I Could Have Been A Storm-Chaser

I could have been a storm chaser. I love watching storms come in. I will stay there until they are on top of me. And then some. Also, I am awesome with directions. I don't even own a GPS, and until this year I didn't even own a smartphone (and even that one doesn't have access to internet unless I'm at home, so I have to do maps old school, or use my actual sense of direction, which rocks). I don't even know how many times my daughter has said to me, "Mommy, do you know where we are?" and the answer is, "No, but I still know I can get where we are going." And I do.

A few weeks back I was driving home from work when I heard the emergency alert system come on the radio.  Thinking it was "only a test," I didn't pay it much attention, until I realized it wasn't only a test.  Apparently there was a massive storm system moving through the area with winds 60-70 mph and rain and hail and fun kinds of things.  Which normally wouldn't be too much of an issue.  Except that we'd had almost two weeks with no rain and had put our yearlings in a pen with no run-in.  So.  Rapid acceleration home.  Based on the track of the storm, I had about 30 minutes to get them in.  And of course, the goats never make things easy.  And neither does my husband.

I got home, and started moving goats around.  Because I couldn't simply just open some gates and have that be the end of it.  I had to play musical goat pastures, and move the angoras in order to move the yearlings, and then move the angoras back.  Yeah.  And the yearling's gate was tied with bailing twine. (WHY WHY WHY???!!!). Even though I bought all these nice goat-proof metal clips.  I HATE when things are tied with bailing twine.  Because I do NOT carry a knife on me at all times, because I CAN'T due to work reasons.  Of course there was no knife to be found in the barn.  I briefly considered using my teeth.  Then I thought about just using brute force.  Eventually I got the gate open.  And three of the four yearlings pranced through.  The fourth one, of course, got her head stuck in the fence.  And refused to be helped.  In order to get un-stuck she had to go backwards, and all her pals were in front of her.  Meanwhile, the stormclouds had started rolling in and it was getting kinda dark.  And dogs were barking and leaves were starting to spin. Ok, so to be honest, that is when I started yelling at the goat.  Eventually I got her out.  Meanwhile, her buddies had disappeared into the barn and were scattered around to see what trouble they could get into while unsupervised.  And this is when I started to question my own sanity in even having goats.  I think it took another 15 minutes, but eventually I got everyone where they were supposed to be.  They were not at all thankful, but wanted to know where their grain was. Of course they did. I fed everyone super quick, and then locked up and left them to their own devices.  Somehow I managed to get it all done and the storm was still not yet here.

So I took some pictures.  Let me also just take a minute to mention here that one of our neighbors was actually outside raking leaves while the storm was rolling in. Not bagging them or anything, simply raking them into a pile. I have no idea why. It was a little strange.

Clouds moving in.

More clouds.

Right after I finished taking pictures (I only went inside when the rain started coming down), there was a loud explosion in our front yard.  Like fireworks. And more dog barking, only this time it was coming from my dogs. I thought our transformer was blown, until I realized that we still had power.  Our internet was dead though.  My husband didn't believe me about the explosion.  He kept telling me that I must have been seeing and hearing things (riiiight).  Until he went to the barn the next day and saw our electric fence charger blown into little tiny pieces in the barn.  The one that we just paid to have re-built. But at least nothing caught fire, right?

Storm rolling in

The ungrateful goats

Toby Gets His Christmas Request In

And it's finally October! I cannot say that I am sad to see September go. There were several good and great things that happened in the month of September this year, including our wedding anniversary, a wedding in our family, and a much-needed trip for me to visit friends in California.  But there were also several very horrible and stressful things happening that rather over-shadowed the good.

The main horrific thing had to do with Toby, who is like my second child.  For those people who understand, I do not need to explain.  For those of you who don't, no explanation is going to suffice. 

In case you don't remember Toby, he is my older, diabetic corgi:

Toby

At the end of August, I found an ulceratic lump growing underneath one of his paw pads.  This is a fancy way of saying it was bleeding ALL over the place. Strangely, for a dog who tries to bite anyone who messes with his feet (even me, if I am just trying to trim  his nails), this did not seem to put him in any abnormal amounts of pain.  And it certainly didn't affect his appetite.  For reasons to be explained below, my carpets may now be permanently stained, as I did not have time to pre-treat all of them.  Also, because of his treatment, I have not be able to to steam clean yet.  If you cannot deal with blood and gore, you should probably skip this post.  If you decide to read on, you have been warned.

So we wrapped the foot as best we could and took him to the vet.  We had to wrap it about 5 times in the course of an hour to get the wrap to stay on before we even got him to the vet. He kept getting it off.  Toby seemed to think it was some kind of game: "Hey! These people put this thing on my foot, I unwrap it with my teeth, and they wrap it again! Fun times!" Did I mention this happened on a Wednesday, when my husband and I both had to work, so Toby had all day to unwrap it and bleed everywhere before we got home? I think he definitely had home field advantage here. 

So, vet visit #1: they diagnosed it as potentially a very deep bacterial infection (given that we have the goats and all, this was a high probability), gave him lots of antibiotic, re-wrapped it, put a head cone on him, and sent us all on our merry way.  Toby was to come back every three days to get his bandaged re-wrapped.  Toby had the bandage off within 24-hours, even with the cone on.  Here is where it can be bad to have a smart dog.  He figured out that the friction of the carpet, combined with the wood strips where the rooms meet, make perfect places to rub the wraps against to get them off.  When I told this to the vet, her response was, "Well, you need to leave the cone on him all the time." Well, duh. I did. All all of your dogs stupid?  (I didn't actually say that last part).  So we tried putting a layer of duct tape over the last layer of wrap to cut down on the friction, which helped a little (it gave us an extra 24 hours). 

Then I had to go to California and leave Toby in the care of my husband for a week and a half.  Neither of them was particularly happy with this arrangement.  Toby, who previously had to be dragged (or carried) into the vet office because he was so unwilling to go in there, actually went in there on his own four feet the first time I took him when I got back.  I guess he figured that me taking him was a better deal than Chad taking him.  Chad had a vet visit while I was away, where they just put him on more antibiotics, still thinking it was an infection.  The first visit I had when I got back, it was at least twice the original size, definitely protruding above the paw pad (at first, you had to actually dig a little to find it), and gross.  I was determined that there would be no more antibiotics. Clearly, the antibiotic approach was not working. The vet agreed with me, and we scheduled surgery for within a few days, to include a biopsy of the lump.

Toby did well with the surgery.  Throughout the whole thing, with the wrap and the stitches, he adapted to life with a cone relatively well.  At first, he had his sonar bark, when he would need to find me.  That drove my husband a little nuts. But as soon as I called out to him so he could find me, he would stop barking.  

The other thing was needing to keep it dry and clean.  Whenever we took Toby outside, we had to put a plastic bag on his injured paw.  For the most part we had a dry week.  But we leave for work early in the morning when the dew is still on the grass.  So on went the bag.  And Toby is a water wuss anyway.  It didn't take him long to figure out that three of his paws were getting wet, while one of them was staying dry.  I will never forget the look he gave me one morning.  It clearly said, "Hey, Mommy, you have been holding out on me here. Why aren't all my paws covered! They could all be dry!"  I guess Toby wants dog booties for Christmas.  They actually make them. There are tons on Amazon. Here is just one pair that I found.

After about a week, we received the results of the biopsy, and found out how lucky Toby was. He had cutaneous extramedullary plasmacytoma.  Which, in this case, was a benign tumor.  It is not usually found under the pad of the feet.  They are part of a larger class (if that is right term) of plasma cell neoplasms; the majority of plasma cell neoplasms (97%) are malignant (source; National Canine Cancer Foundation).  So Toby got the "good" kind I guess. There is a small chance it could grow back and have to be surgically removed again, but if it does, it should be the same kind.  

So, September was quite the roller coaster ride, emotionally.  Given everything that was going on, and what Toby went through, how well he went through it, how cheap the dog booties are (and that Toby is likely to actually wear them), I may just cave and get him his booties for Christmas.