Blah Blah Blah Weather, Blah Blah Blah Dogs

I’m afraid winter is over. I really dislike spring here, at least early spring. I am expecting this one to be particularly unpleasant, since we had record breaking snowfall this winter. Things turn into such a gross, shoe sucking, muddy mess. Flooding closes some bridges and fucks up traffic. I have to clean muddy paw prints off of the floor daily, and there are still muddy paw prints on the floor. Yes, little pretty hints of greens start to appear, but all surrounded by dirty. The streets are gross from the salt and gravel dumped on them all winter. Basically I find it all very esthetically unpleasant and generally tiresome. If I didn’t have dogs, it wouldn’t probably bother me less.

The "creek" in our backyard.

This photo is taken from my living room window. That “creek” is from the sump pump working overtime to keep our basement from flooding. The non-snow area down at the base of the trees is the low spot in the yard. It is a complete swamp. It is gross and dirty, but hey, at least it doesn’t have mosquitoes growing in it… yet. That comes later.

Our snow last week was so amazing. Not just a few dumb flakes, but a real full on snowfall, that accumulated a good six inches, more in some areas. I was so happy to see it falling, as I had already begun to fear that there would be no more snow. The day was pretty warm, and I spent a lot of time playing out in the snow with Indy and Watson. It was a very good day for Indy. I do my best to take the time to really enjoy and appreciate her good days. Overall, she is in amazing shape considering her age, but most of her days are just… days. Hey, I am glad they are not bad days. Still, the good days are very special, and she clearly loves winter, the cold appears to ease some of the inflammations that slow her down.

There are a couple upcoming predicted snow falls, but I don’t expect them to be significant. The days are warm enough it will probably only happen at night, although if enough is falling, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night to take Indy out.

Indy went to see the vet this week, which was a bit of a fail, so I have no real news to report. Just before I arrived, some yahoo ran their car into a transformer box thing and took out all the power in the area. Indy couldn’t even be weighed, much less have blood tested. The vet looked at her in the lobby, because the exam rooms didn’t have any light. Clearly, we’ll need to follow up to get a better picture of her health. Her eyes are still in pretty good shape, no sign of glaucoma or cataracts. She does have nuclear sclerosis, which she has had for a while. The vet mentioned that her night vision probably wasn’t as good, which I agreed with immediately. We’ve actually been leaving a light on for her at night for the past 10 months or so after noticing that her confidence walking around in the dark seemed to be fading.

To continue the fail of vet visit day, my planned trip to take her in for grooming and a “you wash” kind of place was derailed because the place had to close early for some repairs. We’ll try again on Monday.

Tonight Watson goes to his first puppy kindergarten class. I’m very comfortable with puppy raising and dog training, but group classes are a really good way to make sure they learn to behave with distractions. It is cheaper to go do self training sessions at a dog park, but have you seen the way some people (and therefor their dogs) behave at dog parks? Ugh. At least at a group class there is a minimum of one human per dog, plus an instructor, and there is some vague sense that everyone there is hoping for a well behaved dog. I’ll be letting the kid take the class with Watson, as she was very young the last time we raised a puppy. It will be good for her (and Watson) if she is much more involved with his training.

Tags dogs - flood - grumble - indy - my dear watson - pets - snow - spring - weather - winter