SAINTS

sweet pea was laying on my lap as i finished up that last post and boom, she has a stroke.
that fast. she couldn’t stand, her head was pulled to the right and then she just went flaccid while i carried her around. i thought i was going to lose her and i was not ready yet.

it took her a little while to recover and she is still a bit wobbly, and she has had both ASA and some tramadol but sweet pea is back and fussing and i am very, very happy.

i was chasing a freaking stupid cow down the road. percy barged the gate when the hay delivery guy was leaving tonight. there he was running and bucking his way into town. we finally chased him up into my driveway and cornered him by the front yard gate, and then i had to keep hitting him on the face with a switch to keep him from charging off again. it was horrible and he finally bowled past the hay guy who did not have a switch and ran back down the driveway so we could run after and chase him again.

just what i wanted to do after hauling around 40 bales of freaking heavy hay, running thru 2 feet of wet heavy snow to chase and beat up my poor stupid adolescent cow who thought he was just going to have a fun and youthful adventure. bad percy, that was not the least bit fun, that was dangerous!

i almost might have preferred to be tortured in a hospital bed…but not quite….altho i thought we might have to call an ambulance cuz i thought my heart was about to explode!

then chris and i could have shared a room…that might have been nice.

Chris has been in Ridge Meadows Hospital since Sunday. She has a serious illness that resulted in symptoms so severe and agonizing that Super Dyke couldn’t ignore then any longer.

The hospital is a small one, totally understaffed and overworked. Maybe because of this, the staff is very open to making the patients as comfortable as possible however that might look to an individual patient. Chris can’t (literally) eat the food provided by food services, so I bring her meals from home (with the permission of the doctor, the dietitian, and the Pope. Things that she needs to be comfortable (like bed baths and hair washes) are left for me to do because we want it that way. Best of all, though, is that each evening, I have been permitted to bring one of the dogs in for a visit. First Piper, then Sienna, and last night, Kiefer. Fortunately Chris is in a semi-private room, and her lovely roommate is a dog nut. She was thrilled when Sienna jumped up on her bed and snuggled with her. Her Aussie Shepherd is with her dog walker, and she is missing  the dog terribly, so  our dogs, love sponges  all, are giving her a dose of  much needed unconditional adoration, too. The nurses and nursing assistants, the cleaning staff, other patients and visitors are charmed by seeing a dog on the unit. There are a lot of smiles when a dog breezes in….especially Kiefer, who was a big hit, and such a good boy.

Chris is recovering from her flare-up, slowly and surely. She’s a fighter, and she will not give in to hopelessness. Fortunately she has had some awesome nurses, very caring and professional people who make her feel safe and help her manage her still-significant pain. She’ll be at Ridge Meadows for a while longer….sadly no quick fix for this disease.

dixie chick who is feral and has hated my guts for more than 5 yrs is currently curled up and sleeping on the bed i set up for missy…which is approx. 18 inches away from me. oh yeah dixie, you only despise me when it is convenient.

clyde had a nice upside down nap on my chest while i was watching american idol…it is a bit disconcerting to have him suddenly start snarling in his sleep with his jaws in my neck, for no good reason..i always wonder if he is about to lose it and start attacking me, he was pretty close to my juglar vein….thankfully, he just went back to more pleasant dreams….. that dog is odd.

sarah has been a very good girl since we moved her up into the laundry area. phoebe has leapt over the fence a couple of times and snuck back into her favorite laundry shelf…and sarah has even let her.

lol…dixie just woke up and hopped down for a drink, she came within a couple of inches of me…apparently i am invisible today…i think my feelings might be hurt!

new incoming this weekend…3 senior cats with no one to look after them, their owner has gone into facility care, there goes my animal free den again!….and a blind senior incontinent pug whose very elderly owner can no longer care for. i hope all of these guys are sweet and cooperative and easy to care for….we have enough saintly freaks, we need a few more angels to balance the load!

ellie is still on her knees every morning but once her pain meds kick in she is up and ready to go.

nicole is re-naming sunshine to “milly” she is eating a bit on her own but not enough yet, and she is purring once in awhile too, but she still needs force feeding to get enough nutrition in and she might be coming down with URI so she needs to be watched carefully too.

missy barely ate much of anything at lunch time…she is really speeding up on her downward decline…her time is getting close and i am watching her even closer to know when she says she is done. so far today, she says she is ok…we will just have to take this moment by moment for now.

sparkles still is battling her diarrhea, tomorrow trina and i are going to give her a bottle of pepto as per the vet. hopefully that will firm her up a bit and then we need to give her backside a bath.

bond is still at the vets and not doing very well. they are going to xray his anterior skull and see if there is an underlying bone neoplasm that is the source of his out of control infection.

penny did well with her surgery and she went home to her foster home today. apparently she was very relieved to finally be out of the vets.

edwina (the new he/she duck) is doing really well…fully accepted and very comfortable and this is even with me confining them all to the hen house because the snow is way over their heads.

princess leia the warrior bunny is finally settling in. she and patches are becoming friends and she did not try to kill me when i cleaned their pen today. she is a confident little bunny, that is for sure.

tyra’s knee is doing ok, i am keeping her on anti-inflammatory meds for the next couple of days.

dexter is actually pretty good today…he even bounded thru the snow for about a hundred feet before he decided he better slow down and walk instead.

cleo jumped maudie when we were out on our walk…no damage done, but maudes feelings were hurt and cleo knew i was pretty upset with her…apparently they both wanted the same pile of frozen horse poop…for goodness sakes, there are tons of frozen poopscicles out there for everyone.

i had to drain that wound on phoebe’s head…she did not like that very much. but it was starting to abcess and she is on antibiotics so it should heal up quickly now. she sure does not like me goofing with her person, every time i get up to move, she watches and moves away from me. but this is what leashes are made for…to hang on to reluctant beasts so you can get them to do whatever it is you need them to do….like stay still.

all the cleaning and animal care is done, the last load of laundry is just finishing up and i have an hour and a bit to do nothing much at all….hmmm, nap or a movie, personal laundry or a hot bath?…oh what shall i choose to do!

We got a quick note from Callie’s mom with some pictures.  Callie is probably about 10 months old.  Her mom says she is still shy but is happy, smart and pup with attitude.  I still can’t figure out her breed and she looks to be smaller than Oliver so am going to guess she is about 30 lbs.

it is interesting to watch the message boards and watch which people get jumped on and by whom and in what way. it is pretty much always the same people jumping and the same people getting landed on time and time again. some do it veiled in politeness and reason, some do it with a knife in the back, others just bury their victims underneath a mountain of hate. it all means the same thing tho…someone doesn’t like you, and i wonder sometimes if deep down they even really like themselves?

there are alot of double standards in rescue…quite a few BC rescues brought up animals from Katrina…it was ok for these animals to take BC homes…why? well because the humans who brought them here were hero’s who went to Katrina and lived all that horror. hero’s are allowed to do anything, but regular people are not.

it is not ok to pull and ship a dog stateside to BC and far away from the impending gas chamber…that just requires a cheque book and a car to get to the airport to pick up the dog…nothing about human heroics in that. we like people to think that hero’s are special. and people who rescue animals will tell you of a long list of very sad stories and how they made those stories happy again. people in rescue have savior-syndrome…we always do such great and wonderous things…heck even bathing and grooming a stinky dog with matts or de-worming an animal becomes an act of heroism in the extreme. it really is not such a great big deal.

some people believe that BC dogs sometimes don’t get homes and sometimes they die in the shelters because american dogs steal their homes…. which might be true, except no one in rescue admits that these dogs die in BC shelters because we mostly don’t want those particular dogs for whatever reason anyway and no one had any intention of taking them home…..if even the BC rescues won’t pull and don’t want these dogs…do we really think that joe public does instead? not likely…american dogs or no american dogs…no one wants some of the dogs up here, not even rescue.

some people say that the rescues that bring dogs up from the states, make alot of money. the adoption fees are quite high, $400-$500…but bringing them here costs quite alot too. my cat hook was adopted from a high kill shelter in saskatchewan…one little ancient one-eyed cat cost $400 in transport fees just to get here…i would think dogs who need heartworm tests and rabies vaccines/vet health certificates plus shipping and transport from the states could cost significantly more…but maybe i am wrong on this, maybe these things all get done for free.

many of the opponents to bringing american dogs into canada have in one way or another, been involved in attempts to bring dogs across the border in the past. maybe it was ok then, but now it is not, altho i am not sure what has changed in the past few years.

the issues are only issues depending on who is involved…if you are part of the “in group” (or trying to get “in”) you can pretty much do whatever you want…of course the question becomes what are you getting “in” to….and do you really want to be “in” that at all?

i always wonder if people ever consider what the rest of us think when it starts again with the same old, same old thing…same behaviors, different victim, different accusations and gossip. but the same tone of negative judgement…someone is doing something that someone else doesn’t like.

i also wonder if people consider that animals are not put here as trophies or awards for us to wave around to make ourselves look good to someone else. i have been accused of blowing my own horn…but whenever have you heard me brag about giving a dog a bath, or making a wrecked dog perfect, or “saving” a dog from horrible abuse?..when have i laid hands on anyone and created some kind of miracle of rescue? hah, not likely…insert a picture of me gagging here …i am not likely to do that because i am pretty truthful…i get someone else to bath and groom the dogs (bending over the tub hurts my back) and i get someone else to shave them too (because the last time i tried it i made cole bleed)…i never save a dog from anything, someone else did cuz they are the ones who sent them here….i just give them a nice place to live…and i certainly don’t do rescue miracles, any of those are performed by the animals themselves. clyde is healing himself, i just take care of him while he does this. all i do is live with a bunch of not so perfect animals that i happen to love alot…..i think hero’s do great things, bathing dogs, mopping up pee, being nice to the not so nice until they do become nice again, would not be one of those great things to me….but saving 30 or 40 dogs from a gas chamber across the border?, now i think that might be a pretty great thing to those 30-40 dogs.

sigh, long rambling tirade…all about what? nothing much, just about some more not very nice hot air.

snowed in today…work kindly rearranged the schedule so i did not have to risk life and limb getting to work. i am doubly grateful because i have another killer headache and don’t feel much like a nurse, more like a patient.

cole is pretending he is a husky…he gives a pretty good imitation of one too (unless you happen to watch him)…he lays out in the snow, curled up like a real husky in his snowy bed. he stays like that for about an hour til his fake husky bones start to get cold. then he hikes himself back into the house to lay on his comfy bed by the fire. after an hour or two when he is toasty warm and feeling wild again, he curls back up in the snow. why not just stay on the warm comfy bed, why freeze your ass off just to pretend?

dixie chick who after 5 non-feral years, still pretends that i am out to kill her. she freezes her butt off outside in the cat run and pitifully cries until she finally gives up and curls up on the couch….why all the “i am feral ” drama? just come in and stay on the couch, like anyone here even cares if you think you are feral or not.

princess leia the warrior rabbit is a bit more settled today. she still thought that she could beat the shit out of trina when trina went in to clean her pen. come on now…everyone in the entire world knows a rabbit can’t win a one on one battle with a human holding a dustpan….dustpans make good raging rabbit shields.

edwina (the new little duck) might be a boy or a girl so we will call her/him eddie til someone smart comes to visit who knows if a duck is a boy or a girl. he/she has moved into the hen house with rusty, helga and pleeze and has happily been accepted by her new non-duck family. he/she is a very smart duck to find safe, well fed haven the day before a giant snow storm.

we moved sarah up into the laundry room and she likes it much better in there…she only has a very small fence blocking her off which is better than the 48 inch high puppy pen. she is less isolated, more a part of things, especially important things like washing and folding laundry. she makes a good laundry buddy.

endora got shifted to the other side of the sink and now has a little suite on the counter over there. she has her food and water and she has her comfy bed and now she has a small, personal litter box of her own too.

stripe who lives in the cupboard over the fridge got a home make over too. i gave her a nice, new puffy, softy bed and laid towels on both her shelves like new little carpets and gave her back her furry lounging pad. she seems quite happy with her redecorated abode…
why do i have cats living on counters and inside of cupboards? because they are weird!

everyone is quiet and everyone is sleeping and i really should feed everyone which i have not done yet…but they aren’t complaining and my head still hurts too much to listen to all the chaos that opening cans around here creates.

why do they think if they freak out and carry on that it makes feeding time taste any better? i am sure it doesn’t, i am sure it would taste exactly the same if they all just sat quietly until it arrived….hopefully my headache will get better as i just took some more tylenol cuz there are some here that i absolutely have to feed canned food to and i would like it not to hurt my sore head if we can avoid it.

it is very pretty with all of the snow if you stay in the house and just look out the windows…sigh….i wish the barn guys could put themselves to bed.

the day started with a rush trip to the vet for james bond. he just has not been doing well the last few days so this morning when i assessed him and discovered he had started dehydrating, off he went. they have started him on re-hydration therapy and sent off some blood work and we will see how he does. he is a very old cat at 17 yrs old.

then our 2 of our applicants for the new staff member position came by for a tour and a chat. they had already passed the interviews with mo and chris and then made their way up here. i think we will do a couple of shifts trial so they can see exactly what this job entails.

tyra and phoebe were being doorknobs and both of them got hurt. phoebe has a gash on her head and tyra pulled her cruciate. she is darn lucky she didn’t tear it and phoebe is lucky tyra’s mouth didn’t take out her eye when she fell and if those two don’t stop with the doorknobby crap when they are running around outside…..i will hurt them both!!

i gave ellie her first injection, trina fed her 2 carrot muffins while i pumped 10cc’s of meds into her. i did a very good job and she was a very good pig. i was on afternoon shift today so it was nice not to be so rushed in the morning like i usually am and i had some time to go and buy her some muffins on my way back from the vet.

a lady came by from the school…apparently there was a stray duck over there…trina sent her back with a carrier to catch it but the duck had flown away. the duck showed up here later and started to walk into the barn. greg came to get me but then the duck disappeared again. the duck was finally captured late this afternoon and is currently sleeping in a thick bed of straw inside a dog house in the chicken pen. it was dark by the time i got home so i have yet to meet this wandering bird but i am sure he/she is someone special to have found his/her own way here to saints.

penny the new little senior chi, whose blood work has been such a concern…finally revealed the hidden source of her walled off abcess as it burst today, it was intrauterine…. penny had never been spayed. and luckily her foster mom was right on top of it and got her right into the vet. she has been on antibiotics for awhile now in the hopes that they would reach the hidden infection somehow. she is off for surgery in the morning and hopefully it all goes well without incident. i was talking to colleen about her this morning and we were trying to decide if the next step was an ultasound to see what we could find…i guess penny decided to be cooperative and spare us the extra expense.

princess leia and patches are not getting along all that great. i will give them until tomorrow before i stick that warrior princess rabbit right back inside a cage.

i just had to check out sweet pea’s mammary tumours, and gawd damn it they have tripled in size in the last little bit. we are going to lose her sooner than later and i am not ready for this.

it was just getting dark when greg got back with some hay and feed to last thru this expected snow storm. he had a bit of misadventure before unloading…percy charged the gate and got loose and while greg was wrestling with him..spritely, gideon, and sparkles flew past down the road. needless to say, greg was having heart attacks with my most beloved barn beasts loose and heading into town in high speed…he thought about calling me and then changed his mind and decided to go get them first and bring them safely home before he told me that they had been busy escaping…. sigh…bad barn guys…now they will forever be at that gate.

ellie mae was a very good pig, she did not join the bad ones in doing bad things and pete and edith were good too but i am sure it was because they weren’t anywhere near the gate. and the sheep and carl and jeanette are just as good as ellie is cuz they did not try to run away too.

everyone is safe in bed, i am very thankful for this. and greg has gone home to rest his pounding heart which i am sure was pumping in very high speed. i am glad i missed that excitement, i am sure i would have been having a fatal heart attack.

planning my next set of days off, starting wednsday…i like this part of my rotation…5 days off before i go back to working 5 on… 2 off and am wanting to kill myself once again.

so the van still needs cleaning and the entrance way still needs to be organized. i have to do something about the frozen water tubs out in the field. jeanette still needs her feet trimmed but i am waiting for it to warm up a bit first because hard frozen ground hurts newly trimmed feet.

i need to move miss sarah…possibly up into the laundry area since she still cannot be around the other guys but she does need more room. and our barn feed and hay stores are getting dangerously low, so tidying up the shed for a delivery of both needs to get done too. i need to work out a reasonable payment schedule for all the liability insurences due too so a trip to the insurence agent is first thing on my list.

i should probably look really closely at the money situation too…i think we are running out and might be in trouble soon…not sure what i will do about it but i should at least know that it is time to be freaking out.

we need to orientate a new staff member (who we still have to choose) because trina will be away for 6 weeks and we all know that i can no longer take care of everything around here without her so hiring someone good is critical to all of us here.

i think that is everything saints related (besides regular daily cleaning of house, barns, americats, bunnies and the usual animal care) and of course there is my personal stuff (like my laundry and paying the bills and getting a few groceries) blah, all the stuff that i hate.

i think it is important to have a plan in place, even if it is wishful thinking because it gives you a goal to work towards…and maybe you might almost get there but not quite…. which is better than not even trying cuz you do end up even further along than if you just sat around watching tv.

it works for me.