to break up.  That resulted in the not-so-little bundle of joy you see here.
Born on November 17, she shares her birthday with my late mother.  I decided that called for naming her after my mother- Hilda. (This was also the name of Dutch's very first sighthound, so that made it even more apropos!)  Since she was born a singleton, some modification of the spelling was called for.  I stole the idea from a large, midwestern athletic conference logo.  I named her H1LDA.  Make sure you get it right.

Beyond The Sea

The parents.. Otis/Fada.  Image ©Camilla Colleen

Earthly arrival early June.  Hare-Brained Homestead arrival anticipated late-August or early September.  Watch this space

There's Political News...

...and then there's POLITICAL NEWS:

The Obama kinder will finally be getting their White House Dog sometime in April.  The news, such as it is, is that this won't be the puppy, promised by the POTUS on election night, but a rescue dog.  And what kind of rescue dog, you might ask, if you didn't already know?  Why, it's going to be a Portuguese Water Dog... just like the two Ted Kennedy owns, and like the ones a lure coursing friend of ours in Texas owns.

It's great that the Obamas are choosing a rescue.  It's unfortunate that they are choosing a breed that has so many health problems.  They've done their homework well on so many other parts of their lives, but not this time.  I guess they didn't get the message from Pat Burns.  

Personally.. I'd suggest a Galgo-  that's just me    ;o)

UPDATE 2/26: Or maybe not.  Time will tell.

What a Life.

Last Monday, I dropped Margaret off at yet another airport- Austin, TX in this case. She'll be in Michigan for a couple of weeks, then she and her mother will be flying to Georgia for Christmas with a large chunk of the family.

I returned to our parking place of late, the driveway of our good friend Sherita, in the tiny burg of Santa Anna, Texas. (Dining tip: H&H Diner. Another case of good grub in small towns. In this case, the jalapeno cheeseburger's to die for. They also make their own pies and cookies.) Sherita has wireless internet access in the driveway, so I have no excuse for not blogging for the last couple of weeks other than the usual: lazy.

I left Santa Anna this afternoon, bound for Socorro, NM where, this Saturday, a certain Spanish Greyhound will run in his first official hunt. This trip was up in the air until I actually backed out of the driveway- it seems "Mr. I've-never-seen-anything-I-wouldn't-put-in-my-mouth" last Sunday retrieved, from a nearly impossible location, the big bottle of generic Ibuprofen, chewed off the lid, and scattered the contents around the living room of the Express! This, while I was shooting the AHCA trial, and Margaret was outside manning her laptop for the clients. I didn't think he actually ingested anything because of the amount left on the floor, but it became very apparent on Monday, that he had, indeed, swallowed a couple before deciding they weren't to his taste. Evidence including diarrhea, vomiting, frequent urination.. all the typical signs of Ibuprofen toxicity.

Unfortunately, it was 24 hours after the fact, so any first aid would have been useless, and it was time for a lot of breath holding. The vomiting only lasted for a few hours. The diarrhea is still an on and off thing, but the blood- indicating stomach ulceration- is becoming less, with a regimen of Mylanta, Immodium, and yogurt. I had blood work done by the local country doc, and all the kidney numbers were normal, and the blood was clotting normally. Most importantly, his activity level is back to obnoxiously normal!

So, I hit the road. Rather late, actually, but I made it to Brownfield, TX , just East of the New Mexico border on US380. I'm staying at Coleman Park, a nice city park with 14 free full-hookup RV sites, five of which are now filled. And, as a bonus: free WiFi!

300 miles to go. I'll have high speed wireless again at Casey's in Socorro. I plan to spend a couple of days there after the hunt, and do some wildlife and landscape shooting, and will share that when it happens. And more.

12 Years Ago This Morning...

...Randir, (Leelanau Mithrandir) was whelped in my basement in Jackson, MI. Today, like most days, he's sacked out on the bed. But he was chasing jackrabbits last Winter, and I expect he'll sprint out (briefly!) after them again next Winter. We send out birthday wishes to his two surviving sisters, Hillary and Morgan.

"...may you stay forever young." - Bob Dylan

Walkin' the Dog.

Bar Mitzvah! He's a "man" now...

And have I mentioned what a pain the deerflies are when we're walking? Oh, I think I have. Illustration:

I Did It.... Again!

Nature photography is best left, apparently, to professional nature photographers... or Boy Scouts.

Today's missed opportunity: Baby turkeys.

Reconsidered taking the camera when I walked Sandia, and I was still close enough to go back for it, but decided, "nah.. won't see anything today". I had even taken a few steps back toward the Express. Sigh.

Out of the brush and onto the trail they came... singly, and occasionally in pairs. About 5 inches tall. Not sure how old that would make them, but they could fly! Once they realized there was a large human- with a dog- not 15 feet away, they took to the trees. They fly better than adults, who wandered slowly off in the opposite direction. I think we were meant to follow.

What next? Waiting for our first Bobcat!

Oh yeah... I did pick up at least one tick. Penance.

The Things You See When You Haven't Got a Camera...

Wouldn't you know it? Took Sandia for a walk on the campground trails yesterday. Had to stick to the open areas on the North end, because we were quickly flushed from the trail that runs through the woods.. (See the previous post on deerflies). I had the boy on the new 110lb Flexi, but didn't bring the camera, mostly out of pure laziness.

Now, I've seen lots and lots of interesting critters and things at the old Holiday RV Campground... Sandhill Cranes, deer, geese, turkeys, turtles, wood ducks (in the trees over the RV!), squirrels, cottontails, fungi, wildflowers, raptors.. the list is endless. Yesterday morning, while I was walking Rally, a coyote- bigger than Rally- stopped at the edge of the cornfield, about 20 yards away, and gave us a good long stare before proceeding on with his daily business.

Nothing previously could have prepared me for yesterday's event, however. We had just seen a pair of spotted fawns rollicking in the tall grass out by the interstate.. no adults in evidence. I was cursing the fact that the camera was in the motor home, and we were approaching a large thicket where a lot of deer often rest during the late afternoon. I was anticipating the explosion of mass deer-flight when, from behind us, I heard, "Excuse me!". Huh? That didn't compute- like when you hear a powerful jet, and look up in the sky and the first thing your eyes fall on is a soaring turkey vulture. I turned and, bearing down on us, was a horse.. a trotter, in fact, complete with sulky and a little black driver in goggles! As he sped by, he said, "How you doin' today?", and I said.. "uh... um... er.. fine?"

I've been on that trail dozens of times. This was definitely a first. There are horses on the nearby property. I just never realized they were racing horses, although there is a harness racing track in Jackson. It is an interesting practice track, though, because it's far from level. He disappeared around the bend, and I immediately got on the phone to Margaret to pass on the story. While talking to her, we passed the last photo opportunity of the walk, when I spied a box turtle laying eggs next to the trail.

SO.. today I took the camera when the boy and I went out for our daily constitutional. No fawns. No horses,sulkies, or diminutive drivers.. of any color. No turtle. No nuthin'! Well, nearly no nuthin'. I did see this perfect, living description of "gossamer wing"..

And Sandia self-posed for me in a nice setting...

What's the Boy Scouts' motto? Oh yeah.. Be Prepared. Well, I once hacked a hole in my knee with a hatchet... during a "hatchet safety" session at a Boy Scout "Camporee". But, that's just me.

¡Hoy es Sandia del Primer Cumpleaños!

¡Que tienen muchos, muchos más!

Fun With Photoshop Elements.

...and a distorted window. Just for fun, while we wait for the wildflowers to bloom in Michigan. Expecting Trilliums any time now.

Lights On!

There's a phrase in lure coursing and racing, when a dog whose previous enthusiasm for pursuing artificial lures is, shall we say, lukewarm. We say "the light came on" when that dog suddenly goes from lackadaisical to earnest chasing.

It happened with Fanny, it happened with Rally, and Saturday evening at the end of the practice sessions at the OKIGO trial in Ohio, it seemed to happen with Sandia!

His eyes are locked on the lure, and he ran right past me, (and that's a new thing!). In fact, he didn't even glance my way. He needed a bit of the ol' "gitit,gitit,gitit..." a couple of times, but he ended up doing most of the course.

On Sunday, we tried it again, and he demonstrated that, while the light is indeed on, it's a low watt bulb. He'll need a lot more practices before he's ready for the intense, heated competition of...

...the Singles Stake ;-)

Raison Raisin d'etre

Fans of the puppy will be happy to know that, 36 hours after the fateful ingestion of the shriveled grapes, he's completely asymptomatic. Up early this morning, and getting in trouble... oops! There goes the bottle of antacids. Well his tummy was probably sore from all the puking yesterday.

This morning's walk eliminated the last of the charcoal and more raisins. Interesting visual: a two-tone turd; black and brown. I decided not to go back to the animal hospital for further bill padding. He's going to be fine.

Drinking normally, peeing normally, no runs, no vomiting, and definitely... no lethargy.

Pins and Needles

It's always something.

For the next 24-36 hours I'll be keeping a watchful eye on young Mr. Sandia.

He sleeps soundly every night on a stack of blankets next to the bed. Till around 6:30 or 7:00am... then he goes into his active phase, counter surfing, table hopping, etc. This is when he gets destructive... grabbing a plastic cup from the bathroom sink and chewing it up, finding the leather sunglasses case and chewing it up, reading paperbacks by ripping out the pages... and mostly- looking for something to eat. You get the idea.

About 6:45 this morning, as I was dragging my ass out of bed, (Margaret had spent the night at her parents to prepare for their meeting with a lawyer this morning), I saw Sandia bouncing something large and cylindrical by the sink. It looked like the blank CD container. If only. It was a container of raisins. There weren't nearly as many as there had been last night when I put the container up in the overhead storage, (absently leaving the door open). He had apparently got up on the ottoman and then the chair to retrieve them.

If you have dogs, you know this is a bad thing. Potentially one of the worst things. Toxicity can occur with as little as 0.16 oz per Kg of body weight.. in Sandia's case that's about 4 oz. I estimate he ate around a half cup, possibly more.

Researchers still haven't found what it is in raisins (and grapes) that is toxic to dogs and cats. A micotoxin is suspected, but hasn't yet been identified. Toxicity manifests itself in some cases in acute renal (kidney) failure, and anuria, (lack of urine production). These are sometimes fatal, and can occur in just a couple of days.

I got on the Internet to see if I could use Hydrogen Peroxide to induce vomiting. Indeed I could. Knowing it was OK, and being able to squirt it in his mouth? Something altogether different. If Rally is the most perfect patient veterinarians have seen, Sandia is her evil twin. By myself it was impossible to hold the dog, open his mouth, and squirt the H2O2 in. Not enough hands. Time to call Margaret and wake her up. I was going to need the car anyway.

I think I manged to squeeze about 15ml into him with no result. I walked him and he started gobbling grass like a milking cow. OK... he was going to do it his way. Still nothing.

Meanwhile, Margaret had called Ann Arbor Animal Hospital and we were good to go. I dropped her back off at her parents and made a beeline to a place I hadn't seen in at least 15 years. Believe me, it didn't look like the picture you'll see at the link back then! In fact, my experience with AAAH goes back to the '70s, when Doc Hergott ran a small 2 exam room facility in a little red house at the same location. That's Ann Arbor for you. They told me Doc was still alive, which is surprising considering all the time he spent at Stadium Tavern, just across the street, where I was tending bar to supplement my GI Bill college fund.

But I digress. I brought Sandia in, and he was immediately swept away behind closed doors.. (I really hate when that happens).. to have vomiting induced. No WalMart Hydrogen Peroxide here, they gave him an injection of Apomorphine. He only vomited up about 12 raisins. He was also given activated carbon, which is an absorptive... to pick up any toxins in the digestive tract and carry them out the back.

They took his blood for a CBC (complete blood count), and a "comprehensive organ function" scan. All values at the time were normal. I have to take him back tomorrow and have this $125 worth of blood tests done again. It never ends. I believe I will follow Patrick's advice, (#8, way at the bottom of the post), and question the $25 dollar item entitled: "Nursing Care Daytime"(?) Just how is that different from the $50 office visit?

Anyway, I will be watching the boy for signs of vomiting and diarrhea (none so far), increased thirst, (about normal), and lethargy, (everybody in this house is lethargic at some point of the day... right now, for instance). Other than being a little quieter than normal, and he's had a traumatic day, he seems pretty normal. His evening walk did give up the evidence that some raisins made it out of the stomach before the Apomorphine made it in.. I made like a CSI and counted around 2 dozen,inflated and looking more like little grapes at this point. Later in the evening, more raisins were produced along with the activated charcoal... now that's something to see: jet black stools.

If we make it through the night without any incidents, I think we'll be out of the woods. And believe you me... I'll be doing a thorough scan of the counters before retiring tonight. Good practice for everyone.

Runaways.

Well. That was exciting... in a stressful kind of way. And hard on the vocal chords. (Cords?).

What was that, Dan? See, it's like this: To get Rally out of the motor home to walk, she has to be picked up and set down on the ground.. while this is happening, the door swings wide open, because both hands (and attendant arms) are on the dog. This offers a golden opportunity for Mr. Sandia to make a break for it. Most of the time I've made a circus grab, on the fly, and tossed him back in before closing the door. Today, I got a finger on his collar, but he just slipped off and away he went.

To make today unique, Fanny took advantage of the wide open door while I was turned and yelling at Sandia. Just one, I can get back fairly easily. With two, I had co-enablers. Away they rushed... toward the campground office. They said hello to a lady getting into a pickup, wheeled and ran back toward me.. hey, this was going to be easy after all.

Not. They ran to a corner and peed, looked over their shoulder at this...

Yes... a cornfield. A big cornfield, with a couple of deer stands on the perimeter. The temptation was obviously too much, as they disappeared. When the dogs disappear in the deserts of New Mexico, I don't mind.. I know they'll be back. This is completely different. Farmers in Michigan, and most other states in the vicinity, shoot dogs that are chasing deer. I hoped they didn't jump any deer. I did see a sandhill crane launch more vertically than they're used to.

Meanwhile, I still had Rally on the flexi, and she hadn't peed yet, so I couldn't put her back in, and I couldn't trudge across the cornfield with her and her cast, and the long-promised rain just beginning. So I stood on the campground side yelling, and they cavorted on the opposite side. I just hoped they stayed in the field and didn't venture into the surrounding woods.

Rally finally peed. I ran back to the motor home, threw her in, grabbed my Fox 40 Classic, and ran back to the cornfield, hoping they were still in sight. I was now ready to venture into the field myself... alternatingly yelling their names and blowing the whistle.. Sandia, made a run back toward me, I brought out a dog biscuit, caught his eye... and he slowed,... and then decided he hadn't had enough exercise. Meanwhile, Fanny had disappeared from view. Then Sandia disappeared.

It had now been almost 20 minutes they'd been running loose. I was on my own, because Margaret had gone into Ann Arbor to visit her parents.. if I dropped dead in the middle of the field, no one would find me until they came through to plant new corn. I had to find them..

I was halfway across the field when Sandia approached. And stayed. I got a leash on him, gave him a biscuit that he was too exhausted to eat, (although he did remove it from my jacket pocket after we were back in the house), and we went in search of Fanny.

We got all the way across, to the foot of one of the deer stands, and she was nowhere in sight. There was a trail that sloped downhill toward Goose Lake, west of the stand... as we started down it, Fanny broke out of the woods behind us, and stood to be leashed. She was finally out of gas. But not out of surprises.

I'd thought the worse thing that could happen was that they'd be shot by some farmer. Perhaps not... Fanny was covered in burrs... including covering her right eye completely; and she'd rolled in something exotic. Crane crap? Deer carcass? It was black, and greasy, and stunk to the heavens. Great. She needed washing, and it was raining and only about 45 degrees. I didn't want to bring her in, but that was my only option.

And that's how I came to do a thorough cleaning up of the shower and the bathroom today!

Return to the Swimmin' Hole

Remember that slide show from last October? You know, the one with Sandia and Rally playing in the little temporary pond in the back corner of Windyglen? Good. We figured, if still shots are good, movies will be even better.. so Margaret took Fanny and Sandia back to the pond which, due to recent heavy rains, was much bigger... and deeper, and shot this video with the Fuji ...

Listen... maybe that's why it's called Windyglen! And look at Sandia... that's why I think he's Bipolar.

OK. Not Funny Any More.

This started about 7 last night. Just light flurries now, but the winter storm warning continues until 6PM tonight, with another 1-4 expected. And I have to drive in to the airport to get Margaret at 4. In one of those meteorological mysteries, there's virtually no snow in Albuquerque, just 30 miles away. The problem will be getting there.

All In the Family

It was damn cold when I got up this morning, but by the time we got up to Moriarty and got the dogs out of the vehicles, it was damn perfect weather. This would be the only chance we'd have for a -truncated- family shot. Maya (that loooong dog from a previous post) on the left, Zuni in the middle, and well, what readers of this blog don't recognize Sandia? The people? It matters? Okay, Steve Garth, and Chris Mason (without whom, neither Steve or I would have these fabulous Spanish Greyhounds).

I would be an irresponsible owner if I didn't post at least one picture of the group chasing a jack, with Sandia prominently in the lead...

... and a solo shot of Sandia's backside, showing some pretty decent muscling..

..and after Sandia had run two, I leashed him up so Maya and Zuni could get some decent photo time ;-) Sandia's run way more than his littermates at this point which, depending on my or Chris's point of view is either a good thing or a bad. Time will tell. Today was his last rabbit until next Fall at the earliest.. so I guess I could have let him chase a third one. It was a great day out with good people and promising dogs.

We headed back to Edgewood for breakfast at the East Mountain Grill... something I was looking forward to all week. The best huevos rancheros I've ever tasted.. with green chiles, of course, and good black beans. We had to wait for Steve a bit, because he was hung up in the parking lot on the phone with Jermaine Dupri. Oh, these movers and shakers I hang out with.

Heads Up

Three quick things:

Tomorrow, 3 or 4 of the Galgo littermates are going out hunting. I predict a post about that later in the day.

New slide show on the sidebar. Magdalena. People, dogs, landscapes, horses,..... and pigeons. Click on the show for the captioned version.

Last: I just chopped a buck off the price of the bumper stickers at the store. We realized there may be some price resistance to a five dollar bumper sticker... even a spectacular, vibrant, attention-getting, custom design that our Margaret sweated over for days! There's lamer stickers there for $6 and more. Be like the folks in the Netherlands: buy a bunch! (And Anke: we'll do something nice for you... kind of like price protection).

A Long Dog, But Not a Longdog.

This is Sandia's littermate, Maya, at an oval "fun run" on Saturday in Mountainair. Chris said she was long. No, I did not Photoshop in an extra section of body. She's looking good here, but lost interest about the time the lure began to turn. Sandia did pretty much the same thing, after first coming to visit the photographer :-)

Any and all dogs were welcome to run. Below is proof that 4 legs aren't required to get around the track, as long as there's plenty of heart.

Rhymes With "OH NO!!"

Morning in Edgewood, NM...

...Dogs had a good time, though.

Not like it was any big surprise.. it was predicted days ago. Took Sandia by surprise, though. He'd never seen snow before, and the driveway was quite slippery. And why isn't that rabbit running away?

10:30 AM.... it's all gone.