An eastern fox squirrel strips eats bark that it has stripped from a tree. It had already pulled off quite a bit of the bark near its perch. The eastern fox squirrel is not native to this area but is commonly seen in the Portland metro area.
Tag: Oregon
Klickitat Street
Ellie poses under the cherry blossoms on Klickitat Street after we went to the dog park (I took her leash off for the picture). The street was made famous by the Beverly Cleary books I read as a child, although her characters live a bit further east than this. The first few blocks east of Irving Park are closed to vehicle traffic (except for the handful of houses with driveways on the street) so you can walk down the street itself.
Our Aging Pup
Age is taking its toll on our sweet pup. Her stamina has been declining and while she still gets around pretty well, she’s not as confident in her footing as she used to be. Her hearing seems to be on the decline and she has a thyroid issue (thankfully it’s responding well to medication). At her last checkup her blood pressure was high as was the protein in her urine, the latter something we’ve been keeping an eye on for a few years, so she’s now on blood pressure medication. She had an ultrasound yesterday and thankfully her kidneys are in good shape, but there is a growth on one of her adrenal glands that might be harmless but could be the early stages of cancer, we’ll recheck in a few months and see if it’s growing.
The hardest part yesterday was that in order for the ultrasound to be effective we couldn’t feed her in the morning, and food is one of Ellie’s great joys. Funnily enough she has lots of little ways of reminding you she hasn’t been fed but she won’t get aggressive or even bark, so gentle is her nature. As I got my breakfast, even though disappointed her owners had forgotten to feed her, she got excited as this is when she gets a dental bone, her favorite treat. But even that had to wait until after her test so I had to watch as her initial excitement turned to confusion and sorrow as she slowly realized her hints weren’t being taken and she wasn’t even going to get her treat.
Perhaps as a side effect of the sedation for the ultrasound, or worry over lost treats, her stomach was upset all night so I stayed up with her to let her out into the yard whenever she started dancing around on the hardwood. She was feeling better by morning but I was so tired from being up most of the night that I’m taking today off.
She goes back in a couple of weeks to recheck her blood pressure and protein levels. One thing that remains unchanged is her bountiful and joyful spirit. She doesn’t mind that in addition to her allergy pills she gets an extra pill in the morning and three in the evening, as we put her pills in hot dog slices that she readily gobbles down. In fact she’s trying to convince us that she also needs to be treated for scurvy, botulism, and space madness.
This picture was taken in early January when we got a nice bit of snow. My wife and I walked with Ellie up to the neighborhood grocery store for a few supplies and Ellie and I waited outside at one of the picnic tables while my wife grabbed the groceries. She’s drooling because I kept bribing her with treats so she wouldn’t greet every single person entering the store and sniff the bags of those walking out. I’m holding the camera down and to my left, she’s watching my eyes for a sign that another treat might be forthcoming.
May you have many happy and healthy days to come, sweet pup.
Is That It?
My wife and I wanted to see the new Star Wars movie so a couple of days after Christmas we drove up to a neighborhood movie theater. When we came out a good bit of snow was coming down, a rarity for this area, but I knew it wasn’t supposed to last long. And it didn’t, slowing down even during the short drive home.
I took Ellie to the dog park as soon as we got home, both because she loves the snow and because it reminds me of the day we decided to adopt a dog and later found the perfect one. Sadly though the snow had all but stopped and it was too warm and wet for it to stick to the ground. I couldn’t resist a picture of her looking up at me with a light dusting of snow on her back as she stood in the muddy dog park.
But she wasn’t lamenting the lack of snow but rather watching me to see when I would start running, as her favorite game is to run beside me and match my every move. This field used to be grass and clay which turned into a soupy mess the entire winter. Ellie would dance around, giving me her famous chop chop, encouraging me to run. I could never convince her that only one of us was built to run in that slop. But now that there is sand in the main part of the dog park, it not only drains much faster but also compacts nicely under your feet, so while you may get a bit dirty when it’s soaking wet you’ll maintain good footing while you run. My thanks to the parks department for that, it’s made a big difference in our winter walks.
📷: Canon 7D II | Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8
🗓️: December 27, 2015
Thanksgiving
We had a sunny day on the weekend after Thanksgiving so I brought my camera along on Ellie’s morning walk to take some pictures in Irving Park. I had in previous weeks hoped to take some fall pictures with her but the groundskeepers had been too efficient at removing the fallen leaves (not to mention Ellie’s beloved acorns). I noticed a clump of leaves under the canopy of this old tree so I took Ellie’s leash off and made her pose for me.
I’m extremely thankful for this sweet pup who has blessed our lives for seven years, and also for this nice little park just a few blocks from our house where we can walk her (the dog park is a little ways over to the left). And I’m thankful too for people many decades ago who decided not to chop down some of the old trees in the park, I never get tired of seeing them on our walks.
World Peace & Hamburgers
I smiled when I saw this tag on the Wishing Tree, a wish first for something both altruistic and impossible, followed by one both pragmatic and easily attainable.
Ellie of the North(west)
Snow is not common in Portland so when we got some unexpected snow we took Ellie on an extra walk in the afternoon so she could enjoy it. It was snowing on our morning walk and continued during her annual checkup at the vet but had stopped by the time we took her on her second walk. The freezing rain had just started by the time of her evening walk, which by the next morning left everything coated in ice and Ellie refused to go on any more walks until it melted. She hates ice as much as she loves snow.
Her vet visit showed that her thyroid levels are really low, which might account for some things we had chalked up to aging like her reduced stamina. She’s taking medicine now but it’s too soon to see any improvements. I was thankful for my little Subaru while taking her to the vet, as given the rarity of snow we only have all-season tires, and the car handled the snowy streets without complaint. I left it parked the next day as our streets were solid ice, even snow tires wouldn’t have helped then. Thankfully warmer weather returned the next day and the streets cleared up, although the yards and sidewalks took a bit longer.
This picture is taken at the edge of the dog park at Irving Park, one of our stops on our walks in the neighborhood.
“How Come Nobody’s Playing Hoops?”
Hard to say, pup, it’s a real mystery.
Hope Springs Eternal
The route Ellie and I take on our walk through Irving Park is lined with old oak trees, so in the fall we are surrounded by ripened acorns that have fallen to the ground. They smell enough like food to Ellie that she wants to sniff them, but not enough like food to try to eat them. Still, she wants to sniff each acorn just to be sure, hope springs eternal when it comes to food with this dog. This morning a storm knocked a bunch of green acorns to the ground and some kids collected them and stuffed them into the largest hole the dogs had dug in the dog park. Ellie of course had to sniff them, although not for long, the green acorns didn’t hold the appeal of the ripened ones.
In the picture below, Ellie again “sniffs” the acorns. I put sniffs in quotes because this was our evening walk and the morning’s sniff had already revealed there was no food to be had, so she wasn’t interested in further inspection. I wanted a different vantage point than the morning picture however so I bribed her by placing one of her treats beside the acorns. We must have been in a vortex that swallowed sound, however, as several times she seemed not to hear me when I gave the “leave it” command and instead ate the treat as soon as I set it down.
Holes in the Earth
We finally got some much needed rain and I wanted to take a picture to celebrate it, but we also got high winds so I couldn’t take any macro pictures like last time. But when I took Ellie up to the dog park I saw this hole that had started to fill with water and it reminded me of another hole in the earth I like photographing, one from Yellowstone National Park (shown below). That one is one of the many geothermal features in the area and is filled with water from below, not above.
There are a few of these holes in the dog park, and since Ellie likes to run beside me in the park, I have to navigate around the holes so that neither one of us steps in one and twists an ankle (she watches me more than the way ahead, trusting me not to lead her astray). The parks folks fill them in occasionally but some dogs like to dig, so new holes always appear. They’ve been spreading sand at this end of the park the past few years and it’s a big help during the winter when rain is not hard to come by, as the sand drains well and it gives Ellie and I a safe area to run in. In the old days she’d still want to run out into the grass, but only one of us has a body built for running in such muddy circumstances, and these days even she isn’t quite as steady on her feet as age begins to take its toll.
I never imagined the dog park would remind me of my beloved Yellowstone so today’s visit made me smile almost as much as the goofball dog who waited patiently for me to take the picture, and of course expected a treat as her reward.
Boolie 