Friday, May 01, 2009

Catching Up (2)

I'm usually quite a pragmatist about the weather. Whatever it is doing, hot or cold, sunny or cloudy, I think it is all good. It is part of having an atmosphere surrounding our little blue ball, and that is a pretty good thing too.

But it's been cloudy, grey, and raining for what seems like days and endless days up here in north Texas. We've got more storms moving in tonight and again Saturday night. My yard is a bog. Even the dogs squish with every step.

At this point, I'm getting a wee bit tired of rain.

But, back to Circus K9! I was looking through my pictures tonight and realized that I have taken some really nice ones in the past few months that aren't making it to the blog. So here we go.

The first is of Harry taken in mid-January, 2009. He was not feeling well at all. His toenails were in horrible shape and he could barely walk. I pulled him from our January flyball tournament at the last minute. In this photo, he is napping in a sunny spot in my office--dogs that are feeling a bit punky get go to work with me. They think it is special and I can keep an eye on them.


But this next photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. It's the bottom of one of Harry's paws. What's the big deal about that, you ask? Well, his condition, alopecia areata, also resulted in hair loss from his ears and nose. The cyclosporine, an immune system suppresant, keeps his body from attacking his toenail-growing cells. But it affects hair-growing cells too. Harry is growing rugs of hair on the bottom of his feet. Some breeds do this normally but fox terriers don't usually have that much hair on the bottom of their feet. And his ears are covered with downy fuzz! But best of all, he has about 6-7 mm of new nail growth on every one of his toes. The dermatologist was extremely pleased with Harry's progress!


Here's a picture of Bhumi napping in the box of dog toys which is up on a bookshelf in the dog room. I had to put all of the dog toys away because Cap is insanely destructive. He is like some Tasmanian devil dervish--he can chew his way through toys in minutes, leaving a few shreds as evidence. Unlike the terriers, he swallows most of his demolition work. Cap only gets one toy at a time now, and it has to be at least an 8 on the T3i scale. Plus, if those weren't enough restrictions, he prefers rubber toys. So mostly all he gets are one variation or another of the Cuz toys. Great toys, but with the master dervish destroyer, one will last perhaps two weeks if we are lucky.


Here's a picture of Cap looking distinctly non-devilish. He's 15 1/2" at the shoulders and 18.2 lbs at 8 months. I took him to class with Mimi and Gracie this week to start some socialization. Opinions were mixed as to what I should try to ILP him as--BC or Aussie--but there was general agreement that it would probably not be successful. He's just too small to be a proper BC (at least from the perspective of the ILP process) and there is that troublesome issue of no tail.


Lola and Bix often hang out together. Here's a picture of them relaxing in the sun on their Cheengoo cat lounger. I switched them all to Felidae senior cat food. Now into their second bag, Lola is at last losing some weight.


It is of course too wet to play in the yard tonight so instead I did weave work with Gracie, introduced Cap to the tippy board, and played ball with Mimi. It was a special transparent red rubber ball with LED lights that come on when you smack the ball against something. Harry wouldn't touch it but Mimi just loved it. Here are some fun pics of her. She reminds me of a B-movie monster!




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