Come Play with Bunny

It is apparently OK with The Man if Dirtbunny suggests to the world that he would consider the possibility of wearing Heidi Klum's scalp as a hat. Probably because he knows that the "world" (i.e., Bunny's known readership) consists of her Daddy (when he's not overseas) and Mel (who reads the stuff about the dogs and the yarn, but not the stuff about the food). Also, he knows Mel is too nice to think ill of The Man, and Daddy is so happy that someone took Dirtbunny off his hands that anything The Man does is just fine so long as Dirtbunny doesn't move back in with her parents.

I think I have probably fixed the comments to allow anonymous contributions from those who don't want the evil overlords of Blogger to know their stuff. That was what I always intended, but, you know, sometimes Bunny has problems.

Weather

So this is why I had to cancel my massage and also a doctor appointment:



We have quite a steep slope down to the street, so when there's ice, I'm trapped in the house, because I am afraid I'll fall and hurt my back. It was pretty for a while, and now it's gone. I'm starting to despair of getting any real, work-cancelling snow this year.

Yesterday was warm and sunny, just perfect for marinating the Tiki juice that is soaked into the sunroom rug and creating a lovely ammonia odor, perhaps what one might smell on the surface of Venus, if one's nostrils weren't burned up by the heat and acid. So we cleaned the rug. Yes, we clean up after every accident, but this time we did the super-duper move the table and deodorize underneath it job. And it worked and the room smelled normal and we enjoyed the sunny afternoon:

And then Kirby saw something scary and had to leave the room. What did he see? This:

A reflection on the ceiling. SCARY! I kept telling him that it wouldn't bother him if he would just stop looking to see if it was still there, but he wouldn't listen. Silly boy.

Blast!

So I'm supposed to be getting a massage right now, but we are having freezing rain and I am trapped in my house because of icy conditions. I really wanted a massage. I was supposed to have one last Wednesday, but Kirby was busy pretending to be dead/dying, so I didn't go. I know exactly which muscles in my neck and shoulders I wanted her to work on, too.

So now what? There's the Wahoos on TV tonight, but they are playing the ranked and despised Tarheels, and they are terrible this year and will only make me sad if I watch. There are election returns, but I will be asleep by the time there's anything to report, and I cannot bear the schlocky non-news they try to feed us based on 5% of precincts reporting.

I never did learn how to entertain myself.

Further Update

1. Our Special Boy continues to show no signs of any difficulty. He is his perfect, adorable, wonderful self. Still no clue as to what was wrong and how to prevent future incidents.
2. Dirtbunny, through trial and error, has figured out how to get her Anti-virus sweep to run. First, disable anti-spyware software. Second, do not connect/disable connection to internet. Three, run sweep. Elapsed time of last sweep: 45 minutes. Prior record: 2 1/2 hours. Four, able (un-disable?) anti-spyware software and internet connections. Five, business as usual.

I am very proud of myself for working out this problem. I really don't know how any of this techno stuff works. I just began to notice patterns and suspect interference from other programs and so I gave it a shot. Also, I am fully able to operate can-openers and doorknobs.

Beagle Update

Our Favorite Boy came home from the hospital Wednesday night. We had him home with us and all seemed well, but we were nervous about leaving him home alone yesterday, so we took him back for observation. It was an uneventful day. He is acting perfectly normal.

As I feared, the vet does not know what happened. We’ve ruled out some things, and are waiting for some more test results to come in, but we have no cause yet and, thus, no treatment plan really. This doesn’t do much to alleviate my worry.

We are probably looking at some neurological issue of indeterminate cause, maybe something congenital, maybe the effects of a trauma before we adopted him, maybe the effects of a small stroke. Once the last batch of test results rule out the other theories, we will probably be consulting with a doggie neurologist and take it from there.

Der Kirbenhund is acting just like himself and shows no signs of anything. He’s been playful and happy to see me, doing his characteristic little high-stepping happy prance that we love so much. Guess what? The vet thinks his high-stepping gait is not so much cute and quirky, but rather hypermetric, i.e., a possible symptom of a lesion on his little canine cerebellum. The high-stepping gait reflects him not having a good sense of where his feet are relative to the ground. We love his dorky walk and wouldn’t dream of changing it if it’s nothing more than a silly walk. If it’s a symptom of something more important, well, that’s a different matter, and a bridge to be crossed when we come to it.

A while ago, someone at the dog park asked me about the walk and wanted to know if Kirby had neurological problems. I thought that woman was a really big asshole. MY DOG IS PERFECT EXACTLY THE WAY HE IS! But she probably meant well after all.

Nemesis

This lives in front of our house:



Please to note the minivan whizzing by in the background. Suburbia, man, suburbia.



This is a recent note from our dog walker:

“Good walk today—they both peed several times and Tiki pooped. We met a
yellow Lab from afar* (neither dog was too impressed) and all went well until
the mailbox below your yard. Like Kirby has never seen it before...”

He’s getting better. Some days he pays no attention to the mailbox and walks right by with no struggle. But the dog walker is right. He’s lived here for 22 months and goes by the same mailbox two or three times a day, and still has trouble with it.



*That would be Eden. Eden spends a lot of time off-leash enjoying the sunshine from the front steps of her humans’ house. Sometimes, however, she wanders a little. She’s a nice girl and causes no trouble, despite her humans’ flagrant disregard for the leash laws. Recently, she wandered enough to warrant the posting of “Lost Dog” flyers. She has since returned home safely, but her humans still let her wander around off-leash at will. I don’t get it. My dogs are happy here and would not, I think, “run” away, but they might get distracted by a good smell and end up lost. We’ve already had one lost dog and I think it came close to killing The Man before we got her back. We learned our lesson. Eden’s family has not.

Special Boy

He's Fierce!

He's Nervous!

He's Sexy!

And he had a seizure this morning. When your beloved dog goes rigid, then limp, and then stops breathing for 30 seconds and won't be revived, all your other problems go away for a while.

He's at the vet now, being tested and watched while they try to figure out what happened and why. I'm working on not absolutely losing my shit.

I thought he was gone. Think good thoughts for him.

His Brains are Still in his Nose

Kirby cannot/will not jump. When he wants to be on the sofa or on the chair or on the bed, he does a little dance routine, sometimes accompanied by getting up on his hind legs, front legs on the sofa/bed, until he creates enough of a ruckus that he gets what he wants, i.e., someone picks him up and puts him where he wants to go.

Three times, and three times only, he has gotten up without help. Once, he got onto the bench at the foot of the bed. That's a pretty big jump, and he had to start from the hardwood floor, where there's no traction. Once, he got onto the sofa at the old folks' home. That was a much lower jump, and he got an assist from the rug.

This morning, he got onto the sofa here at home. A medium sized jump, and he went from one of his pads to the sofa, so he had some traction. He was down, and then he was doing his dance, and then he had his front paws up on the sofa cushion, and then he was up. Foom! All done. And he settled in as if nothing unusual had happened. We Good Boy'ed him in the hopes it would encourage him to try again, and we left his pad there so he'd have a secure traction sarting point.

It is as if it never happened. His tiny brain has forgotten that he can get up on the sofa all by himself. We are back to the pathetic dance.

Funny thing, though. He will go to great lengths to get next to his Bunny. Once he's there, however, he gives her the butt and ignores her.

Bunny May or May Not Post Later

The internet connection has been hinky Chez Nous, and our problem with the cable and the HDMI connection is back, and I don't know what is going on with the technology around here. I was finally able to run all my virus and spyware scans, so that felt good. But it is time to run them again, and that could take all day, the rate things have been going arond here. Off I go.