Hounds Sleep After Their Morning Walk

Although as the title says, the hounds are sleeping right now as I type this morning post. Heidi is back on the couch, Sadie in the 'big chair' and Stella right next to my desk chair. The photo above was from last night around midnight as I was watching a football game. Heidi decided she'd share one of her new blankets. They are not a noisy crowd when awake but they are extremely quiet when they sleep.

Before I go to bed a lot of times I think of what I'll do the next day. A lot of times 'the routine' looks like it will change the next day, but by the time the morning is few hours old we are doing nothing different than we do the majority of days throughout the year. There either isn't enough tasks listed that are that important to get done, or I'm just lazy. It's probably the latter ... the hounds took off running as soon as they were outside, they had waited long enough for the first walk of the day.

I was dressed perfectly for the weather. I didn't hear anything walking across the yard because it was cut low on Thursday but once in the field every step I took was amplified with 'crunching' sounds beneath my boots.

Some of fallen leaves, some older wild flowers are showing me it is more winter than fall. The tv weather expert says we are at lower than normal temps but of course that will change in a few days and then go back to freezing. I have only one thing I need to do before it rains again ... get back on the roof and blow the leaves out of the gutters. It's a quick job that probably takes me longer getting the ladder out of the small shed and extended out so I can climb on the roof than it does to clean the gutters.

With the hounds disappearing as they ran and me walking, I was happy to see they were just around the first turn. I knew why they were there and what their focus would be this morning. So I had to put my herding skills to work and get Stella headed in the direction of Sadie and I numerous times ... otherwise she would never leave.

We are headed to the vet this week. I'll be anxious to see how much Stella weighs and see how much weight she has gained back since last April. She was skin and bones then, only weighing 65 pounds after some sort of virus.

Sadie needs her annual shots and exam. Stella always goes with Sadie to the vet not because she likes to but because I don't know what she would do if I left her behind by herself. I could put Heidi in the room with her but I'd rather not see the worst case result if I can still manage getting both bloodhounds out of the FJ and into the vet. Taking all three hounds to the vet at the same time is impossible.

Once inside the vet waiting room, both hounds will always sit quietly and observe. The room is always packed. A few times there are too many dogs and cats for Stella, so if there is room she will climb up on the wooden seat to sit next to me. The crowded waiting room seems to enjoy bloodhound humor.

I take Heidi alone for her checkups. I purposely schedule them at different times of the year so I am not taking all three hounds at once or making two different trips the same week. Most of the time the annual trips are based on the date they first step their paws into the house on their arrival date years ago.

I always do the rabies shot because you never know when a possum, raccoon, or coyote might surprise us outside in the dark when we take our last trip outside for the day. It's never happened the twenty years I've lived here but sometimes I do pick up eyeballs as my flashlight scans the field at night.

I had to match this red leaf with the yellow one I took before. Those two leaves were the only ones with any color, that were laying in the field as we walked. I miss having the field mowed before winter but it's really not tall enough to make that much of a difference.

That is one good thing about blogging ... you can look back in time and see just what it was like a year ago or longer. I can also tell if there is any changes in the hounds over time.

With the paths made by different ATVs and the pickup truck as the owner of the field checks out his land .. I wonder if the field will even be cut next summer. Years ago the previous owner would spread fertilizer from the turkey farms behind these fields. It use to be full of grass and had very few weeds or wild flowers, if any at all. I was told by the boy that bales the field, the current owner would not let them apply fertilizer to his field.

I may end this post with just the rest of the photos. I am kind of out of words this morning if you haven't noticed and am finding it hard to write about anything.

It's another day of football today but the tv schedule that I print out listing all the college games and the channels they are on, shows I have a chance to get to bed earlier than normal. Sounds good to me since I am a little behind in my sleep for the week.

Just below freezing here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

I'm In Total Hibernation

It looks like it has been a while since my last post, that talked about being a nester or an explorer. In the past 18 days since my last post I have turned into a serious hibernator more than anything. It's not even snowing yet, temperatures are fantastic for this time of year but that hasn't got me outside a lot. It's like I am almost house bound and I'll tell the reasons further down the page.

The hounds and I are fine and still get in the daily dog walk unless the ground is so saturated where it is just too muddy, soft or wet to walk through the field. With Winston's belly so close to the ground when he walks, it doesn't take much to get his whole underside wet if the hay is damp when walking. Sadie will walk in snow, rain, wind or fire ... she just doesn't care what the weather is doing when she hears the word "walk". Heidi on the other had is strictly a good weather walker. If she finds herself having to 'tip toe' through the yard or field, she does a 180 and sprints for the house and refuses to go.

Heidi and I went for a vet followup visit on November 28 to check on her treatment for erythema and alopocia. There was improvement but not as much as I thought would happen after a month of daily doses of 100mg of Atopica, medicated shampoo baths every 4 days and diphenhydramine (benadryl 50mg) every 8-12 hours to prevent itching. Yet, the vet was very happy with the progress. We walked out with a $16 bill or a 'check-up' visit and a month supply of Atopica worth $150 for free because he had started the treatment process. She wanted me to continue the daily doses for 2 more weeks than move to giving the Atopica every other day.

I will say in the past week Heidi has looked the best she has in a long time, skin-wise. All 4 of her paws have a thick growth of hair, along with under her neck and her rear hocks are starting to show a layer of hair coming back. Of course whenever there is some kind of allergy involved, the question lingers in back of the mind asking, is t the medication working or is it the season change where allergies are not as prevalent?

Anyway, either way she is looking much better and it's nice to know that steroid shots were not needed for the improvement. We go back January 9 for a followup. After that I am hopeful the skin problem will be under control with doses of Atopica maybe every 3-4 days from then on. The vet says that is the plan and it should work out to less dosage year round for her allergy control.

One thing I like about blogging is the function of record keeping. When I glanced back through 2011-2013 in the month of December I saw that last year I only posted one time in December. It was on December 9th, a picture of the Coachman was sitting in the back covered with 12" of snow. I had forgot that it snowed that early in the month. After seeing that I was pretty happy with the current daytime temperatures in the low 40's most of the time. Also it also showed me that I rarely posted during the month of December, 3 times in 2012 and 5 times in 2011 only a couple of months after starting the blog.

So I guess for me it's just normal not to post much in the month of December.

I do write on two other blogs that I have now. One is a personal journal that I write in every morning. I started that journal in late August. I like doing that because it kind of clears my mind. Plus I wanted a way to record my mood swings and health conditions. It will also give me a record for any computer issues and solutions, and a history of what the hounds have done. That blog is in the private status and I decided to use that format because it was much more convenient using Blogger rather than Microsoft Word.

The other blog was just started this week. As you know I am a sports junkie. Over the years I would send out an email before every game IU played in football or basketball, to a group of friends I went to college with, back 40 years ago. These emails would cover stories, statistics or previews. This year the 'roar' seemed to get louder from the small group of friends saying "you need to start a blog and write about all of this".  I thought about it off and on but thought 3 blogs were too much.

Then I decided why not? The purpose would be a little different than the private journal and this blog about my rv research, retirement life and future travels. Unlike this blog, I also wanted to add some Google Adsense and some sports affiliate links for some possible income. So this week I decided to take the plunge and started a new sports only blog, talking about no specific team or sports, just sports in general.

That small group of friends liked the first post so much they passed the blog link out to their sports friends and family scattered all over the USA and it is showing me through google states I am getting some pretty good traffic after just a couple of posts. One friend even said that I might have to go into hiding after writing in such a controversial tone about our favorite team....lol. I even signed up for a Google + account, put all the settings to public to get the blog spread out as much as possible.

No matter what time of the year or where I am, my interest in sports is always there and I am always reading about it or watching it, so the sports blog should be pretty fun. I'll not have any problem finding something to write about.

Speaking of those Google stats that are provided to bloggers using Blogger as their blog platform, behind the scenes on your blog traffic, it showing this past month that the Ukraine not only passed Canada in number of visitors but also moved to the #1 spot above the blog visitors in the USA. How strange is that? Are they trying to hack me or do they just like the hounds? I don't know.

So I have added a couple of new blogs to the list of blogs for those that are interested in security news, online or shopping. One is the LastPass blog. It is the free service I use for all of my passwords to my banks, and any other sites, all encrypted passwords. The other blog is about security not only on your computer but also credit cards. That blogger usually has a new post every day M-F with some great information. Like today I found out that my browser updates did not run and install automatically along with the Microsoft Office for Mac. His blog will always be near the top of the list because he blogs frequently.

Since I am hibernating there might be some readers wondering if I am sitting in front of my computer 15 hours per day or am I still using that Nikon D3200 camera I bought a few months back and if I am why not any pictures?

I am spending very little time on the computer. Just enough to write, read blog updates and sports news. The rest of my day is including a lot of book reading, more than I had planned on but I can't stop reading and am finding books that I have bought but never read until now. I am still downsizing plus some normal indoor maintenance/updates that comes with home ownership. I pop in an occasional movie. I finally sorted all of my DVDs alphabetical. That will prevent this older brain from buying duplicate movies which I found about 7 different shows where I did that after I sorted them.

I use the camera almost every day but those photos are not much different than what you have already seen of the back field, sunsets to the west taken from my yard or the hounds. The hounds are not really doing much besides winter sleeping. Sadie won the war on changing the dinner time for her and the bassets. When we "fell back" in the fall for the time change, she would come and sit by the desk at 3pm not 4pm if she had not been fed yet. Then as Heidi started feeling better she started barking at 3pm wanting to be fed and Winston walks toward his bowl but just sits and stares as if to say "what are their problems". So we eat by 3pm based on the bloodhound's demands. So much for the time change.

I will say there have been a couple of close calls but I have NOT dropped the camera or lens, I haven't dropped the new iPhone or iPad Mini. I love the Mini iPad even more than the larger, heavier 1st generation iPad that I used previously. The retina display is fantastic and I can tell the difference with my eyes. My glasses are not needed to read the smaller fonts.

Well it looks like I have rambled on enough here. I'll try to load some photos on my next post and will try to start blogging her more. It's hard to decide sometimes what is boring and what is interesting to readers since my current lifestyle is pretty mundane.

I do enjoying reading my blog list to keep track of everybody. Weather-wise it sounds like the best place to be most of the time is in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Heidi Has a New Vet & New Treatment

As you may remember a few posts back I talked about Heidi's ongoing problem with allergies that have become worse over the past year. It was noted when I bought her from Basset Rescue (GABR), along with her medical records, that she had an ongoing allergy problem. So it is something we have been dealing with not every month but usually 6- 8 months out of the year.  Over the past year the treatment from my vet had changed from a pill to a shot. I was under the assumption it was an allergy shot, like you or I would get if we had allergies. Months ago after I dug a little deeper on the internet about the ingredients of the shot, I found they had changed from a pill for allergies to a steroid shot.

I didn't like that change so I started looking at other alternatives last spring. No one or no test could pinpoint what she was allergic to. Was it a food allergy, grass or walking through the hay field, environmental or seasonal.

I always suspected environmental because it didn't last all 12 months of the year but also occurred at different times through all 4 seasons. I had also tried different types of dry food, grain free, lamb based, duck & chicken based and even salmon based dry kibble. Last summer I tried a food supplement called Dinovite without any change in her skin problem. These past couple of months I have added coconut oil to her food with nothing really working.

No change ... so I didn't think it was food related.

Throughout the past year I had tried different antibiotic sprays, specialized shampoos with oatmeal or aloe vera. As one reader suggested I tried a solution to treat mites. Nothing improved. Last week I found some antibiotics left from Winston's script last spring and gave Heidi the last of those, which amounted to 2-1/2 days of antibiotics .... improvement.

Since her annual check up, annual shots and the steroid shot in late September I had decided for the first time in about 8 years that I was going to look for a different vet. There were other reasons to look somewhere else besides the treatment. Due to my location, plus living in a small town, there are different vets to choose from but 16-25 miles away. I do have a local vet but stopped going to him 8 years ago. I was about to chose  a vet that is my neighbor but has his office 18 miles away. He is more into the treatment of farm animals for the local Amish/Mennonite farms 18 miles away but also uses alternative treatments for dogs. For some reason I had not called his office for an appointment yet.

Heidi's skin problems came back very rapidly after the antibiotics were stopped and was in the worse shape I had ever seen. To help relieve the redness, swelling and I'm sure soreness, I gave her a bath where not only did she soak with the shampoo but also a nice soak in warm water after the shampoo rinse. She laid in the water up to her neck almost dozing off.

I had decided to call the next morning for an appointment for the new vet 18 miles away. It was after their office hours so it would have to wait till Tuesday morning before I could call. I guess timing is everything. Late Monday night I received an email from my friend that lives in that town 18 miles away, where my neighbor's vet office is located, asking if I had seen the new vet in my town. I had passed this place twice in the past month on my way out of town but had not noticed the house that had recently sold was turned into a new veterinary clinic. I had missed their sign in the front yard.

I spent a few minutes reading their website about their business, the staff, their services and treatments. They sounded like they had a good business plan along with being a paperless office. I made my appointment online, after midnight. They confirmed my appointment by email and a phone call yesterday morning. I normally wouldn't write about a vet visit in detail but in this case I am. Not a lot of detail but just a few highlights that stood out, changes from my past vet and finally some answers after years of asking if there was anything else we could do for her besides just a shot that was no longer working for a month or so but closer to 2 weeks. Was there a different kind of food I should be feeding her?

This older house had been remodeled into a vet clinic ... very nice design and workmanship. After the receptionist double checked my address, phone number and email address that I had posted online ... Heidi and I proceeded to our treatment room. Soon after the vet tech stepped inside, sat her laptop on the table where you would normally lift your dog or cat for them to inspect. But she sat on the floor to get to Heidi's level ... asking questions as she petted her. At no time was I asked to put Heidi up on the table so she would be at the vet's level. We covered a lot of information with questions and answers. The only time I saw her go to the computer was after she took Heidi's pulse and temperature. That is something I want you to remember for later in this story.

Next the vet came in. She also sat her laptop on the table, where I would normally lift my hound for them to look out. Remember this is a paperless office so they had laptops and no folder with written files. The vet also sat on the floor at Heidi's level and gave her a thorough inspection while asking questions and giving me answers to my questions. A lot of information was covered between us. Not once did the vet go to her computer to type what was being said. She left the room after we were finished our discussion and her inspection of Heidi then came back with 3 options for me to consider based on her analysis.

Steroid shots nor allergy shots were an option.

During our discussion I was really impressed with her answers because not only where they detailed answers but the reasons why things were happening and how to treat it. They were the same questions I had asked my previous vet over the past 3 years of having Heidi treated for allergies ... only this time I had answers and not another steroid shot for the "quick band-aide" fix.

She recommended a medicated shampoo to be used only until the other meds started to work. I found out it was not a food allergy. It was not something that could be cured and gone for good, it will be an ongoing problem just as it has been the past 5+ years for Heidi. I also was relieved to find out it was not a grass or a hay field issue. It is most likely an airborne environmental issue like any person has and can be treated with medication without steroids.

What is going to be different is getting her away from those steroid shots ... which is something I wanted. It is also going to be a program where once under control, it would not be something that would flash back after 3-4 weeks causing her pain, swelling and soreness ... it would be under control. At the same time it would be a treatment only when the allergies are active.

I chose the Atopica "The Comfort Club" program. It's a modified oral capsule (cyclosporine) USP for dogs, the same ingredient you or I would be able to take for skin issues. I also left with the Antiseptic Shampoo along with 50mg capsules of Benedryl for her itching, to be used only until the Atopica took effect.

Since it was a paperless office I only walked out with the medications and a small debit card receipt, knowing my invoice would be emailed to me in a pdf file. That was nice because I am also a paperless person and always took those receipts in the past and scanned them when I got home into pdf files. I had their invoice in my inbox within 10 minutes after leaving the office.

The surprise came around 4:07pm when I received an email from the vet office and an attached pdf file named "Heidi's Health Report Card". All of the discussions with the vet tech and the vet were typed in a detailed summary. (They were paying attention to what was said). They even included what kind of dog food she eats and what the main ingredients were. They included the vital signs with temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, pulse quality, CRT, hydration, and body condition. They listed her condition in a categorized list based on their observation...even noting her ears were clean, something they mentioned at the time that they don't normally see in basset hounds.

They asked me if they could take a couple of pictures of Heidi's skin issues for their files and website, as they wanted to track improvements of her condition.

Heidi was cooperative throughout the visit, even rolling over on her back to show the vet her stomach and legpits issues ... without asking.

I'll update my leaf removal process in my next post.

Winston's Vet Visit

Winston came out of the vet visit in good shape and some prednisone, 20mg for his back. He had dropped a couple of pounds since last year's check up and shots. He was told he is in great shape for a 9yr old basset. His back problem is just a stage of getting older, maybe tweaked it and is inflamed. The prednisone will calm it down a little bit and then some buffered aspirin after that on a daily basis.

We are hitting record lows tonight in southern Indiana, high 20's. It's times like these I wish I were in warmer country and traveling. The thoughts of Arizona and Borrego Springs Ca always come to the surface when it gets cold.

What do traveler's do to prevent freezing damage while they are traveling and can't winterize their rigs? You could be headed south and hit below freezing temps for an over night stay, with full or partially full tanks. Asking that question shows you how much of a rookie I am in the RV game.

As it gets colder, I realize it's nice to have a home base with heat and long hot showers available.