Jonesy Update (Now with more update!)

I'm just going to give you a quick update on Jonesy. The swelling on his nose has gone completely down, but the day after he went to the vet he woke up with hives all over his ears. At this point, we have no idea what caused his allergic reaction. After a couple higher doses of benadryl, the hives went away. The sores on his nose have scabbed over because he has no opportunities to go outside alone and scratch them up with tree branches again.

Looking a little better

The real test is going to be today. I work in the middle of the day and no one else will be home with him from 3:30-7:30PM. Normally, leaving him inside for four hours would be no problem. He has a history of holding his bladder for 12 hours at a time when it's really cold outside and he doesn't want to go out. However, the steroids he is on to help with all the allergic reactions make him really thirsty and therefore he has been peeing at least once an hour.

So for a few hours, he's going to have to be left outside where he can scratch his nose. I'm hoping not to come home to a bloody mess. He will have company in his friend (my sister's dog) Bob Barker and my dad's dog Danger, so maybe they can help keep him distracted. So far, even with the cone on and close supervision he is obsessed with trying to scratch his nose. He's discovered that he can press the cone up against someone's leg and rub his nose on the inside of it. 

Bob Barker with Jonesy last fall

Update: Today, Jonesy's nose is looking pretty good. He managed to rub the scabs off, but he has been cone-free all day and things are healing. He is still peeing like a racehorse, but that will continue as long as he's on the steroids.

Happily cone-free!

Oh Jonesy

Well I've had an interesting last several days with my dog. After his trip to the dog park last Friday, he had stepped on a cactus and spend several hours taking the needles out of his paws. Apparently though, that was not his only mishap for this particular trip. The park we visited was a big open space park with lots of different kinds of weeds growing. At one point, I noticed his face was green with pollen from running through the growth, but as we'd been to this park numerous times before, I wasn't worried.

Jonesy has known food allergies, he reacts strongly to chicken: as in he breaks out in hives all over his belly and occasionally inside his ears. He has a milder reaction to turkey: his belly gets a milder form of the rash when he's had a fair amount of turkey. What he has never had before though was an environmental allergic reaction.

On Saturday night, he broke into a pretty violent sneezing fit, one so strong I'd never seen him sneeze that hard before and I was semi-concerned. This was around his normal dinnertime, so I went ahead and fed him before I checked him over for any abnormal signs. He started to shake his head a bit during this time, so I looked inside his ears and spotted what looked to be a couple of small hives. I gave him benadryl and let him go on his merry way.

A short time later, I noticed he was pretty vigorously shaking his head, so I got a flashlight to thoroughly check out his ears. It was when I lifted up his left ear that I noticed it felt oddly heavy and was swollen. This was a new symptom that he had never had before, but I knew from working at a dog daycare in the past that floppy eared dogs could get hematomas (a build-up of blood and fluid in the ear flaps) and thought maybe that was what he had the beginnings of from shaking his head.

Note the swollen ear.

Since it was a weekend and I didn't think it was an emergency, I opted to just observe him because 6 months ago we had a very expensive Sunday vet visit when he impaled himself on a branch. He seemed fine other than twitching his ears and slight swelling on Sunday, so I went to work and tried not to be too worried. When I came home from work, his left ear was noticeably more swollen, so I figured Monday morning we'd make a trip to the vet (see above photo).

Of course, on Monday morning, the ear was back down to normal, so I decided we'd just see if this was the end of the episode. As I'm sure you might guess, this was not the end of it. Late Monday night, I let him out to the bathroom and when he came back inside, he frantically started rubbing his nose on the furniture. I noticed what looked two scratches and thought maybe he'd managed to snag his nose on the fence or something.

See? Just looks like little scratches.

Now Tuesday morning, when I came home, he had spent the morning apparently rubbing at his nose with his paws because there were two larger wounds. At this point, I figured the nose and earlier swollen ears were not unconnected so we paid our veterinarian a visit. I strongly suspected this was all related to an allergic reaction, but at this point we needed some help getting things under control that the benadryl just wasn't helping.

At the vet they listened to my description of everything and agreed that it seemed most likely to be from an allergic reaction. They took a sample of the blood oozing out of his snout wounds and checked under a microscope to make sure there were no signs of infection. His temperature read normal and he had not lost any appetite or thirst, so with no signs of anything other than a bad allergic reaction we got some steroids, antibiotics (to prevent infection) and an e-collar (aka cone of shame) to keep him from scratching his nose any farther.

"I'm just going to stare at you until you take this thing off!"

At home, I adjusted the cone of shame to fit and Jonesy initially had a really hard time getting around. He'd never had an e-collar on before as he was neutered by the shelter at (a way too young!) 8 weeks old and his neck injury in February was in a spot where a cone would do no good. As expected, he kept smashing into things with the cone and when he got caught up on something, he'd just stand there and look pitiful. Prior to getting the cone put on, he had been feeling fine, so I think he was just trying to drum up sympathy and have someone take pity on him and remove the cone of shame.

Ouch, so swollen. :(

Come dinnertime, I decided to take the cone off since I'd be supervising him and I wanted to ease the attempt to eat a meal and get a good drink of water. He ate his food and almost instantly started pawing at his nose, so the cone went right back on. He did figure out that he could still get a drink of water with the cone on, so I was less concerned. This, however is not the end of the saga.

This morning, around 3AM, he woke me up wanting to go outside, I assumed to use the bathroom. After several minutes though, I heard his cone smacking repeatedly into something, so I called him and he popped out of the bushes and came back to bed. When I got up this morning, I noticed that the wounds had gotten bigger and this was when I realized he'd found a way to scratch his nose without the use of his paws.

Branches = Great Scratchers!

 So for the next couple days, he's going to have to have supervised trips outside to go to the bathroom. Once the nose heals up some, he'll be able to spend more time outside, but as of right now, I don't want him getting caught up on branches or the fence with the e-collar anyway. Poor Jonesy, this mutt's had more health issues than any of the purebreds we had growing up.

You made it worse with the branches.

Dog Day

After a long week of work, I decided that I needed to do something fun for myself today. Initially, I thought about going camping, I have yet to do so this summer. I enjoy getting out and hiking, cooking hot dogs and roasting marshmallows over a fire. I like exploring new places, but I'm not crazy about the whole sleeping on the ground thing. Tent camping is my preferred method of spending my time in the great outdoors though.

The weather wasn't quite right for camping though, it was supposed to be rainy off and on today and the temperatures overnight in the mountains would possibly drop into the upper 30s, which is a bit cold for my taste. Instead, I opted to take my dog and my dad's for a hike. There's an open space dog park a few miles away from here that has miles of trails that are all in an off-leash area.

With the temperatures topping out in the lower 70s and cloud cover to boot, it was my kind of weather for long walks. I'm definitely not a big fan of temperatures much over 75 degrees and it being late August, there has been plenty of temperatures above my comfort zone. The park usually has a pond, but this year it has remained dry and I haven't brought the dogs in a while because with nowhere to swim, the weather has been too hot during the daylight hours.

There is a small farmer's canal that runs through the open space park and today it was flowing as full as I have ever seen it. Jonesy loves to swim, but my dad's dog, Danger, while fully capable of doing so, hates to swim. We walked alongside the canal for a while and both dogs ended up splashing along it for a while.

Near this particular park, there is also an airport, so while we hiked around the trails, I got to watch a couple of jets take off and land. Normally around this time of year, there's an airshow at the airport, but it was moved to a different location due to construction.

All in all, this was a pleasant afternoon spent with the dogs, enjoying nature. There are some wildflowers still growing at this point in the season, but a couple of months ago, they were everywhere. The one drawback to this park (other than proximity to the Rocky Flats site) is that there are prickly pear cactus growing throughout the area. Jonesy had the misfortune of tripping over a cactus that was hidden under a pile of tumbleweeds. He hates having his feet touched, so I pulled out the bigger needles and he seemed not to be bothered by anything until we got home and he spent an hour picking the smaller needles out of his paws.

Full Moon Failure

The full moons of the last two months have fallen on days when I didn't have to go to work early the next morning (most days I have to be in at 6AM). I enjoy photography and have long wanted to go somewhere and take pictures of the full moon as it rose over the horizon.

Last month, on the day of the full moon, it was overcast and cloudy. It started to break up a little bit as it drew closer to time for the moon to come out. So I decided to drive west, through Boulder Canyon to see if I couldn't find a nice vantage point to watch the moonrise. Naturally, the clouds didn't break and I didn't get to see the moonrise, but it was a pleasantly cool evening and the drive through the mountains was nice. As soon as I got home, the moon peaked out from behind the clouds.

Again, this month on the day of the full moon, the skies were cloudy to the east where the moon would rise. I drove east this time, hoping the clouds would break up, but again, no such luck. This time I did find a pretty place to watch the sun set at least.

So, after back to back months of disappointment on watching the full moon rise, I decided to at least try and get out of the city lights on Tuesday night to watch the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. At the last minute, I decided to bring my camera along. I knew I wouldn't be able to photograph the meteor shower (not a good enough camera), but I wasn't disappointed. I did get to take pictures of the moonrise.

It wasn't quite the full moon I had envisioned, but it was pretty close and...well, pretty. This time I was near the Boulder Reservoir. I saw the first bit of the moon peaking it's head over the horizon and while I set up my tripod, the moon rose all the way up over the horizon. I still managed to get lots of pictures, including some when it looked more yellow or orange. And after watching the moonrise, I did see several meteors, so all in all, it was a good night.

While I have failed in my two attempts to get pictures of the full moon rising, I haven't given up. Maybe next month I'll have better luck. At least now I know of a decent spot to see the moonrise without all the obstructions of houses and such on the horizon (trees are okay in my book). The drawback was that despite all my precautions (long pants/jacket/bug spray) I was eaten alive by mosquitoes! Seriously, I've counted more than 20 different mosquito bites over my body. My luck now is that I'll get West Nile Virus. *knocks on wood* In the meantime, I'm trying not to scratch the heck out of myself.

Hello!

I've always enjoyed writing and haven't done nearly enough of it lately, so I'm going to try to start blogging again. We'll see how it goes. So, first off I'll give you an introduction to me.

I live near Denver, Colorado and have a dog named Jonesy, a cat named Oliver and a couple small aquariums full of fish. Jonesy is a 3 and a half year old mutt (Australian Shepherd/Plott mix). He is quite a character and is generally a very mellow dog. He does not like it when people swear - he *will* jump up and get into your face and try to calm you down. I suspect he would make a good therapy dog with training.

Oliver is a 9 year old medium-haired black cat and I adopted him about a year ago. He's another easy-going type of pet. He lets any dog he encounters come right up and get in his face to say hi. He has only swatted Jonesy once and it was after Jonesy trampled him when I came home from work and Jonesy started jumping up and down in excitement.

 I'm 28 years old and I have no kids. As of right now, I don't plan to and there are various reasons as to why. This is a source of disappointment to my mom, who refers to my dog as her only grandson and casually mentions how she has no grandkids. I have an older brother and younger sister who also have no kids right now. I don't know if she'll ever get the grandchildren she wants out of them, but I try not to let it concern me.

I am definitely a bit of a nerd as I love science and history. Basically, I like to read and learn on an continual basis, even beyond school. Speaking of, I went to university for 3 years and then decided I wasn't on the course I wanted to be on and quit. As of now, I do plan to go back to school to either finish my degree or possibly a technical school to get into the veterinary technician field.

Additionally, I'm a huge fan of Star Trek and find myself referencing events that happened in an episode I've recently watched, much to the annoyance of people around me. I try to keep my references reigned in, but sometimes it's hard. I do the same with the educational podcasts I listen to, something comes up in a conversation that reminds me of something I learned recently in a podcast and I can't help but mention it.

And last, but certainly not least, I am a huge klutz. I frequently have cuts, scrapes or scabs somewhere on my body. I don't bruise easily, which is fortunate or my co-workers would be liable to think I'm being abused. I trip over things on a daily basis, I bump into things all the time. When I was younger, this bothered me, but I've come to accept it: both my parents are shall we say, less than graceful, so I am going to be for the rest of my life too.

The most recent ridiculous way in which I hurt myself was during cleaning out my apartment ahead of moving out. I had all the drawers in the kitchen pulled out because I had wiped them out and wanted to be sure they were dried out before I closed them. I dropped my sponge on the floor and managed to raise up into an open drawer with my hip. A little later on, I went to the freezer to get some ice to put on the hip. As I was getting ice out of the tray, I sliced my finger open on a piece of ice! I pretty much don't know anyone else who has ever managed to hurt themselves with a piece of frozen water, so it made me feel pretty talented.

I could probably go on for quite a bit longer about things that for all I know, bore other people to tears. However, I'll call this a good introduction. As for the blog, I plan on just writing about whatever strikes my fancy. In parting, here's a picture of my dog and cat napping: