Camping at Wright Beach

I spent the weekend with my parents and brother at Wright Beach, outside of Bodega Bay.

Legend has it that more than 80 years ago the largest rock was connected to land, and a family was walking out on it with their son, who sadly slipped off and drowned. In his anger and wanting to prevent another tragedy like theirs ever recurring the father blew up the connecting rocks.


Despite this beach being so deadly that you can't go in the water (and even going near it is discouraged due to sleeper waves) we had a great time! Here mom in her pj's holds Kali and Troy holds Sage (who is in her fashionable doggy sweater) while they play and tangle themselves up.


Hiking up the path to walk back to our campground, viewing the beautiful huge waves through the fog.


Daddy!


Happy weekend! And a welcome respite from the heat in Sacramento (over a hundred!) while we enjoyed high fifties, s'mores, and dad's homemade chili. Yummy!

Incoherent Spluttering

  . . . while picking up the soggy, strewn-about pieces of my favorite American Eagle flip flops that are apparently the tastiest doggy treat ever. So mad at the dogs right now--but also mad at myself, because I KNOW they like to eat flip flops and I left them out, and for our dogs that's like screaming EAT ME! in a really defiant way, kind of like the Gingerbread Man does at Lord Farquaad in Shrek. 

Vaccine Nightmare

You may recall that I was laid off two weeks ago from the veterinary clinic where I worked for three and a half years. One of the most difficult parts of this laying off (aside from my boss not saying good-bye or giving me a heads up) is that now I have to pay full price for everything for my animals. Add to that some horrendously unlucky timing since I was laid off right when I was planning on bringing in all the animals for their vaccines and heartworm/lyme disease tests . . . and I was looking at a few hundred dollars instead of less than fifty. 

Since I'm a cheapskate, I decided to take them to the County's Spay and Neuter where it costs less, yay! Also, I'm not ready to see my old boss yet. I don't know if he didn't say bye because he would miss me and get sad--I'm wanting to think that but don't think it's very probable. 

We left the house at eleven. I hauled the two cats in their two carriers into the tiny crowded office and waited twenty minutes to get checked in. The tech said it would be fifteen minutes so I took the cats outside and got the dogs from the hot car (it's in the nineties today) and we waited on a bench in the shade. For at least thirty minutes. Finally it was our turn! Everything went spiffingly. We waited again for our test results and then paid $148 (zomg) and left in my car that needed gas to go fill it up and drive to the foster kittens veterinary clinic so I could drop off a fecal test for Nellie, our black foster baby girl. But by now we'd been out for over two hours and I had two hot dogs and two upset cats, so I decided to postpone those other errands. 

Two minutes later I look over and see Oz panting. Like a dog. Mouth open, tongue out, quick breaths. I grab the form the clinic gave me about vaccine reactions and difficulty breathing is one of the emergency ones. I hang a U-y and call the clinic to tell them and they say come back right away. We park, I grab Oz, leave the dogs and Io in the hot car with the windows down, and high-tail it back into the clinic where a tech takes him and whisks him into the back room for a doctor to examine him. I sit down, practically wringing my hands and trying not to be too upset because I'm feeling like I might cry, worried that my baby boy is gasping for air and not liking being on the client side of a veterinary clinic at all. I'm also worried that my animals in the car are too hot so I tell a lady I'll be outside when they need me. I turn on the car but don't have enough gas to be comfortable doing that for however long they will have Oz, so I take the carrier and the two dogs back up the stairs to the waiting area while the lady pops back in and out and asks me how long Oz has been in the carrier, how long in the car, etc. Finally she comes back out with him in his carrier and tells me that he's okay, probably just in shock and that they gave him some benadryl at no charge, and to watch him carefully all day. 

I can't get outta there fast enough. I reload the animals and take off watching Oz, who is calmer but still occasionally panting and then licking his paws. I'm still upset and not sure that Oz is okay and trying to convince myself that he's okay and then belatedly remembering to check on Io, who is stuffed in a tiny carrier and has been for nearly three hours now. I had this terrible urge to get home--I think a teeny anxiety attack as well--because I was trembly and trying not to cry and just knew that if I got home it would all be okay, which is totally irrationally. But it was true. As soon as I got back home and let the cats out I saw Oz acting normally and could pick him up and smoosh him and kiss him, I was better. And he was better. 

All in all, much more of a hair-raising vaccine experience than I'm used to. All of us were exhausted and went upstairs and collapsed on my parents bed and the cats snuggled close. All better. 

Horror is . . .

. . . being trapped in a car halfway through running errands with two dogs when one of them releases their anal glands.

I? Am currently scrubbing the shit out of my car, spraying it with the strongest cleaner we possess, and scrubbing it again.

Also I? Am never taking the damn dogs in my car again. There goes my sympathy for them never leaving the house. Their new nicknames are Stinky Butts.

Dog Playdate

SPRING BREAK! SPRING BREAK! WE'RE ON SPRING BREAK!!! FREEEEEEEDOM!!!

Also! Nick's parents and Clair went off to the ocean for a few days so Nick and I had their house to ourselves! I had a brilliant idea the second day and brought over my dogs to meet their dogs, like a dog playdate. It . . . turned out not to be such a brilliant idea, and all the dogs may now be emotionally traumatized.

Here's Bobbi Socks, their new(ish) boxer. She loves those leaves, loves to drool, and is very friendly. So friendly she ticked off my dogs by licking their mouths (ew).

Aaand here's Molly, the sassy Boston terrier that started off hating me and now likes me and jumps and licks but isn't that friendly towards strangers, including dogs.

Here Molly is terrifying my dog Kali. Molly kept trying to herd my dogs by biting at their legs, poor things!

Sage loves Nick. Though it is possible in this case that my girls are trying to jump on Nick so they can get away from Molly and Bobbi. Kali actually jumped into the trunk of my car and wouldn't come out!

And then Sage chased the kitten up a tree. A tall tree. Which she promptly got wedged into and was stuck. But that's another post!

Kitten in Katie's Cleavage

Meet our new foster kitten, Sophie. 

She is 10 days old, a whopping 4 ounces, and the only survivor of her three other litter mates.

 She is ADORABLE. We picked her up this morning from a veterinary clinic, and are feeding her teeny tiny amounts of kitten milk replacement mixed with a teenier amount of wet kitten food every three hours. We also need to keep her warm, and the best way to do that is body contact.

 

Thus, the kitten cleavage.  

As I type this she is curled up sleeping inside my shirt. Our dog Sage is going bonkers trying to figure out where the kitten scent is coming from. 

Here's our tiny new girl!

Conked out after a good meal. 

Still sleeping. Apparently she spends the majority of her time asleep. She is so darn cute!

I'm sure I'll have updates a lot because KITTEN PICTURES! Who can resist?! ^_^ 

We Interrupt This Procrastination Schedule For Fluffy Goodness And Some AGGHHH

Here's a picture of my adorable dog Sage, hogging the new(ish) dog bed that we bought because they ate the old one.

Sage and Kali won't share this nice comfy bed, even though there is plenty of room! (Seriously, plenty of room!) Spoiled girls. Now we own two of these and they are very happy with their beds. We just have less room in our living room. ^_^



Ahhh. Cute little girl.

I had to post something fluffy because AGGGGHHHHH, Anatomy is kicking my butt. Hard. I spent 7 1/2 hours on Anatomy today and should probably do more . . .but I also got rain soaked, so bad I was dripping from my hair and my jacket made me colder than just my shirt and my legs have been aching ever since they were encased in sopping fake leather boots for three hours. So. I'm thinking nice hot bubble bath and hot cocoa and a good book will help!

My Last Snow Day

I woke up this morning, thinking I would need to rush around and get ready for work, when I looked outside and saw WHITE! Everywhere! No road, no grass, even the air was thick with swirls of snow. I ran downstairs and called my boss, who lives nearby, to see if we would need to go in to work, and he said work was canceled, and to enjoy my snow day. And then I realized, since I go to college in a lower elevation, this is likely to be my last snow day ever! So I plan to enjoy the snow. The dogs sure are enjoying it, as you will see!

Our backyard: with a blurry hummingbird drinking sugar water to keep warm. I felt bad for him! (Fun fact: hummingbirds with bright colors on their necks are males. It's cuz they need the prettiness to get the girls).

Our front yard AKA Winter Wonderland

Our back yard: Sage and Kali don't know what to think!

Mmmmm, yummy! Fluffy water!

The huge blue oak tree in our backyard, so beautifully white and covered in snow.

Kali sniffing around, trampling through our plants. Who needs roses when you have snow?

Run! ColdfeetcoldfeetRUN!

Keep running! Don't stop running!

Running past the camera.

The girls spent about fifteen minutes with Kali chasing Sage--never catching her--while I furiously snapped pictures and only got funny looking blurry dogs. But it was cute, really!

Brrrrrr. Did you know my toes are cold?

Well, didja?! I need doggy slippers!

Mmmmmm NOM NOM NOM SNOW.

Dawg

I picked up a stray dog today after I nearly ran her over--but it's probable she would have damaged my car more than I damaged her. This is a picture of her breed--I think she was mixed with maybe St. Bernard too.



She was the sweetest thing and came right on over when I called her, and she got into my car and I drove her to my house and called the cell number on her collar--no answer, so we left a message. An hour later there was no call back, and our poor dogs were tired of being yelled at for barking at the strange dog in the backyard.

Sage and Kali


Just when we were beginning to panic that we might have this moose in our backyard all night--and would she freeze outside? where will we put her inside? if she sleeps in the guest bedroom will she tear it to pieces?--we got a call from a quavery voice, a sweet elderly woman who lived not one mile from us.

This dog, Dixie, evidently went to the same dog training school that ours did--the Dig-And-Dig-Until-You-Are-Free-Under-The-Fence School. She had already escaped once today and the sweet lady was so happy we had found her! Reminds us that even when we're exasperated and mad at our dogs for escaping, we're happy to find them too.

All's well that ends well.