The Price of Vanity

Not surprisingly, it turns out that the price of vanity is a pretty steep price indeed. I’ve had a minor medical saga that’s been going on for the past three months. It is at last coming to a close but there is no question that it has contributed greatly to my prolonged funk.

I decided to have some visible spider veins in my legs treated. Two patches on my left shin would turn very dark like bruises when my heart rate increased such as when I was really hot or when I was exercising. I found them unpleasant to look at. And because I wear shorts and skirts most of the year here, I was looking at them often. After some tests to make sure my veins and arteries and valves were functioning as they should, I arranged to have several areas of spider vein in my legs injected with a chemical that burns the tiny capillaries out.

The doctor clearly and on two occasions reviewed the risks with me: blood clots, ulcers at the injection sites, shifting of the spider veins to a nearby location, etc.I went ahead with the procedure fully informed of these risk. I want to be clear on this because what happened is not the doctor's fault.

The two patches on my left shin were large and required injection of a considerable volume of the caustic chemical. I had half a dozen other smaller areas treated at the same time. All is well with the small treatment areas. But within 3-4 days of the treatment, I developed two large ulcers, each about 2.5 cm in diameter, on my left shin. The chemical burned out the veins and the surrounding tissue as well.

I’ve been living with these open wounds on my leg for more than three months. They have to be treated with a type of antibiotic ointment that is used on burn victims (they were the result of chemical burns, after all) and covered at all times, mainly because it was very painful when fabric brushed against them. The doctor debrided both of them three times, an excruciatingly painful procedure in which he cut and scraped the dead tissue out. It felt like he was grabbing nerve fibers with tweezers and yanking them out of my leg. The ulcers were always extremely painful to the touch…I had to be careful that the dogs didn’t bump my leg.

There is no CVS here where I can get bandages or gauze or things like that. I managed to cadge some dressings from the doctor at each visit, but when those ran out I had to cobble together coverings for the ulcers out of eye patches, the only bandage I could find here that was large enough to cover them.

Finally, one of the ulcers got small enough to excise. Two weeks ago the doctor removed a lump of flesh from my leg about the size of a meatball and stitched me up with several yards of what felt like 30-lb test line. Now I had an entirely new type of wound to clean and care for. The incision was about 6 cm long. Not surprisingly, for the first week, it was very painful. But, amazingly, quickly, it began to heal. After two weeks, the doctor removed the external stitches (there are some dissolving ones inside) and seemed quite pleased with the result.

Even the quiet little Jordanian nurse seemed pleased, telling me “mafi mark, mafi mark,” an amusing conflation of Arabic and English (mafi means no or none). I agree: the thin scar that will eventually be left will certainly be better than the hideous round scar that would form if the ulcers were not removed—and who knows how many more months it would take for the ulcer to completely heal, if it ever did?

As an aside, I should mention that the excision procedure itself is rather messy. Only a local is used so I sat up and checked on things every so often out of morbid curiosity. The excision part itself goes quickly. Cauterizing the veins and arteries is a bit complicated; lots of them are exposed because of the depth of the incision. Because an electric current is used to cauterize them, I had to be grounded to the machine. Even with that, if the doctor held the probe to my tissue for too long, electricity would begin to flow through my leg and it would begin to twitch like I was some sort of frog in a dissection tray. He had to give me more local anesthetic injections to shut off the nerve response to keep my leg from moving. There was quite a bit of sizzling and smoking as well. Puts one right off beef, I'll tell you. But the stitching up part was by far the worst. I could feel every single tug and pull of the sutures; my brain was screaming "pain!" even though all I felt was pressure.

I don’t have to cover the first excision site now, and only have to apply some basic antibiotic ointment once a day for a few more days. Whew. Low maintenance wounds are a great improvement over those damned ulcers.

And at last, the second ulcer shrunk down to a manageable, or I should say, excisable size. It was cut out yesterday morning. Another 6-cm incision, another meatball removed, and more 30-lb test line. But by the time I head out for my holiday in mid-May, my medical saga should be behind me.

The price of vanity? I won’t have to worry about those damned spider veins on my shin now. No, I will now have scars to replace them.

Exceptional

One of the more frustrating aspects of living in Saudi Arabia is dealing with the extraordinary cultural exceptionalism of the locals. All cultures view themselves as unique from their neighbors; that is a fundamental aspect of culture. It’s the “we think we are better/behave better/think better than everyone else” part that causes problems.

Allow me to tell you a short story to illustrate the point.

I had Azza in the vet to get one of her vaccinations and there was a local couple in there at the same time. He was in western clothes, she was wearing an abaya and head scarf but didn’t cover her face.

A bit of an aside before I continue the story. You have to be very careful about assuming that a local male wearing western clothes is westernized. Although many of those who work at Aramco were educated OOK and exposed to modern concepts in science and technology and medicine and biology and so on, a surprisingly small number of those ideas remain with them upon their return. So on a daily basis you encounter such superstitious nonsense as “you should never eat an even number of dates; you can only digest them if you eat an odd number." 

So this man asked me if Azza was a saluki. I told him she was a mix. The woman then asked if she could pet Azza. I was surprised because most Arabs and Asians will not have a thing to do with dogs, will cross to the other side of the road to avoid passing us on the sidewalk, that sort of thing. I told her, sure, she could pet Azza. She reached down her hand to touch Azza’s head, and Azza promptly peed a bit on the floor and began licking the woman’s hand, both submissive/appeasement behaviors that drive me utterly mad (because she does them constantly even though appeasement isn't required). I have almost trained her to stop licking Harry, Mimi, me, and my friends and their dogs, but strangers are another matter. Then the guy told me that salukis are the “only dogs that muslims are allowed to own.” I was working out how to tell the woman that there was now some dog pee on the floor that she might want to avoid and didn’t quite hear him. I looked up and said “Allowed?” He said, yes, allowed by religion. I said, “Oh?” And then he came out with this conversation stopper: “Yes, because salukis have different chemicals in their mouths than other dogs and are therefore clean.”

Where do you go with that? Tell them that they are ignorant of basic biology? That such nonsense is not mentioned in any official text used by Islam (the Prophet Mohammed’s comments about dogs are in a couple of hadiths, and no hadith mentions salukis or their mouths)? Try to explain that the flora and fauna in salukis’ mouths are no different than any other dog's mouth? That just that morning Azza ate bird poop and worms off the sidewalk and licked her butt, and how exactly does that make her mouth clean?

I simply turned away to move Azza to another corner of the room. I’m going to hell anyway so I never mentioned that his wife’s abaya was dragging through dog pee.

Funk

I’ve been in a bit of a funk the past couple of months. Lots of stressors have contributed to this, including a lack of whine (poor planning on my part but a batch is on its way, perhaps three weeks from drinkable), some medical issues, being stuck IK since November because of further poor planning, not being able to walk the dogs in the mornings because of a large pack of aggressive feral dogs stalking the land, and being super busy at work.

I’ve posted before about my “method” for the blog. My method requires time for me to first ponder the stories I want to write about and then to sort out the language that I will use to tell them. Of course I have dashed off the occasional post on the fly but most of the time I have most of a post worked out in my head before I sit down at the keyboard. Being so busy at work has cut into my pondering time.

But back to the funk. It has specifically cut into my ability to live in the moment and find interesting stories to tell you. Not that interesting things aren’t happening around me. I live in Saudi Arabia after all, smack in the middle of the Middle East. Plenty of stupid, amazing, infuriating, awesome things going on all the time. Unfortunately, the funk is causing me to focus on the infuriating more than the entertaining and any story I start to tell quickly turns into a rant.

Another interesting corollary of living in Saudi Arabia is that ranting online is a particularly stupid and rapid way for you to lose your job. Heck, ranting in public will produce the same result. You even have to carefully choose with whom you share your rants. You certainly don’t want to go further and leave a public record of them.

But the funk is clearing. I’ve got a nice leave coming up in May with a good friend—you’ll hear plenty about that when I return.

And my dogs still love me.

Wildlife

I encountered this bit of local fauna almost a year ago (late April, 2011). It's a sand viper. They are poisonous but not necessarily deadly. The birds got to this one and he was nearly dead by the time I crossed paths with him. They pecked his head with such accuracy that his skull was staved in and locking his lower jaw in place.

Sand viper. Grass for scale?

Close up view of his mangled head. The red streaks to the left are his blood. The birds, probably the Indian mynahs, clearly put a smackdown on this guy, who shouldn't have been out after sunrise anyway.

And I found this treasure right outside my patio gate just the other morning around 4:30 a.m. I've been told that these creatures are everywhere in the housing areas, and you might recall Harry's close encounter with one, but this is the first time I've spotted one so close to home.

The spot in the concrete at about 9 o'clock is the diameter of a dime. This guy is fairly hefty!

It's a wind scorpion, also known as a camel spider. You can count the legs and tell right away that it isn't a true spider, but it is clearly related! I completely addled it by taking these photos because its eye spots are on top of its head. It rambled around a bit, fell off a step into the grass, then hunkered down to recover.

Of course a post on wildlife wouldn't be complete without a couple of pictures of the dogs.

Harry is amazingly tolerant of the pesty puppy as long as she is calm. She's been doing some growing, but he still outweighs her! She's still nothing much but leg.

A sea of dog beds and blankets, perfect for a pack of sleepy dogs.

Shower Evangelical

I've mentioned before that houses in Dhahran have two kinds of water in them. We have a special water faucet in our kitchens for sweet water. This water has been treated and desalinated. It tastes okay and I drink it right from the tap.

Raw water comes out of the other faucets. This is well water that has been treated with chlorine to kill nasties. It is salty and extremely hard but potable, although I don't drink it or cook with it. Dishes washed in it have to be rinsed in sweet water or they get permanent spots. It rusts metal. It eats cotton. And unfortunately, this is the water that comes out of the shower. Imagine what it does to your skin and hair. You never feel clean. Soaps and shampoos don't work like you expect them to.

So I'm very pleased to report that I found a solution to the raw-water showers: a shower head with a chlorine-removing filter inside of it. This thing is totally amazing. You can literally feel and smell the difference in the water coming out of the shower. For less than USD 50, I can have soft hair and clean skin for about a year. I've shared the news of this great product with dozens of people--I'm sure Amazon is wondering why they are getting a rash of orders for the shower head from Saudi Arabia!

Training Azza (3)

Why am I starting this post with a pic of Azza drinking out of the house water bowl? Because the water bowl is just one of the many surprising challenges that she presents me with daily.

At first, I kept a small water bowl in her crate because during her house training she was spending a fair bit of time in there. But now that she is more reliable and spending more time out with the rest of us, I figured she could drink out of the same water bowl as the other animals.

Too bad she was terrified of it! She went for two days without drinking before she broke down and slunk over to the bowl for a furtive lap or two. She still creeps up on it, and as you can see in the picture, she is as stretched out as she can be, making sure that not a single hair of her body touches the scary bowl.

Ready? Get it! She will jump up and drive forward for a toy. She appears to prefer plush ones with squeakers.

I continue to work patiently with her. Our work on the "what is that?" behavior has started to show some success.

On Friday, she went on her first "neighborhood" walk away from the circum-golf course path and soccer field where we normally go and along which we normally only see other people. Instead, I took her on a short walk along a street with houses and yards and what turned out to be an endless array of scary things.

Harry getting his regular weekend nap in the sun, perfect for warming old bones. Azza was too restless to nap--you can tell that she hasn't settled.

 Using her still-new "what is that?" behavior, I free shaped her to nose-touch a kid's swing that was moving in the breeze (at her first sight of it, she hackled up, dropped to the ground, and started growling)--I consider this a new personal best in free shaping. I also free-shaped her to nose-touch a type of trash can she'd not seen before (it was very large and scary). And I lured her across a metal grate over a culvert in the sidewalk, paw by paw. She managed to slowly creep/walk past many parked cars (larger cars require extra treats). She sat calmly at my side before I released her to cross streets. She didn't pull on the lead, alternately walking in front of me or in a heel position by my side, the latter getting lots of rewards. All in all, a grand success.

Even though her shoulders are barely half an inch above Mimi's, Azza can reach the kitchen counter with her front paws. She is pretty much nothing but legs. Upul and I are working on discouraging this behavior.

Upul giving the dogs a treat, as he always does before he leaves whether I am there or not. Azza waiting patiently. I insist on 100% enforcement of this because she is pushy and nippy.

I have a large agave-type succulent outside my gate. Every few weeks, its javelin-like leaves threaten to impale me as I go in and out so I have to trim them back. I leave the pile of trimmings on the ground next to my sidewalk for the gardener to haul off the next day. When Azza went out to potty the first time, that pile of stuff wasn't there. When she went out the next time, well, she got sight of those leaves on the ground and she slammed on the brakes and refused to walk past them. I walked over, tapped the pile, and said "what is that?". Slowly, slowly, she approached, getting treats for every step she took towards the scary thing, until she put her nose on it. Then, jackpot! A handful of treats and we calmly go back to our original business.

She completely understands now that Harry is not to be bumped or licked or otherwise annoyed. It took four chomps from him but she at last got the message. But now he has become "forbidden fruit" and she is obsessed with him. She waits until he settles down on one of the big dog beds, then creeps around behind him and curls up next to him, usually back to back. Amazingly, he allows her to do this and doesn't even give a single growl as long as she doesn't fidget or flop about. Harry has become oddly both more and less tolerant as he gets older (he's 13 and a half now, nearly deaf, and going blind as well). He and Mimi are always touching when they sleep at night. I never thought I'd see him tolerate the pesty puppy too.

It's been an unusually cold spring, weather not seen in these parts since the late 1990's. Harry likes to be covered on those cool evenings. Azza crept in after he was settled and curled up behind him.

I also work her on a long line to practice recalls. My trusty 15-foot cotton lead is nowhere near long enough for this dog. I had to go to a 50-foot piece of nylon cord. I let her lunge around me in huge looping circles, call her in for a game of tug, and release her to do some more laps. She is damned fast, and when she runs her hind legs and feet move so far forward in between her front legs that they are almost under her head. So we practice recalls and she gets some good exercise too.

I have tried to explain the situation with dogs on camp before but I suppose it is worth repeating. Dogs are barely tolerated. Right now, the official customs rule is "no toy dogs"...and to a Saudi customs agent, ALL BREEDS are toy breeds. Doesn't matter whether the dog you want to import is a toy breed or not. His word is the final one. There is no appeal, no higher authority, no logic. If my Saudi neighbors (I have three of them in my immediate area) complain about my dogs, for any reason, even if it is a false accusation, I would have to get rid of Azza, might be kicked out of Aramco housing, might even be fired. There is no recourse, no appeal, no logic. If a Saudi says it is so, that is the end of the discussion. If you are a westerner, you will always lose. So it is imperative that Azza learn that she can't jump on and attempt to greet every human she sees, that she can't bark at imaginary scary shit at 4 a.m., in short, that she gains some civilized behaviors that will allow us to cope in this environment (and I'm not talking about the weather).

A three-way game in progress. It was hard to get this photo--I need a couple more hands!

 But back to the training. Azza likes to tug and with careful management, I can get a three-way game going where I alternately toss a toy for Mimi to retrieve and play tug or toss a toy a few feet for Harry with one hand, and I tug with Azza with the other hand. I think they get more excited with the proximity of the other dogs but so far there has been no hint of aggression or guarding.

Origami dog discovers the couch.

Agility in KSA Weeks 18, 19, and 20

It's been a bit hectic in the agility class lately because we lost MH. Last week (week 19) was her last class with us. Her husband couldn't take the FW at Aramco any longer (let's just say that if you prefer to work in an environment where merit and hard work are rewarded, this is not the place for you) and accepted a position with another oil company located in Cairo, Egypt. They managed to escape before the golden handcuffs were locked in place--sometimes people stay, hating every day they go to work, because they can't afford to leave! But the H's got out before that happened.

I am bereft. I have no idea how I can run these classes without her sharp eye and gentle suggestions. Having a large-dog handler as a training and teaching partner really brought a fuller dimension to the sequences I set up and the exercises we would run on them. It became a habit for me to set up the equipment then watch MH run her two PWDs on it. Her success or failure allowed me to properly adjust everything so that the sequences would work for our intrepid little group of handlers. Plus she was always ready with a new approach to solving a handling or training problem. The classes will not be the same.

In recognition of her leaving, I designed a special course for week 18, borrowing the idea directly from Nancy Gyes' extremely successful "Alphabet Drills" in which she created training exercises based on the letters of the alphabet. MH's dogs were named Austin and Dallas so I designed some short sequences based on the letters a and d.

The handlers generously contributed money and for MH's last class we were able to present her with a $200 gift certificate to Clean Run. There were definitely tears all around at the end of that class!

In a nod to MH's preference for NADAC, I set up a more open, flowing course than usual for her last class with us. She was able to run both of her dogs in numerous variations of this exercise. It might be the last time she gets to do agility with her older dog. Very sad.

I designed this particular sequence around a gently curving jump chute with the goal of getting the dogs and handlers to commit more fully to jumps. A lot of them fail to cross the plane of a jump, instead coming to a stop right next to it, with the totally expected result that their dogs stop too! We had some decent success with the chute although few of the dogs could do all five jumps in a row.

This particular sequence was so fun that I set it up again this week for our last class and had the handlers work some of the variations to challenge their skills. And I deliberately set out to challenge them too, asking for front crosses, RFPs, serpentine handling, wraps, jumping with collection, jumping with extension. It was a fun class to end our session with.

Today was the last agility class in KSA until late September. I am so utterly blessed to have had the opportunity to play agility for 20 weeks. I wish we had a longer agility season here but with limited facilities and the hideous weather, I really don't have much choice.

Looking forward to the fall, I will begin contact training with a contact board first on the ground then propped up on the table, which will have a spiffy PVC frame lifting it up to 12 inches. I will also build a wobble board, testing it with Azza first, of course, and drag that out there. And I hope to get some more PVC parts when I'm in the US this summer and build four jump wings to help start the handlers on distance work.

So I have grand plans, even though I have to be very patient to put them all in place!