Blog move is now complete, just ahead of my blogoversary! Please visit my new home @ Crafty Catastrophy
Thanks!
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Coming soon at a new day and time
Or perhaps just a new url. I'm combining all the blogs... yes there are 3 at various states of active, into one and moving them to a common URL to make managing the blog a bit easier and allowing the delusion that my life is a bit more entertaining haha so please update your feed or you can re-subscribe at the new location. We hiked Latourell falls today, the update is over on the combined blog which has all the feeds combined and should move to the new location tomorrow
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
A very long night
This week started out a bit rough, I don't like the time change and having to adjust an hour so I'm usually groggy for a few days while I adjust. Add to that we're very busy at work so I'm in 2 hours early every day and Monday was a very long day. That should have been the worst of it but seems it can't be that simple here. We went to bed last night and I was reading in bed for a bit before going to sleep and hear the sound of nails on the metal track for the closet doors, I got out of bed thinking Lizzie managed to tangle herself in her blanket and she was freaking out being confused over being stuck but it was not that simple.
Tried to pick her up to extract her from the blanket and she began to flair around, by this point Jay was awake so I asked him to turn on his bedside light thinking the light would help reduce her confusion but once it was on something completely different. As I was holding her she left leaning to one side and she is not a dog who likes to be held so she was upset and wiggling around to get away, then we saw her eyes which were rapidly moving side to side and she was drooling all over me. She was not confused, this was much worse and was leaning toward looking like one of Indiana's seizures. Then just when it seemed like she was calming it got even worse, she got sick and I set her on another blanket while I was passing Jay the towel she'd been sick on and she just laid there and wouldn't move, and her bladder let go. At this moment, looking at a dog that seemed unable to move and losing control of her body functions I was pretty convinced we were losing her. She's 13 and had a very bad start in life. She was breed stock for a puppy mill somewhere in Ohio, she had 10 litters in 5 years at which point the miller allowed a rescue to take her and others under the agreement they didn't look too close at the operation, she's blind in one eye now and losing her hearing at a much more progressed rate than Indiana who is less than a year younger.
We scooped her up and rushed her to the emergency vet and waited for the vet to examine her and sort out what was really going on. While we waited we had the unpleasant discussion of how far we were going to go with her for any sort of treatment. Even after 7 years with us she is still skittish with strange people and places, we tend to side with less is more wanting her to be comfortable and happy but not wanting the road to get back to that point to be misery for her, if the quality of life is diminished after going through a long process of less than pleasant treatment for her we aren't convinced its worth it. If she's going to require an exceptional amount of handling and close interaction even from us after she's recovered it will stress her out and make her miserable but as it turned out it wasn't necessary. We now both agree on where we stand with any extraordinary treatment but as it turns out she had a bad case of vertigo. Canine Vestibular Syndrome was the diagnosis and it was causing a severe case of motion sickness which is why she was flopping over to her side and was unable or unwilling to stand, I'd expect it would be about as fun as the night I drank too much and the room was spinning without actually being drunk and for a dog that doesn't understand what is happening I could see that being immensely confusing hence causing the stress that led to her laying on the floor looking like she was dying. We were told to give her Dramamine to calm the motion sickness and the problem itself should clear itself within a week.
We took her and went on our way to stop at a pharmacy on the way home and pick up some Dramamine only to realize that in a city of this size, there is apparently no such thing as a 24 hour pharmacy, really? I grew up in Michigan and there were 24 hour pharmacies and groceries everywhere and in this city that was exponentially larger we couldn't find one. We managed to find the grocery near the house was open for another 10 minutes when we passed so I got her meds and took her home to get her settled.
Here we are this morning, she came out for breakfast and ate just fine then crawled into her bed which was previously next to the wall. As she was trying to burrow she ended up rolling into the wall so I moved the bed next to the couch so at least she wasn't hitting the hard wall and she did not approve of me moving her bed, quite the creature of habit we have here haha. She's still not feeling great I can tell by how she's laying, she curls up when she doesn't feel well, but she's comfortable and is able to walk slowly around the house with minimal toppling over
Indiana is confused as to why I'm home, since I didn't sleep and didn't want to leave her right away to possibly hurt herself in her crate I opted to not go into work today so I could get some rest and make sure she won't cause any further problems to herself.
Maggie doesn't care, she just wants to know why I've got the camera in her face while she's napping. She was upset last night, probably because Lizzie smelled like the vet when we returned with her.
Tried to pick her up to extract her from the blanket and she began to flair around, by this point Jay was awake so I asked him to turn on his bedside light thinking the light would help reduce her confusion but once it was on something completely different. As I was holding her she left leaning to one side and she is not a dog who likes to be held so she was upset and wiggling around to get away, then we saw her eyes which were rapidly moving side to side and she was drooling all over me. She was not confused, this was much worse and was leaning toward looking like one of Indiana's seizures. Then just when it seemed like she was calming it got even worse, she got sick and I set her on another blanket while I was passing Jay the towel she'd been sick on and she just laid there and wouldn't move, and her bladder let go. At this moment, looking at a dog that seemed unable to move and losing control of her body functions I was pretty convinced we were losing her. She's 13 and had a very bad start in life. She was breed stock for a puppy mill somewhere in Ohio, she had 10 litters in 5 years at which point the miller allowed a rescue to take her and others under the agreement they didn't look too close at the operation, she's blind in one eye now and losing her hearing at a much more progressed rate than Indiana who is less than a year younger.
We scooped her up and rushed her to the emergency vet and waited for the vet to examine her and sort out what was really going on. While we waited we had the unpleasant discussion of how far we were going to go with her for any sort of treatment. Even after 7 years with us she is still skittish with strange people and places, we tend to side with less is more wanting her to be comfortable and happy but not wanting the road to get back to that point to be misery for her, if the quality of life is diminished after going through a long process of less than pleasant treatment for her we aren't convinced its worth it. If she's going to require an exceptional amount of handling and close interaction even from us after she's recovered it will stress her out and make her miserable but as it turned out it wasn't necessary. We now both agree on where we stand with any extraordinary treatment but as it turns out she had a bad case of vertigo. Canine Vestibular Syndrome was the diagnosis and it was causing a severe case of motion sickness which is why she was flopping over to her side and was unable or unwilling to stand, I'd expect it would be about as fun as the night I drank too much and the room was spinning without actually being drunk and for a dog that doesn't understand what is happening I could see that being immensely confusing hence causing the stress that led to her laying on the floor looking like she was dying. We were told to give her Dramamine to calm the motion sickness and the problem itself should clear itself within a week.
We took her and went on our way to stop at a pharmacy on the way home and pick up some Dramamine only to realize that in a city of this size, there is apparently no such thing as a 24 hour pharmacy, really? I grew up in Michigan and there were 24 hour pharmacies and groceries everywhere and in this city that was exponentially larger we couldn't find one. We managed to find the grocery near the house was open for another 10 minutes when we passed so I got her meds and took her home to get her settled.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The Hike That Almost Wasn't
Rule number #1, never trust the weather forecast. I should know this having lived in Oregon for several years but apparently my desire to go for a hike overrode my brain and I went by the printed forecast after checking a few sites - I really should have checked the radar, oh well.
We started out and it was cloudy, we incorrectly assumed the weather would clear on the far side of coast range. Once we hit Elsie it was apparent the weather was not what we were expecting and with the brisk wind it does not make for a very nice hike. We stopped at Camp 18 for breakfast hoping it would clear as the forecast promised and while we ate we discussed alternate things to do since we had driven the hour to the coast. After breakfast the weather had not cleared and me, being me, remembered the outlet mall in Seaside which has a kitchen outlet... which might have some of the iron I'm hunting for, yay! oh wait, darn rain ruining our hike up saddle mountain.
The precious... Ok so its not the beautiful red Le Creuset that I've been drooling over for weeks but in process of deciding what I would use this size pan for the non-enameled pan was more practical and it can double as a really deep skillet. After wasting a bit of time wandering through the kitchen shop for things I really don't need and seeing it was still raining we decided to go with plan B which was to visit Ecola park on the coast and see if the weather was better, the radar I was able to see online gave the appearance that the weather was clearer to the south.
This place never gets old, the point is pretty high above the ocean and offers beautiful views of the coast. From here we had our choice of Indiana beach or Crescent beach, as we've been to Indiana beach before we opted for Crescent beach which you can just barely see on the left of this shot. Since the main trail washed out several years ago we had to take the trail through the trees which is a 2.4 mile out and back trail.
The sign at the trail head said this was cougar country, those are decidedly *not* cougar tracks and we found these as we were entering the trees, I pondered what else we might see if there were elk this close to the parking area.
Most of the trail was a nice smooth walk through the trees with the usual mud holes and several downed trees. As its early in the season there were a few trees down we actually had to crawl under, I'm hoping this is because its early in the season and the parks service hasn't been out to clean up from the winter storms.
Now this is a beach! Minimal traffic with the hike to get here along with it being early in the morning and misty rain, we didn't see another set of footprints anywhere in the sand. This rock formation was intriguing, unlike most of the rocks on the coast, larger versions of the small one in the foreground, this large formation was smooth and had the appearance of layer upon layer of sand in all different shades of browns with a bit of pink. Anyone know rocks to tell me what this one is? There is a closer photo of a smaller piece of it sticking out of the sand here
And Ecola from the beach, you can just make out a few remaining stretches of the old trail but if it was still here there would have been many more people and we had the beach all to ourselves today, ha! Sadly tide was coming in so we didn't have time to stand and admire the view, we headed down the beach to see what else might be lurking and found a waterfall flowing on to the beach
and the remnants of stairs that go up to the trail to Canon Beach. Nothing like a random waterfall at the beach right? I love waterfalls and since things will dry up with the approach of summer they're at their best now.
All in all a lovely day and a nice hike after our initial plan was thwarted by the weather, I didn't get off completely unscathed.
Lovely mud, something there seems to be a lot of on the coast trails. I actually fared better than Jay did, I slipped once trying to avoid a section that threatened to pull your shoes off, he slipped on another section and had to struggle to regain his footing and nearly got a mud facial compliments of the trail.
As always, full photos are in my Flickr album with many more shots along the trail, now I'm off to see if I can't get to sleep my body already seems to disapprove of the time change.
We started out and it was cloudy, we incorrectly assumed the weather would clear on the far side of coast range. Once we hit Elsie it was apparent the weather was not what we were expecting and with the brisk wind it does not make for a very nice hike. We stopped at Camp 18 for breakfast hoping it would clear as the forecast promised and while we ate we discussed alternate things to do since we had driven the hour to the coast. After breakfast the weather had not cleared and me, being me, remembered the outlet mall in Seaside which has a kitchen outlet... which might have some of the iron I'm hunting for, yay! oh wait, darn rain ruining our hike up saddle mountain.
Most of the trail was a nice smooth walk through the trees with the usual mud holes and several downed trees. As its early in the season there were a few trees down we actually had to crawl under, I'm hoping this is because its early in the season and the parks service hasn't been out to clean up from the winter storms.
And Ecola from the beach, you can just make out a few remaining stretches of the old trail but if it was still here there would have been many more people and we had the beach all to ourselves today, ha! Sadly tide was coming in so we didn't have time to stand and admire the view, we headed down the beach to see what else might be lurking and found a waterfall flowing on to the beach
All in all a lovely day and a nice hike after our initial plan was thwarted by the weather, I didn't get off completely unscathed.
Lovely mud, something there seems to be a lot of on the coast trails. I actually fared better than Jay did, I slipped once trying to avoid a section that threatened to pull your shoes off, he slipped on another section and had to struggle to regain his footing and nearly got a mud facial compliments of the trail.
As always, full photos are in my Flickr album with many more shots along the trail, now I'm off to see if I can't get to sleep my body already seems to disapprove of the time change.
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