Pets – Page 46

Templeton Says Goodbye

Memory is a fickle thing. I’ve been editing old images in with the new so I can bring some old blog posts back online and was ready to update the picture of Templeton watching the dying light late on a summer evening in 2007. I was a bit dumbfounded to find I had never put the picture online, though I seem to remember doing so. I even remember the name of the post! I looked at the old site though and it was nowhere to be found, I guess I meant to post it, wrote the post in my head, but never got around to it. Better late than never.

Boo, Where Are Your Arms?

Boo may not have bones but he does have arms. Just not sure where he keeps them.

Vibram

We’re trying out a couple of types of dog shoes for Ellie, I was amused to see this pair has the same Vibram soles as my hiking shoes. They are designed for outdoor use but we got them for indoor use as her arthritic back legs are bothering her more now and she can struggle on the slippery tile. On Wednesday she couldn’t get up after we came back from our walk and was clearly anxious about it so my wife took her to the vet. We’ve been trying out some additional pain medication, the vet took her off one and switched to another and Ellie showed immediate improvement. She’s moving about more normally and has rolled around in the little patch of grass in the backyard a few times. We’ve only had her wear the shoes for short periods so far and she tolerates them OK.

Ellie’s New Kicks

In Memory of Porter

In December 2008 we got an unusually heavy snow in Portland. You can draw a direct line between the day I took this picture and the day we adopted our dog Ellie. Our neighbor’s dog Porter saw me and came running over to say hello as he always did, always with the same enthusiasm, so I took a few pictures then put the camera down and played with him. He loved catching snowballs in the air and I so enjoyed my time with him that it got me thinking about getting a dog of our own. I had never given it much thought as I think our cat Templeton would have been miserable with a dog around. But he had died a year prior, and our three cats at the time had all met Porter and seemed fine with him, so my wife and I discussed it and a couple of weeks later we brought home Ellie.

Porter was always eager to see me the entire time we lived there, old age eventually slowed the speed at which he’d come bounding over but it never touched his enthusiasm. He loved to run back and forth across the yard with me and he loved to be petted. He was well loved by his family and lived a good long life until his health rapidly declined recently. I will always be grateful for this sweet pup, not just for his role in bringing Ellie into our lives, but for every time he made my world brighter just by saying hello.

Let’s Get Outside

“Let’s Get Outside” is an apt slogan for my hiking shoes but not for little Squeaks who, like all our cats, is indoors only. She doesn’t spend much time in cardboard boxes, sometimes I think she tries it just to understand why brother Boo loves them so.

Searching for Meaning

Boo looks out from the picture window in the dining room of our old house in Portland. This morning I noticed the door of one of the kitchen cabinets was moving on its own and suddenly out popped Boo. He quickly figured out how to open the cabinets after we moved here and one has become a favorite. Look inside and you’ll see he’s made a cozy space surrounded by reading materials like Catwoman comics and the writings of Heraclitus. I need to put an end to it because you’re not getting back to sleep when someone wakes you up at 3 a.m. to ask you why you cannot step twice in the same river.

Pupdate

Age continues to take its slow toll on our sweet pup Ellie but at fourteen or fifteen years old she is doing far better than I ever hoped. We found a good vet here in Scottsdale and the good news is her kidney disease hasn’t worsened. She’s lost about 10 pounds in the last 6 months but an ultrasound didn’t show anything alarming. A continuing trend and a symptom of the kidney issues is she is not as interested in eating her food so we have switched to a different food that has helped for the moment. She is still quite interested in the cats’ food but it has far too much protein for her.

She is feeling more pain in her back and hind legs so we are adjusting her pain medicines, there is some risk to her kidneys but at this point we want to make sure the remainder of her life is as happy as it can be. It seems to be helping, this morning she went on a 0.75 mile walk and kept a good pace the entire time, yesterday she went 1.17 miles! With the heat we don’t take her on evening walks but even in Portland it was getting difficult, I could only get her to go to the park and then she’d want to go straight home.

She loves sleeping both in her dog beds and on the tile floors although the tile is proving a bit slippery, we’re getting some booties that will give her more grip. Her attitude is one of joy as it always has been. Her hearing has been going for a while now, when I came home yesterday she didn’t hear me even as I walked up behind her but she happily greeted me when I rubbed her floppy ears.

Every day a blessing.

Great Views

I enjoyed some great views this morning on my first visit to Piestewa Peak but this will always be my favorite view.

26 Minutes

Two pictures taken 26 minutes apart as I tested out a new camera in March of 2017, Sam sleeping in my office in the late afternoon, first in direct light and then in diffuse light. The great snuggler is curled up beside me now.