Well trap season started up again tonight. I'm capitan of our team, we're called The Source in hopes that the local gaming store will come through on the sponsorship deal. If they don't well then we'll just deal and be goofily named. We have some returning cast and some new shooters. Rebecca and Dave and Shaun are new. Back again we have myself and Erik of course, and Tony, Sigrid, Rob, Eric, and Deanna.

Also on the new list, is a new barrel on my shotgun. Dad got me a 28" barrel and so I swapped it out for my 24". It swings very much nicer now. Like a real trap gun. Quite pleasing.

Tonight I did something dumb. I shot AWESOME. Durring the handicapping phase. Oh well.. I guess that means I need an awesome season. I hit 20 and 21. Oh well. I am hoping we end up in the bottom division again as we have some new shooters with scores in the single digits. Not that it matters deeply to us if we win or lose, but it's nice to feel sort of competitive.

For those worried about Mort after my last post, getting his pain under control has done tons for him. He's back to his old self, he stole the leftover steak I was prepping for dinner the other night.

Today I went trap shooting for what might be the last time this year, as the end is nigh, and the weather won't be great. I hit 18 at trap and 9 at sporting clays.

Mort's pink leg is due to knee surgery. He tore the ACL in his left leg. He's feeling MUCH better today. Soon we'll be in the hard to keep him low activity. He made his first escape attempt today... got half way down the stairs.

Kirk Sulu hurt Bean Seed Boy!

Mort is home from the vet. HIs leg is wrapped from toe to hip in pink vet wrap. And they shaved him WAY WAY up into his back. He is one pathetic looking mutt. He lays on the sofa and squeaks. I'm hoping he'll be feeling better soon.

Dog Action Shot!

Here's Ed, on our exciting afternoon. I know everybody posts action shots of their pets, and the internet is just rife with them, but you know the action! the drama! this is SOOO exciting!

It's been a doggy couple of days. That is to say Mort went to the vet for his regular visit on Monday. Tomorrow I should hear the results of his thyroid test. Tonight the dogs came in from the yard having been bitten. I don't know by what. I do not suspect they got into a fight with each other. That would be VERY unlike them. I can count on one hand the number of times they've bitten each other, and both of them have involved extreme people in their proximity stress, which in turn stressed them out and they took it out on each other.

Back in August I posted this about Ed and his leak. And our solution. Well for a month we've tried the fleece band. It has issues. It gets wet, it's not too absorbent, he gets fussy once it's wet and tries to get it off. Basically wet fleece is bad. So... On to prototype two.

This new model is made from a cotton dish towel that one of the dogs destroyed. Well they chewed some good food bit out of the corner anyhow. So.. Since it was headed for the rag bag anyhow... I cut it in half lengthwise. Took the smaller half (the one with the end chewed out) and cut off all the straggly ends and the finished edges, and folded it up into a pad several layers thick and about 3.5" wide by 6" long. I then sewed this into an outer band with a length sufficient to go around the dog. Once again closed with velcro.

So this model has more layers in the necessary area, and is stiffer, so he'll have a harder time escaping it. The old one he would some times worm out of, but more often he'd just push it back far enough that it wasn't covering the leaky bit.

Action shots to follow, once I get my camera back. It went on vacation to Russia without me.

Drippy Ed, what will we do with him? Drugs don't work. We've tried. Diapers, well you could do that but really they're meant for girl dogs and the absorbent parts are all in the wrong places. So..I tried making him a Drip Stop. He's wearing the prototype now. It's about two and a half inches wide, made of fleece (ugly fleece) and closes with velcro (currently the closure is on his back) I think it might work better on the bottom if he tolerates it well. Basically he's wearing a sort of doggy cumberband, that covers his leaky bits. It's been half an hour and 0 attempts to remove it. I have it secured with Velcro.(Yes, the real 3M stuff you freaks, otherwise I would have called it hook and loop fastener.) This should allow it to be removed easily to send him outside, and go back on fast on his way inside. Maybe this will be the end of the thrice daily house mopping. We'll see.

Well... While I was getting ready for bed I sucked it up. I called Ed over to me in the bathroom. I wiped off his former bump with a damp cotton ball, and looked at it again. Since I had last looked at it (Before dinner and a movie) it's clotted nicely and I wiped off all the excess blood in his fur. Now it hardly looks like anything at all except a little skin scrape that's healing over. I think unless things change I'll just let it go this way and have the vet look at it next week. It didn't appear to hurt at all me looking/poking/wiping at it. On that note I think I'll go to bed.

Backstory: Ed had this little warty lump on top of his head. It was rather like the one we had removed from Mort a while back. It had recently gotten sort of puffy and a bit bigger. I was figuring to have the vet look at it when he went in to have his thyroid levels checked again next week.

Well today we get to see reason #329 that it's probably true that I'm too dependant on toad. Ed had that bump on his head remember. Now it's gone and he's got a little ooky slightly bloody looking hole. I'd clean it up and look at it closer..but it makes me feel all queasy to look at it. Clearly if it were an emergency I'd suck it up and deal. But these little things....ooky. I think it's likely he scratched it off in his crate today. Cause it was there last night, and there this morning. But still he ripped off the little warty tihng. How gross. Now he's got a hole maybe the size of a pencil eraser in the skin right at the top of front of his head. I suppose I could snap a picture of it.. then look at it more closely. If toad were here she'd look at it close and give me input on if he should go in or if he'll survive.

He doesn't object to me looking at it. I did give it a fairly good look. It doesn't seem bad. It's not bleeding now. Just got a little clot stuck in the fur and a little patch of missing fur, and some missing epidermis. I expect it'll heal right over. Am I a bad pet owner for not taking him in? Maybe. I'll keep an eye on it. If it looks anything other than better in the morning we'll go to the vet tomorrow afternoon or Thursday. But otherwise I think I'll just let it go.

I suppose alternately the cat could have bit it off. She objects to all little tags of stuff on the dogs, rawhide, mud, whatever, she just gnaws and pulls and tugs until they come off. I didn't look close enough when I let him out of his crate. I noticed it while he was sitting next to me on the sofa.

woah..

I had totally forgotten I had moved my blog off of crosspaths.. Guess I need to get out from under a rock.

Interesting things since august... the landscaping is done, the leaves are down in the yard, and most of them are picked up. Mort has torn his ACL and is on reduced activity through thanksgiving.

I dare anyone to keep a beagle still for several months. Really. I do.

Ed goes to the Vet tonight. Lucky him, shots. OOH fun. Have to remember this when I get home, so as he actually gets there.

domestication and natural selection

just when you start thinking your sweet house pets aren't really animals any more they go and do something nasty to prove you wrong. In this case my beagles ate a whole nest of baby bunnies. Or at least 2-3 bunnies. And dropped one in the hallway in exchange for a milkbone, so I suspect mort had had his fill of rabbit. Blech...I hate dealing with dead things....but I sucked it up and did it. Toad should be so proud. I think later I might take them for a walk around the block or something. Just to get some energy off of them without having to let them back in the back yard for a bit. I suspect the nest was originally not in the yard, as bunnies even full sized ones rarely survive a few minutes in there, let alone a nest of them until the little ones were of mobile size.

This was bound to happen I think. After decades of helping girls catch up in the sciences, and the big deal everyone was making about how girls get noticed less in school, well they caught up. But now we have a new problem boys are now "behind" in reading and language skills. Well they were always behind, but now that girls are as good in the things boys were supposedly "just better" at, it occurs to someone they don't read as well as they could.

I have a co-worker who has an elementary schooler who hates to read. He doesn't like reading, he doesn't do too well at it in school either. She and her husband try very hard to find things for him to read that he might be interested in. guysread.com is a website about the guys read initiative to get boys more interested in reading by providing suggestions of books boys might like.

Guess what they don't dig things like Little House on the Prairie and Black Beauty and I suspect Judy Blume books aren't high on the list of things they like. But look how suprizing boys loved Harry Potter duh? a male protagonist? an intersting story? I think it can't hurt for somebody to start a list of boy friendly books.

Boy I have been really negative lately. It isn't as though things are that bad. There are new pictures of my nephew on the web. Icon is this weekend. There is a new Star Trek series. Now if only I could find a great job. In the mean time I suppose I can be happy about little things like when I tripped earlier today I may have skinned my knee..but my pants survived as did all the electrical hardware I was carrying at the time.

Anybody know any good 2nd Ed AD&D modules for 4 characters...about 5th level? Looking for modules specifically because it lets us run over the internet better. Doesn't matter much how well known it is... most of the people aren't too experienced, or have very little module experience anyhow.

Anybody juggle 4 balls? I am working on it and not getting very far... I am missing something simple I am sure.