Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: indy

  • Indy

    Indy and the Kid and London

    16.5 years ago we brought home a puppy from the German Shepherd Rescue. She was my husband’s first dog ever. We got her before our daughter could walk, and she helped to raise our daughter. Indy was a very sweet and a little neurotic. She was family, and we loved her very much.

    This week we had to say goodbye to her. She was damn old for a dog of her size, and she lived a very good life, but I still am very sad. Our daughter, who doesn’t remember a day without her, until now, is totally devastated.

    Indy and the Kid

    The house feels so different without her. I miss her. She was such a good dog.

    Hearth

    I’m so fucking busy this week, I don’t even feel like I have enough time to grieve. It’s just a tight ball of pain and loss and sadness sitting like a rock in my gut, and I just need to keep on keeping on.

    Really, it isn’t even about the time to grieve, it is about having the space to grieve. It is about having the space to just be left the fuck alone, collapsed on the floor sobbing and snotting until I am a desiccated lump. Maybe next week.

  • When It Rains

    Today I took Indy and Watson to go visit a friend. The friend has a big interesting yard with lots of things to smell, and since Indy spent time there before she developed CCD, she still recognizes it and gets a lot of stimulation out of being there, without any anxiety from being someplace unfamiliar. It is a nice safe dog park experience for her, where we don’t run the risk of running into a dog who might knock her over.

    She even has a boyfriend next door. There is this sweet looking husky mix who lives next door, and they interact through the chain link fence, and he likes her and whines for her attention and she plays flirty little games with him, as if she is young again.

    Today Watson wandered over the the chain link fence to meet the strange dog. He made friendly puppy body poses, but the other dog was suspicious of Watson. The other dog felt a bit territorial. So, he hiked up his leg and peed on the chain link fence. Except, you know, chain link fences are more air than substance, so mostly he peed on Watson.

    “Eew, no. Watson, don’t just stand there. Stop peeing on my dog. Come on.”

    Watson sniffs the chain link fence, and takes a step back, so the dog circles and lifts his leg and pees on the fence, and Watson, again.

    “Nooooooo. Don’t pee again! Watson…”

    Unluckily for me, dogs don’t mind being peed on as much as I might hope they would, so Watson had a great day, despite, or perhaps even partially because, he was peed on three times.

    The afternoon was spent with dogs running and playing and sniffing and exploring, and finally I made my way home, to walk right into an educational clusterfuck.

    See, one of the things about the online charter school is that they help educate students by locking the students out of their curriculum whenever the student does something it deems a lockout offense. For instance, if they fail a quiz, they are unable to move forward until they’ve spoken to a teacher and figured out what the problem is. In theory, this sounds kind of reasonable, but since the teachers often take a long time to respond, it really slows things down.

    On Wednesday evening the kid spectacularly failed a chemistry quiz from the future. She finished her lesson, and the online program served up a quiz for a completely different lesson, that she had not yet been exposed to, so she didn’t know any of the answers. She guessed her way to a 42%. She couldn’t NOT take the quiz, because once you start the quiz, you have to finish it and submit it, or you automatically fail it anyway.

    She immediately sent an email to her mentor teacher and her in person science teacher, because she already knows that they respond more rapidly than the online teachers do. She sent screen shots proving that she had not been given the correct quiz (in case it was a one time glitch), but of course, nobody replied until Thursday morning. The local teacher reported the problem to the online school, looked at the content of the lesson, and gave her a quiz that actually quizzed her on her current lesson material. She got a 100%. He then submitted the corrected grade to the online people.

    By this morning, the online school still had not unlocked her chemistry class, so she still couldn’t do her chemistry work. At that point the local teacher stepped in an unlocked it for her, even though that is not the “procedure”. She was left unable to work on her class for more than 24 hours.

    When I arrived home today, she had been locked out of ALL of her classes. Her teacher sent her an email telling her she would be locked out because she hadn’t turned in a form (where we initial a calendar saying what days she was doing schoolwork, even though the online program actually keeps track of all logins and the amount of time spent), but she had turned in the form on Monday. She was working on schoolwork, so she didn’t get the email until a half hour later, at 4PM, and by then nobody would reply to her phone calls or reply to her emails. This leaves her unable to do any schoolwork for the entire weekend. She started the school year late, so she is “behind” on schoolwork. Meaning, she is doing more than the required standard student minimum each week, but she is not currently at the point she should have been at had she started on day one and been completing the minimum each week. She is on track to complete everything by the end of the semester. Each day she is locked out makes a big difference, because then she has less days to cram this extra work in to. Plus, she has a friend coming in from out of town on Monday, whom she hasn’t seen in more than two years. Without being able to work this weekend, she basically cannot spend time with her friend on Monday.

    It sucks.

    That is what I walked into the door to discover, as I directed her to try emailing different people, and I emailed and tried to call people, and basically just frantically tried to get her back into her school program before the day was totally gone and there was no chance.

    We had no luck, and finally she sat dejectedly down next to Watson for comfort. She snuggled her puppy and told him how frustrated she was. Then she said, “You always come back from his house smelling so doggy.”

    “Oh,” I said, “he got peed on.”

    “What?”

    “Yeah. Three times.”

    “You couldn’t have told me that before I hugged him?!”

    “I was distracted by all your school stuff.”

  • Sleeping Arrangments

    I’ve started sleeping downstairs. I’m not sure how long I’ll be doing it for. It isn’t very comfortable, so I am looking into a sofa bed, or some other setup that works better mid-term than our curved sectional.

    Indy is okay. Hell, she is great, for her age, but the decline is inevitable. At this point she needs help to get up some of the time. Not every day, but some days, several times a day. The stairs are also a concern for me at this point, although she still chooses to go up and down them. I’ve put a gate up at the bottom and am restricting her stair activity. I especially don’t want her to take a tumble down them at night while we are sleeping, so I restrict her at night. She gets lonely though, and she has started needing to go out in the middle of the night sometimes. Overall, it just adds up to me feeling mentally better if somebody sleeps downstairs with her, despite having no first floor bedrooms. We definitely will not retire in this house.

    My preferred option for a sofa bed is the MÅNSTAD. In looking for reviews of it, I found this adorable video on YouTube. I love the dog.

    I think we’ll move a bed from the guest room downstairs and try dressing it up to look kind of like seating. It won’t be as good a solution as the MÅNSTAD, but will be far less expensive. That will save some money for more throw rugs, which also help Indy out. Hard floors are not easy on old dogs. I would like to walk a line between helping her out and keeping her company, without crapping up the look of the house so badly that it further depresses me, as if watching her age doesn’t depress me enough. meh

    She is still generally happy, and quite enjoys walks and being near her family. One thing she doesn’t enjoy is getting a bath, but she is in desperate need of one, so next week that needs to be crammed into the schedule. Today, there needs to be nail grinding.

    It sucks that her organ systems are doing so well while her nervous system is slowly failing.

    She is such a good dog.

  • Unsteady

    I’m sleeping downstairs because Indy can’t reasonably make it upstairs tonight. I don’t want her to be alone, so I’ll stay down next to her. She did well, overall, but is having quite a difficult time as she is recovering from the surgery. The vet thinks that it is due to the aftereffects of the Morphine and Valium on her system. I don’t like it. It stresses me out. I want her to be okay NOW.

    She is getting better.

    She has absolutely ZERO patience for Watson right now, so we are keeping them apart. This makes Watson a bit sad. Poor little guy.

    Really, I’m just feeling stressed and sad. She has been part of the family for more than 15 years, and while I know it won’t last forever, I really need the downfall to not be because of a procedure I chose to let them do.

    But, hey, she struggled over to sleep by my feet. She likes being near to me, and I like having her near.

    I wonder if she is young in her dreams.

  • Finally Friday

    It’s been a tough week in the dog world. Not my own dogs, they are fine.

    In the rescue world, things have been a bit rough. It is difficult. It is worth it, but difficult. I try to focus on the worth it part, but some days are harder than others.

    What else is up? It has been warm, and almost all the snow is gone. The backyard is a complete and total swamp. I don’t want Indy and Watson to run around back there, because that is a disaster.

    Indy got her bloodwork results back. She is in really good shape for her age. Good enough that she was cleared for dental surgery. So, that is where she is today. I am nervous about it, not so much because I fear something will happen during surgery (although, of course I will be anxiously awaiting the call that says all is well). I am mostly nervous about starting some kind of chain reaction.

    I give Watson things that are meant to be chews that last a while, and he quickly consumes them. Back to the chew shopping. Apparently, I have another power chewer. I’m not surprised in the overall scheme of things, but I am a bit surprised to have this issue at 12 weeks with the items I’ve been offering him.

    This weeks puppy class was again good, but Watson got less play time in because the other pups there were so small, and he was a bit of a bull in a china shop. Still a great learning experience for him, but it burned less physical energy. Luckily, I have a play date scheduled for Saturday with some big dogs.

    My mother is back for another visit, to help me with some things and mostly to help me with Watson while I get stuff checked off my To Do list. The timing for adopting a puppy was less than excellent, so part of how we came to the conclusion we could manage it anyway, came from her willingness to come back to help. Watson clearly recognized her when she walked it the door. It was so adorable. He likes people in general and is always excited to see new people, but he was just beside himself with sheer wiggly waggy puppy happiness to see the woman who bottle fed him so many meals. We didn’t know whether he would recognize her, but he did.

    I might have created a twitter account for Watson. Great. I’m becoming one of THOSE people.

  • 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.

  • Indy found her inner husky, but now it’s coming out in clumps

    Indy is a rescue dog. She is at the very least a husky/shepherd mix, and might have some other stuff thrown in. She has a GSD nose, stance and coloration, and a husky coat and tail.

    She was a So Cal dog and has always hated rain and wetness. Also, she is getting older and has arthritis, so I was pretty concerned about this move to MN where she was concerned. So concerned, that I actually considered whether I should try to find her a place to stay in So Cal, even though it would mean breaking up our family.

    She absolutely THRIVED in the MN winter though. She has loved it. It took years off of her. She even lost some of the gray from her coat. It has been so fun to see her running around in the snow, a cute ball of puff.

    Now however? She is not a cute ball of puff. She is a mess. She is blowing her coat so much worse than she ever has before. It is just… o.O

    She is embarrassing.

    London is barely tufting at all so far.

    When a double coated dog is blowing their coat, people who are unfamiliar with this process will ask what is wrong with the dog.

    This year, Indy is blowing so much more fur than usual that WE keep asking what is wrong with the dog.

    Poor Indy.

    Poor us.

    There is finally an end in sight, as more of her body is summer coat than winter right now. She looks so much smaller than she did a month ago it is crazy.

    I knew she had really packed on an impressive winter coat this year, but… I had not realized just how much of a difference it was.

    The house is disgusting. We can’t keep up with it. Plus her undercoat is black, and the carpet is cream.

    Anyhow, things have warmed up enough that I am doing night walks again. I prefer this since that way we don’t run into other people out walking their dogs.

    It is still staying below freezing on many days, but there are also many days above freezing.

    Also? Our back door locks again. When it got really cold, the whole back portion of the house shifted and the storm door and door quit lining up properly with the jam. The storm door still can’t lock, and the door latch still doesn’t line up, but the deadbolt can be forced closed again as of last night. This is exciting to me. The kitchen table is still wobbly (this also happened with the cold weather and the shifting of the house), but I am hoping it will improve soon too.

    Also also? I still am sucking at sleeping.

    Indy, when she was cute –

     

  • not warm

    -19°F
    Feels Like
    -36°F

    A WIND CHILL WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR EAST CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA… INCLUDING THE TWIN CITIES METRO AREA… AND WEST CENTRAL WISCONSIN UNTIL NOON ON FRIDAY.

    A WIND CHILL WARNING MEANS THE COMBINATION OF VERY COLD AIR AND WINDS WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILL VALUES. THIS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA OR DEATH IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. WHEN VENTURING OUTDOORS… MAKE SURE THAT YOU DRESS IN LAYERS… AND WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES.

    WIND SPEEDS AROUND 5 MPH WILL BE COMMON TONIGHT. COMBINED WITH LOWS OF 20 TO 30 BELOW… WIND CHILL VALUES WILL DROP TO 35 TO 50 BELOW BY FRIDAY MORNING. THEREFORE THE WIND CHILL WARNING CONTINUES UNTIL NOON ON FRIDAY.

    London got to go on a short walk/run today. Based on the troubles yesterday I only let Indy out for brief trips to the yard. She still enjoys the snow, but is happy to get back inside. By limiting her time we did not have another limping incident.

    I’ve decided that “feels like -20°F” or lower means that Indy doesn’t get a walk. I have ordered booties for her (and London too, just in case). If those help enough then we can set a new cut off for skipping the walk.

    I’ve also decided that “-15°F” or lower means that I really don’t like being outside much.

    So far both of the cars are doing okay. The cold does have an impact on gas mileage and also on things like power steering and start up, etc. They are both doing better than a lot of my husband’s coworkers cars.

    When it gets this cold outside, the furnace does not do a great job of keeping it comfortably warm inside. Especially anywhere near a window, or even a wall. The insulation in this house is not impressive.

  • Too Cold

    It is really cold right now.

    It is painfully cold. The wind chill really really has a significant impact at these temperatures.

    Today we bundled up to take the dogs out for a walk. We took the excited dogs out through the backyard and out the back gate. Then we follow this trail through small ravine and get up to the big path behind out house. We even managed to get up to the patch without either kungfuzap or I slipping and falling.

    As soon as we got up there, Indy trudged off to the side and squatted to pee. Then she started to sniff around, and then… Suddenly it was obvious she was miserable and in pain. She was on 3 legs with one foot dangling, but her other foot was hurting too, so she tried to switch favored feet, but the one she put down, she wasn’t controlling properly, and she set it down, standing on the top side of it. This of course made her stumble. Her legs were shaking like crazy, her tail was firmly between her legs.

    I leg her immediately back inside, worried the whole time that she would fall, and I wasn’t sure how on earth I would carry her if she collapsed, because the thing about dressing up like the little brother from A Christmas Story, is that you just aren’t very physically functional. She limped and shook the whole way back in the house. I got back in and sent the kid and London out for a quick run. I told her to run him so they both stayed warmer and to keep an eye on him for signs of discomfort, etc. I then attended to Indy.

    She was just pressing up against me. I was checking her feet for signs of injury. Her legs were still shaking. Then Willow came over and was rubbing against her and boofing and rubbing against her face. This has NEVER happened before. Willow doesn’t like the dogs. Xander likes Indy, but not Willow. It completely freaked me out. I thought that maybe it wasn’t the cold and their was actually something else wrong with her and she was dying and Willow knew it. Ugh.

    Anyhow, slowly has she warmed up, she started to be able to put normal weight on her feet again and eventually she laid down to rest. After she seemed recovered, I just took her out in the backyard so she could finish going to the bathroom. She hurried and did her business with NO extra sniffing around or playing and happily rushed back inside.

    So. Apparently? “Feels like -24” is too cold for Indy. London was still okay, but he obviously felt it.

    I went out to look for booties for her, but didn’t find any in stock. I hadn’t gotten any before because most people report pretty poor results with older dogs who are not used to them, but she needs to be able to get out there and go to the bathroom without injuring her paws, and if this is going to be an extra harsh winter, I need to work something out.

    If I ever were to custom build a house here, I think it would have to involve an indoor dog bathroom room. I have a design all planned out in my head.

  • In Search of a Punk Rock Chicken Toy

    Indy came to live with us in the fall of 1995. She is an unusual dog in many ways, and I have no idea if she was born that way or whether the unfortunate occurrences of her early life caused it, or it is a mixture of both.

    We got her from a rescue when she was a puppy. She had been turned over because the landlord had told them, either she went or they would be evicted. If you are going to ignore a NO PETS rule, it is best to do it with a quieter animal that will not grow to be 50 lbs. Once we had her it was obvious there was more to her story than that.

    In January of 1996 I bought a net bag shaped like a stocking (on clearance) that had dog treats and toys in it. One of those toys was a squeaky toy cat that was the same coloration as our real cat. We decided that would be a better kid toy than a dog toy and gave it to baby KFZ. The second of those toys was something we dubbed the Punk Rock Chicken. It was made from soft, but not limp rubber, the body like a paper towel tube, two feet merged into one at the bottom, and a bird head on top with hollow spiky “hair”. It squeaked. Indy loved that toy. She carried it around. She squeaked it. She would play fetch with it. She was not one to destroy things, so the toy just went on and on.

    In the fall of 1999 London came to live with us.

    London destroys things. That is what he does. He loves toys, all toys, and he loves them to a rapid death.

    He killed Punk Rock Chicken. It was a dog toy, so I didn’t think to keep it away from him. Hindsight is 20/20. It turns out that was the ONLY toy that Indy would play with. She would not take a replacement. She has never carried around another toy. She has never chased another toy. Nothing. If I want her to chase something, I have to throw treats.

    In 2004 we moved. During the packing we found the squeaky cat that came from the same package. We gave it a squeeze and it squeaked. Indy came running into the room, totally excited, tail wagging like crazy. She looked expectantly at us. We squeaked it again. She cocked her head to one side, looking at what was in our hand. She stopped wagging. We offered her the cat. She put her head down and just wandered out of the room. This was more than four years after the damn Punk Rock Chicken met his doom. The cat had the exact same squeaker, but was not the same thing.

    I have tried barbell toys based on their similar shape to the Punk Rock Chicken. I have tried other chicken and bird shaped toys. I have tried and tried. No go.

    Anyway, here is a photo of the dogs with the toy. If anybody ever sees this toy for sale, please tell me ASAP. We’ll see if the power of the internet can be harnessed to make Indy wag.
    Searching for a Punk Rock Chicken Toy