Dog Stress Part 1

I mentioned last time that our dachshund, Sam, was undergoing a bout with Intervertebral Disc Disease. This is one of those breeder produced diseases that comes from those in the dog show world trying to mold living creatures to some imaginary “standard”. In addition to IVDD these ailments include glaucoma, hip or elbow dysplasia, epilepsy, Cushing’s disease, cataracts, hydrocephalus, cardiomyopathy, lymphoma, osteosarcoma, patellar luxation, retinal atrophy, upper airway syndrome, and to mention just one more result of breeding to produce a desired body shape, English bulldogs can no longer give birth naturally because of the artificial selection of narrow hips and all pups must be delivered by caesarean section. This list is unfortunately but a few of the conditions caused by generations of inbreeding, and if you are a dog lover it should horrify you. But it is the standards embraced by the show dog circuit that have led to these problems and have cut short the life of many an animal that those in the dog fancy profess to love. Personally I think what they are in love with is self-aggrandizement in much the same way parents lose all control when pushing their children into sports or other activities that they wish they had excelled in themselves. But all that is a rant for another day. See http://avetsguidetolife.blogspot.com/2014/08/messed-up-breedswere-responsible.html  for more information from a veterinarian. This entry is an “up close and personal” account of one dog and his owners coping with one specific disease.

Early last spring I got the first warning sign but didn’t recognize it. I had Sam out for a walk and just as we started, instead of eagerly plunging ahead, Sam sat down and refused to go further. I reached down to pet and reassure him and noticed his body was quivering. I picked him up and carried him back to the house and sat down next to him on the floor rubbing him and helping him relax. I thought that he was having a very mild seizure. I had owned other dachshunds that had occasional seizures – maybe once or twice in their lives – it seems that this is a breed thing and doesn’t require medical care unless it is regular and persistent. So finally Sam stopped quivering and relaxed and spent the rest of the afternoon napping next to me on the couch. Life went on and the incident was nearly forgotten. Then two months later the other shoe dropped. Coming home from playing at a wedding on a Saturday night we noticed that Sam didn’t come running to greet us. Instead he just sat on the floor panting loudly. Then he would get up and pace as if looking for something. It was definitely atypical behavior and touching his back I could feel what I now could identify as muscles spasms all along his back and sides. We had no idea what to do, so after a quick call to an emergency vet, at 9:30 at night we piled into the truck and away we went. At the vet’s he got a spinal x-ray which looked normal and his spasms stopped so we were told to keep him from vigorous activity and sent home with some pain medication.

Two days later we were back at the emergency vet with stronger spasms and it was now evident that Sam was in pain. A different vet saw him and then we heard the dreaded diagnosis “herniated disk” and told to give him strict crate rest for three weeks. Again his spasms gradually receded and muscle relaxant was added to his meds. We set up the ex-pen in the living room and began the routine of carrying him outside to do his business. Three weeks later he seemed normal and enjoyed another three weeks of regular activity. We didn’t know it but we had just been through a warm up for the main event.

Summer madness

Summer's half over and I'm trying to catch my breath. Late in May my mother-in-law passed away and my wife has been busy trying to help get her small estate in order and prepare the house for sale.

About the same time our dachshund suffered a back episode requiring us to take him to the emergency (read "expensive") vet twice in a three day period. After three weeks of strict crate rest he seemed to have recovered and led his normal doggy life for another three weeks before another episode. This time he was sent to Iowa State Veterinary Clinic where he underwent two spinal surgeries within 3 days. (For those unfamiliar with the dachshund breed, because of their long backs, they - along with other long backed breeds such as Corgis and Bassets - have a congenital tendency toward Intervertebral Disc Disease. I won't go into it - you can Google it.) After 2 weeks in the hospital, much of it in intensive care, he is now at home where we are trying to help him regain use of his hind legs. The costs of this are massive and ongoing. My hair was thinning and I may resemble Mr. Clean when this is over. My sisters and brother-in-law set up a gofundme page to try and help out. You might want to check it out Sam's Surgeries . If you just want to see this guy and what's going on with him you can check his facebook page The Sam Chronicles . I could go into a rant here about what the dog show crowd has done to purebred dogs from hip dysplasia in large breeds to breathing problems in bulldogs and pugs to these back problems in dachshunds, but you can research it yourself. Look at pictures of these breeds from the early 20th century and look at them now. Inbreeding has weakened purebred dogs for the amusement of dog show participants.

In the middle of all this the community theater that my wife and I play in the orchestra for did their annual summer production. This year it was "The Music Man". Every community theater in Iowa must put this one on at least once and as a result it becomes hackneyed and overdone. Surprisingly under new direction this production was a real winner. It was a pleasure to rehearse and great fun to play the performances. I've complained long and hard elsewhere in these pages about inept direction for amateur production but this was a welcome exception. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if we hadn't been dealing with an invalid pet.

All of this took place after a sort of mixed blessing in that I finally retired from my support position in the banking industry. I looked forward to having a lot of time to do things I had put off doing for years but those things are getting but brief attention as I deal with every thing else rolling downhill. I considered a lengthy rant about the horrible inefficiencies of the banking industry - you know something is wrong when a whole industry can afford to waste so much money, but I'm sure that kind of information is available elsewhere and I would just like to put it all behind me.

Now here it is nearly the first of August, with Labor Day a month away and where has the summer gone? I'm kind of glad we didn't try to have a summer trip this year, but looking forward to the early Christmas gathering of my family near New Orleans in November.

Do Not Drive Into Smoke

(Please excuse any formatting peculiarities on this entry, blogspot has conveniently decided to not let me use their full featured editor)
Long ago in a galaxy not so far away I made a trip from Illinois to California in a 1955 Chevy. People made trips similar to this in similar vehicles in those days and thought nothing of it. This was in the days before the interstate system was complete and much of this journey was made on two lane highways. On the outbound leg of the journey while driving through Oklahoma I noticed highway signs which said "Do Not Drive Into Smoke". I thought this was odd, but saw no smoke during my passage and thought little of it.

A couple of months later on the return trip in the heat of August with no AC and the windows wide open I chose to go by way of Kansas and mid afternoon near Hiawatha I saw a cloud of smoke drifting toward the highway. Having seen no warning signs in Kansas I drove on. At 50 miles per hour and too late to do anything about it, I noticed just before entering the smoke that it looked strangely particulate. No sooner had I noticed this than I was in the cloud and instantly the car was filled with grasshoppers!

When I say filled, I mean that there was not a cubic inch of space inside the car that did not contain a grasshopper. At highway speed I couldn't get pulled over until I was through the cloud and by that time I had grasshoppers in my hair, in my clothes, all over the seats, clinging to the upholstery and ceiling, covering the dash and floor, and in every vent and cranny of the Chevy. A long period of "debugging" myself and the car ensued and even a year later I was still finding grasshopper carcasses in forgotten crevices of the machine.

I was irate and freaked out at the time and wondered why more information was not supplied by the warning signs in Oklahoma. But then what would travelers of the times made of signs saying "Do Not Drive Into Grasshoppers"?

Catching up..

Last post was in March – wow. Certainly gives an indication of how interesting life is here in Iowa. Don’t know whether this may be a symptom of blogger’s block or not. It seems that even some of the most interesting blogs eventually either grind slowly down or deteriorate into minutia of day to day existence that really isn’t that riveting. Whatever the case, it seems that my creative juices get stirred the most when I am outraged about something. Maybe I’m calming down as I age. (yeah – right).

Now it seems that blogger will not allow me to edit and format this blog in their "compose" mode. I can get around in HTML but web technology has really progressed to where expecting WYSIWYG shouldn't be extraordinary. Blogger, I've moved this blog once, I can always move it again. But I digress.

Winter has descending on Iowa in full suck. Temperatures the first week of December hovered around zero at night while temperatures in Juneau, Alaska were in the 30s. What’s wrong with this picture? The first measurable snowfall of the season left 4” on the streets and the usual horde of clueless motorists learned all over again that this strange white stuff could ruin your plans as you selected your speed from two options – too slow or too fast. The Des Moines street department apparently uses snow as a Darwinian device to remove drivers from the roads since they steadfastly refuse to start to clean the streets until after the snow has stopped. Ten o’clock news casts become slide shows of bewildered doofuses standing beside vehicles firmly ensconced in ditches that arrived there by way of excessive speed coupled with a lack of understanding the coefficient of friction between rubber and frozen water.

I really find it ironic that the season of the year where people are in a frenzy of shopping, traveling and merry making has, largely because of climate change, become a season of very difficult, hazardous and dangerous travel. Years ago the coldest weather occurred in January and the holiday season experienced gentle snows and temperatures in the 20s and 30s. It’s been pretty obvious for some time that nature is trying to get our attention “Hey!! You people are screwing this up!” but it becomes particularly pointed as each December seems to get a bit worse. My extended family finally gave up and now celebrates the holidays in October or early November. I’m sure that there are some who would point to a deeper meaning of Christmas that now seems nearly forgotten.

Over the weekend spent seven hours rehearsing and the performing annual “sing along Messiah”. Tonight playing quintet gig at local hospice. In college I could play with a different group every day and performances most nights and still play dance jobs on Friday and Saturday. Nothing says aging quite like the fact that I need some recovery time.

So as I grind on toward retirement next June, after which I may have more time to ruminate by way of this medium, I’ll try to find more interesting tidbits to share here.

Microsoft - you ignorant slut!

Last night my Windows 7 desktop informed me that it had “critical” updates available. This happens on an average of once a week since Microsoft seems unable to get their products right the first fiftieth time. The Windows 7 update application also watches out for any updates it thinks are necessary to applications other than those belonging to Microsoft, because after all, Microsoft knows more about everything you may have on your computer than anyone else including you. So when it informed me that it had an update driver for my Nvidia graphics card I was surprised but willing to give it a try since I had been having issues with the card crashing when I was playing a MMORPG.

So after a 20 minute wait – standard for any Windows update – the computer restarted (really Microsoft? Really?? After all these years we still have to restart the machine after all updates and most software installs. Bush league Microsoft, bush league!) and low and behold all the graphics settings were hosed. I couldn’t get back to my original screen resolution. I tried to open the Nvidia control application only to be told that no Nvidia card was available!

Fortunately, and I almost hate to admit this, Microsoft did something right and included a restore feature in Windows 7 that allows you to return your machine to a previous state after they mangle the settings. This of course took half an hour and another restart but now I am back to where I was after over an hour of time totally wasted. The first version of windows came out in 1983. Thirty years ago!!! And Microsoft still can’t get it right. Seen Windows 8 yet? What a mess. Can you imagine using a machine with Windows 8 for business purposes? One can only hope that this is the final straw that pushes large business users like my employer over the edge and on to Linux.

Soul Sucking - Cable Company Style

About 13 years ago I signed up with the local cable company. Since Des Moines is the equivalent of a little cow town sitting in the middle of nowhere when it comes to modern conveniences, there was only the one company. Our cable bill at that time was $30. I’m sure that by now anyone that has even heard of cable TV can see where this is going. Our cable bill last month was $80. No premium channels, no TIVO or other DVR, no cable box to eliminate punching in arcane codes to get each channel, no frills, just basic cable. $80 a month.

We’ve made several attempts to get some kind of satellite TV either DISH or DIRECTTV but we have this enormous 80+ year old oak tree in the way on the south side of the house. One installer came out and told us how much of the tree we would have to cut away to allow the dish to view the satellites. Four hundred dollars worth of tree work later the next installer told us we should have cut away more. So rather than keep pouring money into tree work and perhaps endangering the life of the tree we stopped going down that path.

So now we are trying to cut the cord by way of antenna TV and streaming internet. Our broadband connection is provided by our phone company and it has been satisfactory up to now. Service when needed has been courteous and prompt. Just last month our modem was swapped out at no cost to us either for the service call or the hardware. However this is DSL. And slow DSL at that coming in at purported speed of 1.5 mbps – when the wind is right and you hold your mouth just so. Contacting the company about higher speeds revealed they are not available because they are dependent on fiber optics and we are trapped in the 1950s Des Moines.

A couple of hours of frantic googling revealed that the only non-business route to higher speed broadband here in Hog Hollow is through (dramatic pause) our cable company! Their rates start at $29.95 the first year, but then start the periodic (monthly) increases so familiar from their cable TV service. So in order to get rid of cable and have a high speed internet feed we have to deal with the very company we are trying to escape from. This is capitalism? Who gave these guys this monopoly? This company (that rhymes with PediaPom) has a license to commit obscene acts on their customers without so much as dinner or a kiss.

Tires - Give me a break!

This morning when heading out to work at 7:10 AM with temperature at 12 degrees (F) a tire was low. An attempt to fire up the compressor ensued. When temperatures are below 15 the compressor tries to start up and then promptly trips a circuit breaker. Now the house must be unlocked and a descent to the basement to flip the breaker follows. Then the compressor operates normally – every time. It’s like a ritual. Below 15 degrees? Compressor on, breaker off, reset breaker – everything returns to normal. Even when it’s 10 below zero you only have to try once. The compressor is like a sulky little kid that wants a piece of candy before doing what you want. It’s just one of life’s little annoyances.

The part that puts a burr under my saddle is the whole tire problem. Hold up your hands if you have tires on your vehicle over a year old and none of them have a slow leak. No one? I thought so. This is a case where “if they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they…” actually applies. We have had self sealing suits for our astronauts since the first space walks back in the 1960s. Is it too much to ask that this kind of technology be applied to tires? What good is a 50,000 mile tread warranty if the tire starts to leak after 10,000 miles and you are told “it can’t be repaired, it’s a break in the sidewall “ or some such nonsense? It’s a boatload of crap the size of the raft of the frigate Medusa. Just try and find a tire store that will actually repair a tire. There is always a reason why they can’t. Back when all I could afford to drive was a beater, when a tire leaked I bought a two dollar plug kit, stuck a plug in a leak myself and went merrily on with tires as bald as Uncle Fester and as old as the car itself. What changed? Now all you have to do is brush the curb and the next day you’re lucky if there is enough air in the tire to get out of the garage. We’re not talking about fly by night “Tires by Guido” black market specials either. These are Michelins or the equivalent. The tire industry seems to be the mac daddy of built in obsolescence.

Give me a break!