One of our favorites

2005 WV State Championships in Davis, WV.
She actually "raced" with me for the last 5 miles, 5 of the faster miles too I might add. And race we did, cause I had broken my chain right after picking her up.

A Year Already

Little dairyDog has been gone for a year, now.  I don't have much to say except we miss her terribly and would give most anything just to pet her speckled belly and kiss her pink snout once more.  

We heart you, dD!

dairydog.com

Should be coming to a browser near you soon.

Weird enough, it was becoming available pending delete and all that, then got snarfed up by some bulk domain service, I contacted them, never heard back, and then on the 13th I checked the whois and it was available.
So I grabbed it.
It's a little settling for sure.

dairyDog, Memorials

Thank you everyone for the kind thoughts and continued well-wishes.

We're getting along.
We'll be adding some "good ole" photos soon.

Betsy's folks sent flowers to us all-

Our Postal person Gretchen dropped off the note and Scooby snack next to the place were dD died. Marked by some Hardy Mums, cause she was a Hardy Dog-


Thnaks again to all that have sent things.
As we trudge on...

dairyDog, 1994?-2007

dairyDog passed away 7:45am, at home, out front in the lawn, on the grass, beneath a blanket and under a beautiful new-day blue sky, with both Betsy and I by her side.
It had been a very long night for us all.

We're going to head up my folks house in Oakland, MD to bury her after we gather ourselves and such.


Rest In Peace dear friend.
Run Free Forever.

Hackles Raised

Our BFF before yesterday's 5 hour vet appointment.

Today I had two people infer that we should just do the right thing and not let Dairy suffer. It took all I had not to shout out WE ARE VEGETARIANS! Having an animal suffer on our behalf goes against one of our strongest principles. Dairy might not be long for this life, but she is NOT suffering, yet. She still smiles and greets us and wags her tail for most anything. She enjoys long naps in the sun, sniffing other dog butts, riding in the car, and letting small puppies and children know that they should respect their elders. We might not speak the same language, but we communicate just fine, and when we see in her eyes that she has had enough of the good fight, we will do the right thing. (And I don't mean call the Pet Mafia, Rob.) Watching Dairy suffer would hurt much more than adjusting to a life without our beloved furry friend.

Grocer's

We have just returned from the grocer's where we purchased chicken niblets, chicken noodle soup, and (cringe) hotdogs. And dear Grandma Shogren is going to drop off some (cooked) hamburger and rice on her way to the airport tomorrow morning. Cross your fingers that at least one of the above items appeals to Dairy's tastebuds!

More Dairy

Little Dairy might be feeling lousy, but that doesn't stop her from being a super sweetie-pie!
Here she is with Uncle Chris.



And a picture of her avoiding her tofu and rice.

Special thanks go out to The Casdorph Family (of super sponsor Casdorph Piano fame), for dropping off some leftover chicken nuggets for dD. Dairy liked them so much, she ate them twice (if you get my drift).

Please send us your leftovers

Guess what I just did. I stewed me up a big old pot of chicken and rice. Yes, sirree. That would be the first time since this house has come under Shogren ownership (10 years) that meat has been cooked under this roof. I just hope this concoction is as tasty as Grandma Shogren's was. I think that is the first time I have ever cooked chicken. Grandma Shogren is out of town for two weeks, so she can't be cooking up some viddles for the pooch. Fortunately, we will see Grandma Schauer next weekend and she has already promised to boil up a chicken for her granddog.
Please note: we did stew her up a big old pot of tofu and rice last night, but that dog is not stupid and was not fooled.
I am reminded of my vegetarian friend from grad school whose dog had allergies, and she would roast a whole turkey plus all the trimmings every Sunday for her dog. I used to snicker at that girl ("vegetarian, hah!"), but I guess I shouldn't have laughed until I walked a mile in her shoes...

Mount Abemore

If you haven't been to Mount Rushmore in the last 1.5 years, you may be surprised to find out that there has been an addition.

Don't try this at home.

So a couple of the kids were checking out some of my adventures and particularly liked the style of this-
Down the Steps

So they got together, grabbed the laundry basket, and all old-fashioned like put themselves into it-


Asked me to give them a little help, "something for the effort"-


And, oops, things went a little awry. The laundry basket wasn't quite long enough and the front edge went quickly down, hucking the guys down the steps.
Totally unretouched photo, actually as I found them, no lie-


They're ok.
Don't worry.

Progress Report

Well, Dairy's been home a week now, and while she is much improved, she is still not eating a whole lot. She is oh-so-picky and finicky.
However, we took her to the race on Sunday, and I think the fresh air stimulated her appetite a bit. She ate a little container of chicken and rice soup (specially prepared by Grandma Shogren just for dD), and a bunch of dog cookies from Uncle Chris. She had to fight the boys for the cookies, though, as hungry bike racers will eat about anything. She even stuck her nose in the trash bag to dig out a cupcake wrapper. Unfortunately, I think we fed her one too many cookies, b/c shortly thereafter, she barfed everything up. I will spare you the photo, but rest assured, we have one. I was just thankful she barfed before we hit the road.
So now that we are back home, she shows signs of being hungry. Here's a nice picture of her begging for a pizza crust. I certainly shared my pizza with her, but not before stuffing it with her 6 different pills! Please note, in this photo she may look like we never feed her, but right next to her she had three different types of dog food, scrambed eggs, and a burrito that she refused to eat.


In any case, we're just happy she's home, breathing well, and showing sparks of her old food-obsessed self. Hopefully the next post will bring more good news!

* addendum by gunnar.
Here's the pills she takes twice a day!
Hangin' out on the counter are Mr. Prickles, the stolen one-eyed Hedgehog from Laurel Legal Service, Piggy, and a pretty cool pen-

dairyDog Come Home!

Yes it's true.

And heck, I'm gonna put this photo here cause it's so happy and all, even if it's down below too. Why not?


Monday evening we went to Paw Prints and were able to snatch up dD and bring her home!

Dr. Thomas went over pretty much the things she had told me that morning, Betsy had a lot of good questions and concerns, and we were given a list of things to try, things to watch out for, and told just keep an eye on her.

We hadn't seen her yet, and of course in telling our tale of woe to others in the waiting room, we had painted a rather dim picture of an old and faithful companion.
But when she came out she was all skittering across the floor looking more alive then she had for quite a while!
I think she knew she was getting out at last (probably them taking the IV out did a lot to convince her of that).

So we paid for her stay $$$ and loaded everyone into the Jeep.
The good folks had given us some various foods to try and so we open the bag of Low Residue Dry Food and dD stuck her little head right in there and started eating!
Unbelievable!
And as fate would have it, the camera ate that shot too.
But I do have one of a very happy and relieved Betsy and a pretty bright eyed (cataracts) and bushy eared dD-


Yay she's home!
No, she didn't eat any more of that dry food. Still hasn't.
But we don't care, as I told Mike Y. I'll feed her bubble gum if that's what she'll eat and wants, it just don't matter much now.

But we do have a little box of meds to give her-


So she's doing pretty well.
Breathing is definitely better and more relaxed.
She's drinking and peeing nicely and often.
She gets around pretty well, pokes around the place, sniffs and lays down a fair bit.
Pretty much the only thing she'll eat regularly are fig bars. Hey they're pretty healthy, got fiber, got energy, used to have that guy dressed up as a Fig Newton, and they're available about anywhere. If that's what she wants, so be it.

We're pretty happy and thankful that she's home.

The neighborhood cats are pretty happy too, I have a pic of them around dD's house, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Thanks for your kind thoughts and good hopes.

The Shogren's and kids.

Second Vist, and Third and ...

Well I had some pics of dD at the hospital in the evening but somehow my camera ate them.
Poopie-pants.

She was doing much better than in the morning, as nearly everyone said "she looks great now!" which also meant that she must have looked truly terrible that morning.
Our friend Nancy Casdorph (of Casdorph fame and name) said that she was with dD for about an hour that morning, she wouldn't eat, wasn't moving much at all, and was quite listless. Then she went home and cried. :(

When we arrived that evening during visiting hours Nancy was there again and everyone was looking much better! Nancy seemed more relieved than we since she had seen dD at her low moment.
We were able to take her for a walk outside w/ me holding the IV bag and all that, just like at the people hospital, though there was an absence of the smoking area...
I *had* pics of this, but they are gone.
Her breathing was still on the panty side of things, but she wasn't drolling and it wasn't like she was breathing w/ her whole body as she had been.
But dD was still not eating much and even the nice Pop Tart that Nancy brought was hardly touched.
Drinking fine, eating not so fine.

For Sunday's visit she was looking alright, no new news, all the test were coming back fine, she was drinking, breathing was pretty decent, yada yada yada. She was still not eating.
Crudcrap.

Here's another picture of dD's stable mate Elvis. Elvis is still there.
He had swallowed a gum band, had surgery, they (another clinc) didn't put the lamp shade on his head, he ate through some sutures AND put a big whole in his belly. We hope Elvis gets better-


Monday morning I went in before work and got to talk with Dr. Thomas some.
Things hadn't really changed, they had taken another round of x-rays and nothing looked that much different.
The good Dr. was trying all the angles, worms, heartworms, other maladies, etc.
She called it the "shotgun" approach.
Nothing bad was coming back positive, but nothing was being held accountable for dairy's ills either.
Sunday evening she had also started dD on steroids to fight off another type of pulminary illness, PIE, I think she called it, and she figured that with that injection she would be ready to probably go home that evening.
If nothing else she wouldn't be depressed from being couped up in a cage and hanging out with a lot of other nice but noisy animals.

Here's a pic of Chuckie with his newly found hoodie, Chirpy all dirty still from the 6 Hour race at Big Bear last w/e and WillyG, all waiting for dD to come home-

First Visit

dD had been there only a few hours, but we had to go see her.
She's doing ok, they haven't been able to stick the tube up her nose to give her O2, so we told them it would be ok to give her a doggie downer.

Here she is trying to escape already!


She peed 5 times while we toured the outside facilities!

What the?

We don't know either, but we found it/she/he on the rail trail.
Betsy put those eyes on, I figure from whatever planet it's from, that's where they go!
He's atop the pumpkin that I snagged from the folks house.
Sweet.

Poor dD

Not feeling well.


Not getting better. That's Jack our newest "Lost Child", hoping for the best.
Betsy put his eyes on too, he still needs some more stuffing though, when we found him he was pretty beat up and stuffing coming out everywhere.


She's at the Vet Hotel now.


Enlarged heart
Fluid in the lungs
Decent sized bullae in her lung
Some gray areas also showed up on the x-ray.

Everyone here is concerned yet hopeful.

Here's Elvis, looking like he's worse off than dD.

It's Bad for the Kids too!

Everyone gets sucked into the 24-frenzy,

And the kids are no exception, only they have too much unsupervised time on their hands and look at the mess that it creates.

Even with all the caffeine, vitamins, crushing cans, and who knows what else, they still just plain crashed. Poor Abe is trying to make it to the couch and failed. WillyG looks the perkiest, but right after that he started burrowing. And poor Cheet-O just couldn't make it any further, fell flat on his happy little face. Poor fellows.

Guess I gotta stay home more now....

Conspiracy

Someone must have told dairyDog that she needed eat plain old dog food,

Cause she's been unwilling to eat it for quite a while now.
We add things, mix things in, sometimes she eats, sometimes she sniffs and goes somewhere else. I blame the internet and someone in the know-
Iowna's Finest

24

Is taking all our time.
Attention.
Thought.
Life.

We eat, sleep, think, just like our comrades at CTU.
It's awful.
But we can't walk away now, we're in too deep.

---------------
sent from somewhere inside the Compound, room #3.
Secure port:3285

dairyDog knows

To let WillyG have his space.
The old dame is wise and sage.

Anyone else remember Willy Geoghegan?
Anybody else have major trouble spelling his name?
Well WillyG is named for him. Definitely a lost child.

He made national news this summer-
Google search for "Willy Geoghegan floyd landis"

I told old friend of his Robbie A., and his reply was-
"Always wondered what happened to him. Surprsing, no. Sad, yes."

Pretty entertaining to say the least.

More welcomes for WillyG

WillyG the wombat certainly has gotten his fair share of socializing.

Here he is with Chirpy, Bambi, and ahh, I forget the other's name. Sorry.

And though the wombat can be friendly, they can also be rather anti-social, turning their noses and showing you their behinds on a whim.

Here's WillyG trying to get away admidst a load of new Cannondale clothing we got from our Cycling Santa.


Such is life w/ a wombat.

Nice weather, good times

Abe, Cheeto, and WillyG enjoying the lack of rain.

Hanging out w/ the trusty Fort Single Speed, keeping the cats away from the Basil.
And out of reach of dairyDog.

Honey Bun Cake

Cheet-O, being a bear, understandably loves honey buns.
You can imagine his immense delight when PPC, being the wonderful mammy that she is, offered to make him a honey bun cake!!!

Here he is studying the recipe:


He was so very helpful!


Abe and Cheet-O waiting for it to cool:


Now that is one happy bear: