Relief

Health issues are always a concern, even if they affect our pets and not the people we love. 

Boys and Bones

Ryder's couple of lumps and bumps are benign and not cancerous. At least for now.

So Many Things

The Phillies got to the World Series, in spectacular fashion. And lost. To a better team. Which I suppose I have to live with. Six trips to the World Series in my lifetime (1980, 1983, 1993, 2008, 2009, 2022). Two wins in six attempts. Not a great winning percentage, but at least we have those two wins.

The Eagles play for the NFC championship tomorrow (as favorites and at home), and a ticket to the Super Bowl. Result TBD. Again, in my lifetime, we lost the Super Bowl in 1980 and 2004 (to the cheating Patriots). Won in 2017 for the first time ever....

In music we have lost in recent years (among my favorites)...Greg Lake, Keith Emerson, Graeme Edge, John Wetton...and now Jeff Beck and David Crosby.

Jeff Beck reminds me of brother Dave, and a musician I would not learn to love until many years later. Somewhere Over the Rainbow. LPs on vinyl and Dad's stereo in the living room.

David Crosby reminds me of a live show in a very small venue in Wilmington where Amp and I got to see Graham Nash in 2013, sparking a renewed interest in CSN and CSNY. And a surprising recognition (for me) that Stephen Stills was the bedrock of CSN. Full stop. And Crosby was the mid-range anchor between Still's gruff lower range and Nash's higher end. In respect to Crosby, I can't go back to a CSN or a Byrds video and not recognize what he contributed... He had a significant reputation for a reason.

Flynn. Sleepy boy.

Grace is rounding out the first semester of her first year at Delaware. Honors College Deans List. But more importantly, finding her own way. Fly little bird...

Hobby stuff continues, and may be posted here in the future... or not.

Feelings on these things come and go, but today I find the thought of posting updates here to be more of an afterthought than a priority.

Ryder. Also sleepy...

Be well.

Here We Go Again

We will never ever ever ever get a dog.

So... Meet our second dog. Flynn is a ~7 month old Corgi (terrier) and Beagle (hound) mix. As near as anyone can tell.

Ryder meet Flynn. Flynn this is Ryder.

We picked him up Thursday morning, so he has now been with us for about 30 hours. So far so good. Ryder is a bit uncertain, but hopefully that changes soon.

Flynn, formerly known as Spaetzle, is well socialized, house trained and acts the healthy pup in every way.

All tuckered out...

Unlike Ryder who was a rescued stray, Flynn was part of a litter that the owners just couldn't keep. He's an adorable little boy.

More to come...

Dog Days of May

Yeah, I feel like this too...

Sleepy Time

Idiopathic Epilepsy

...or, what the vet thinks Ryder has.

On October 2 of last year, Ryder had what looked like a seizure of some sort. It was terrifying, with us never having seen anything like it. At that point, Ryder would have been about 4.5 years old.

Amp and I were in the kitchen, and we heard a loud thump from the direction of the family room. We looked over and saw Ryder getting back to his feet from a prone position. We chuckled and thought he must have wiped out coming down the nearby stairs too fast.

Then we noticed he was shaking bit. We thought he scared himself. Then we saw that he was having trouble standing, and he looked like he was going to fall over walking toward us.

Sleeping baby

We went to him, and Grace came running. She sat next to him on the floor and held him, and told us that he was going to fall down if she didn't hold him up.

Amp scooped him up and sat on the couch with him, holding him and comforting him. He promptly threw up all over her lap. He was quivering and shaking, and I'm probably putting my feelings onto him, but he seemed scared.

The quivering and shaking was not severe, and only lasted 3 or 4 minutes before subsiding, but those few minutes seemed like an eternity. When he was done shaking he cuddled into Amp's lap (he's not normally a lap dog), and let her hold him for 15 or 20 minutes. He was as docile as we've ever seen him. At the end of the 15 or 20 minutes, he stood up, jumped off the couch, and trotted off toward the kitchen like nothing had ever happened.

Helping cook

While this was going on, I gave a panicky call to the vet, who said bring him over as soon as you can.

So we did.

They checked him with a thorough physical exam and a bunch of basic blood work. Everything came back fine. His heart and lungs sounded great. His reflexes were good. His lab work was perfect. If you didn't know what had just happened, he was acting and looking perfectly normal.

The vet's opinion, especially given that he was a middle-aged beagle, was idiopathic epilepsy. Her advice was to keep an eye on him, see if it happened again, and stay in touch.

On December 2 (two months to the day) he had an almost-identical episode. Brief. Not severe. Completely back to normal after 15 or 20 minutes of cuddling.

We didn't panic and reported in to the vet. She said one more of these and we should discuss next steps.

Christmas snacks!

This afternoon at about 3:00pm, almost exactly two months (again) from the last one, Ryder had his third almost-identical episode. I was on a work call, and Grace was a trooper. No panic. Scooped him up and sat on the couch and held him steady. Talked to him and soothed him. And it passed, almost exactly like the others had.

Amp got home from work shortly after, and we took him to the vet an hour later. All tests were the same as after the first episode; physically he was great. A preliminary diagnosis of Idiopathic Epilepsy was made. We discussed next steps (all virtual as they examined Ryder in the office and talked to us on the phone in the parking lot). The most reasonable next step is to put Ryder on a drug called Zonisamide, which is a "primary anti-convulsant". It is the best first choice, being well-tolerated with a minimum of side effects. One dose with the morning meal. One dose with the evening meal. Two doses every day. Which means that Ryder will now be taking more prescription medications that the rest of us combined. By a daily score of Ryder 2 versus everybody else zero.

The girls' first question, after "is he OK?", was "what are we going to do, Dad?"

I think they are worried about the cost of treatments, and whether that cost (or cost avoidance) would win out over Ryder...

We are going to do what the vet recommends, of course.

I never ever ever ever ever wanted a dog. I made that abundantly clear. But now we have a dog and I love him with all my heart. According to Lilo and Stitch, Ohana means family, and family means no-one left behind. So we do what we need to do and hope for the best.

If this doesn't work, we'll try the next thing. And the next. Until we run out of nexts.

Ryder is one of us now.

 

Heading into Fall

So far so good as we head into the fall flu season. I'm still working at home, and have been since mid-March. Amp's dialysis clinic has been only regular patients for a while now, but the resurgence of Covid patients are on the horizon, and they will likely be back to the Covid days of the spring and summer shortly. Bring on the full PPE...

A bit of normalcy in all this craziness is Ryder. We've had him for about 3.5 years now, making him ~4.5 years old. Hard to believe that time passes so quickly, but given the way Grace's experiences are flying by, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He's still...odd. But he's a member of the family.

Big Sister Julia

At a primal level, there is something immensely gratifying about returning home from running some errands, or a short shopping trip, or any other reason to be out of the house for the briefest time, and to be greeted by an ecstatically happy pup.

Not to mention that he can sleep anywhere, and takes great delight in finding new places to crash. We recently cleaned out a storage cabinet containing extra pillows and comforters. Heaping them in a corner to decide what to keep and what to send to Goodwill, we were somewhat surprised (not really, I guess) to find Ryder burrowed into a cave in the middle of the pile. It's good to be a dog.

How'd Ryder get in there?

On the people front, masked and socially distanced band practices have been going on every Monday and Wednesday evening. The other night, I was in the band room with some of the other band parent association board members taking care of some paperwork and admin stuff, only to come back out to the side parking lot and see my little girl up on one of the side stands helping conduct the practice. Happy dad moment.

Field Major Grace

It's impossible to predict what the future will hold in the days of Covid, but as of now, Garnet Valley will be having a 5 game football season, all within the Central League. Three of those 5 games will be home games, at which the band can play their routine for band parents before the game. The band parents will then need to leave the stadium, so that football and cheerleading parents can come in to watch their kids and keep everything under the heavily restricted spectator limits. As of now, the band will be able to stay to play throughout the game. Things can change. Or be cancelled. Who knows. But so far at least, in the overall scheme of things, is good news.

I hope that Grace can have some semblance of a decent Junior year, and that we will be at least somewhat past this for her senior year.

Or herr Trump could inexplicably get reelected. In which case we are all doomed. Our kids deserve better.

The Dog Days of Covid

Sometimes I feel like this too...

 

School will start virtual-only for Grace's junior year. Band camp is postponed. Football season likely won't happen since the governor has recommended no scholastic athletics until at least January. Everything is in a state of flux.

Bah humbug.

Quarantine Day 54...Blah

March 13 seems like a very long time ago. We've settled into a routine, and adapted well enough that it almost seems hard to remember sometimes what it was like when it wasn't like this. Which is both good and bad.

We are fortunate to be in a school district that was well positioned to move to some semblance of online learning (everyone in the high school already had a Chromebook), so Grace's schoolwork is moving along, if somewhat slowly. Julia's work training programs through the Special Ed department can't continue, so they are giving Julia some around-the-house assignments with life skills things, but she is impacted more than Grace. Amp and I are both still working, at least as of now, so we take that one day at a time. My company may be doing more Covid-19 testing than any other lab in the country, but not many people are going to the doctor for anything else, so overall testing demand has crashed (which is all public knowledge). Our leadership has put measures in place to help us ride things out, at least for a while, so there are no guarantees but so far so good. Dialysis isn't optional, so Amp's company forges ahead, and I must say that they have been terrific in taking care of their employees from what I can see. She's only been with them for a few months, but I am very impressed.

Most importantly, we are all still healthy. Knock wood.

That being said, it's undeniable that some days are "blah".

Ryder says "blah" too

Grace asks sometimes what I think the summer and fall will look like. Impossible to answer of course, but we don't try to sugar coat anything for her. Some things will likely begin to move a little bit toward more normal as states take different approaches to reopening, but it isn't going to be anything like normal for a long time.

I fully expect the disruption will carry well into the next school year, if not well into 2021. It's very unlikely at this point that we will be going to the Shore for a week in the summer as we usually do. Band Camp that runs for 2 weeks in August is no sure thing. For that matter, we may not need a marching band routine because there may not be a football season in the fall, at least not the way it normally would be. Or band competitions. School may not be back to normal by when they are supposed to go back the week before Labor Day. The Addams Family is the musical scheduled for the fall, but who knows about that either. In other words, who knows about anything. The message to Grace, then, is don't count on anything and just take things one day at a time.

States reopening too early could make the summer bad in places (if not everywhere). A second wave could make the winter bad. I read an article with loads of historical graphs and charts that detailed a sobering scientific reality. Epidemics invariably come in waves, and the second wave is invariably the worst, not the first...

I hope I am wrong about all of the above, of course.

But it would be nice if we believed in the science. It would be nice if we were planning and preparing better than we seem to be, rather than incompetent leadership sticking its head in the sand and hoping everything turns out OK. Unfortunately, we seem to have moved into the "I can't get reelected unless the economy gets better so the death count no longer matters to me" phase of the proceedings.

We hope it just goes away in the summer (despite the fact that the virus thrives in the tropics).
We hope that it won't come back, despite the fact that they all come back.
We hope that a vaccine that is safe and effective is developed faster than any vaccine has ever been developed in the history of humankind.
We hope a lot of things.

Hope is not a plan.

Cold Weather Dog Cuteness

It's been a little while since I posted some gratuitous Ryder pics, so here we go. Feel free to skip...

With the onset of cold weather, Ryder has turned out to be quite the fan of stealing some warmth from someone else's flannel pajamas...

Hangin' with Julia

Or someone else's fleece blanket...

Hangin' with Grace

Or if nobody else is around, lying on a fleece blanket that someone in the family will then be kind enough to drape over and around him. He likes being bundled up.

Hangin' with a fleece blanket

And as a general rule, follow the sun. Wherever the sun hits the ground, he will follow it around. This position was a new one...

Follow the sun spots

Anyway, thanks for humoring me. More hobby stuff soon.

August Random Tidbits

Our lot was one of the ones on the outer edge of the development, facing the woods and stream valley, which didn't have a lot premium. This was because we have a drainage basin behind us. Which is just a depression with a bunch of grass that deer and groundhogs and rabbits and foxes play in. I don't think I would trade our lot for any other in the development...

Summer blues and whites and greens

I've been lucky enough to be able to work out of my home office a decent bit this summer. Not having nearly two hours of commute in a day is nice. Cutting down on the dry cleaning bills is nice. And last but certainly not least, it's nice to have Ryder come into my office, plunk down on the wing chair across from my desk, and keep me company off and on throughout the day.

Ryder keeping me company while I work

The new house at the River is done, which is a whole other post, but we went down for part of a Saturday to see it, and Grace was anxious to get some fishing in. She caught a good sized catfish and a handful of small white perch. I caught a pretty good catfish, a sunfish and a perch. Julia fished with us for maybe ten minutes and caught a perch and a large sunfish. Not bad for an hour or so.

My fisher girl

It makes me happy that the girls like to fish with me.

Late spring Ryder Cuteness

Alright. I'm becoming the crazy dog person.

Looking out the front

I blame the kids.

On the trail of prowling squirrels

Seriously.

This is how we sit on sofas to watch TV, right?

Remember, I'm the one that said dog over my dead body.

Chillin'

But I'm still here, and the better for it.

Gratuitous Dog Cuteness - March

It's been a while, so it's time to subject the great beyond to doggie cuteness.

Ryder thinks he's human...

Grace likes to take pictures of Ryder, and she takes some very good ones.

...but he sure is cute!

It's odd. We will have had Ryder for one year on March 19, which hardly seems possible. In a way it seems hard to remember a time when we didn't have a dog...

Gratuitous Dog Pics - Late Fall Edition

My indulgence...another round of gratuitous dog pictures. Pardon me...

Comfy dog bed

One and a half year old blue tick beagle.

Bundled up against the cold (by Grace)

We have had a number of snow storms early in the winter this year, and Ryder has had a blast in all of them. He seems unaccustomed to the snow, which would make sense if he is from Georgia or the Carolinas, as we have been told.

New winter coat

He runs around, chases imaginary things, and generally acts as though he has no idea what snow is or how he is supposed to behave in it. It's pretty adorable.

Gratuitous Dog Pictures - Early Fall Edition

So it's been a little while since our last batch of gratuitous dog photos, so here we go...

Ryder loves laundry baskets

Ryder is a bit quirky.

...and loves nesting on my bed

And a little bit nuts.

...and loves a good sun spot

But he's ours...

...and loves a nice warm fall day

...and I wouldn't trade him for the world.

The girls and I have this conversation frequently:

• But dad, you said you didn't want a dog.
• I don't.
• But you love Ryder.
• Of course I do.
• So you want a dog?
• No.
• But you love him?
• Yes.
• And we're keeping him?
• Of course we are. He's family. Ohana means family, and family means no one left behind... (thanks Lilo).

Ryder, 4 Months In

Warning: Gratuitous dog photos to follow.

We are four months to the day (plus 1) of being dog owners. [What were we thinking?!?!]

I think it is fair to say that we are training him (seriously?)...

Hey! That's my pillow!!

...and he is training us (for sure).

Sleepy kids...

That being said, it's hard to remember back to a time when we didn't have Ryder as a member of the family.

Training Day

Ryder is still adorable, but the boy needs some work. Boundless enthusiasm is a good thing. To a point. For first time dog owners, harnessing this boundless energy is going to require some help.

To that end, a well-recommended in-home dog trainer came to the house this morning and spent two and a half hours with us, and with Ryder. We discussed our perception of his issues, what end result we were looking for, and were given guidance on what steps we would be taking to get him to that end point.

Saturday morning, before gymnastics

It's clear that our trainer will be training us as much as he will be training the dog, but the progress we were able to make in one session was remarkable. That being said, we have homework. Lots of homework. And training the dog will be work, there is no mistaking that. Some will be easy. Some won't. But if we truly want the end result that we say we want, we will stick to the plan, and do what we need to do.

Lazy Sunday morning, 8:30am

What I like about this trainer and this approach is that it is not about strong negative reinforcement. I don't want to get the dog "trained" by breaking his spirit. This method is not about that.

So we will keep our fingers crossed. And take comfort in the fact that Julia and Grace were each able to take turns walking Ryder this afternoon with no pulling/dragging issues. Remarkable...

Adopted

Our trial week is up tomorrow, and the outcome has been a foregone conclusion since about day 2. We mailed the signed forms, told the rescue folks to cash the check, and Ryder is ours for good.

Are you my daddy?

It's been a whirlwind of a week. Invisible Fence gets installed in two weeks. Some behavior training sessions start Monday evening. We are now the local Petsmart store's best friend.

Seriously?

The kids love him (we all do), and while he definitely needs some training, he is very good in the most basic (and important) ways: housebroken, a great sleeper, not a biter, not a barker, not a chewer (mostly), and good with the kids.

Handsome profile (squirrel!!)

A few warmer days have brought out a multitude of birds, squirrels, and deer. Which in turn has brought out the hunter/tracker instinct in Ryder. Walks which had gotten easier have gotten harder again. He's a strong boy.

Always nose to the ground

But he's a good boy. And now he is officially ours.

Ryder, Day 3

Day 3, Tuesday March 21.
The turning-point day.

Today was the day that we hoped would reinforce the positive developments of day 2 and continue to assuage the fears of day 1. In summary, that's what we got. Amp had a bunch of ladies come over for mah jong in the morning, and Ryder was calm and well behaved. Food was present and he didn't make a nuisance of himself. Strangers were in the house and he didn't go bonkers. His walks were a little more walk and a little less owner-drag. A little.

Homework and toy-chewing

We had a vet appointment at 5:15 to have him checked out, and everything went very well. He seems to be happy, healthy and well-adjusted. We detailed our observations of him, and the vet said "congrats, you definitely have a beagle".

We had lots of questions of course, and were impressed with the vet and the assistant we dealt with. We asked about what breed he seemed to be, and they thought he was mostly blue tick beagle with not much sign of anything else. We asked if he was actually one year old and they said that seemed to be pretty accurate, as best they could tell. We asked if he was 20 pounds, and they said no, he's 26 pounds and likely on his way to ~35 pounds, given that he is perhaps not done growing yet and has been recently neutered, and will therefore "thicken up" a bit in the next couple of years (he is very lean now). So our small dog may end up nearing 40 pounds. But that's fine. Once you are a part of the family, you are part of the family. And that's where we are. He's ours. Additional training we will deal with. Fencing the back yard we will deal with. But he's a good healthy dog and we all love him. So...welcome to the family, Ryder.

Ryder making himself at home

With everyone in a good frame of mind, the evening was low-key and relaxing. We ate dinner. We walked the dog. Julia did her thing. Grace worked on her homework. Amp enjoyed not being the sole caretaker of the dog. Ryder roamed the house, playing with me, Julia or Grace as the situation allowed. It was as nice a night as we could have wanted. All things considered, we couldn't have expected a much better transition for a new pet over a 3-day period.

As I sit here writing this at 10:15pm, the kids are in bed. Amp is in bed reading. Ryder is in his crate, sleeping without a single peep. Life is good.

He's a keeper.

Ryder, Day 2

Day 2, Monday March 20.
Ryder's first full day with us would be a school and work day. We got up at 5:45, I hopped in the shower to get ready for work and Amp went down to walk him for his morning potty break. He had been good all night, and took care of his business quickly and easily. He seemed calmer and more at ease, but it was hard to say in the few minutes before everyone but Amp headed out. It would be a curiosity filled day, trying to be productive at work while constantly wondering what was going on at home.

It turns out the what was happening at home was Ryder taking Amp on a 2-mile walk/trot. And then a wonderful thing happened. They got back to the house and Ryder did this:

Sleepy pup

Texts throughout the day, and a couple of quick phone calls, seemed to indicate that we had a significantly different pup on day 2 than we did on day 1. High energy yes, but more under control and calmer. This was very encouraging, as we really wanted to keep him. If we felt we could.

When the kids got home, they noticed the same change as mom had. The pendulum began to swing toward optimism, and with a vet appointment scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday), everyone (including me) began to be hopeful that perhaps this might work...

Ryder, Day 1

Day 1 - Sunday March 19.
From 2pm until bedtime at 10pm, Sunday was all about excitement. The girls were excited. And Ryder was (sometimes literally) bouncing off the walls. I don't think he sat or lay down at all until about 9:30.

Sunday, 1:15pm, waiting...

We walked him 8 or 9 times to try to take the edge off of his boundless energy and enthusiasm, and in the hopes that we could settle him down a little bit. But no amount of walking (and trotting) made him less of a perpetual motion machine. And walks were an experience in and of themselves; an experience that could best be described as water-skiing behind a remarkably strong dog for its size. Grace couldn't handle him. Julia didn't even try. It was all that Amp and I could do to keep him in check. Which was concerning, as we had wanted a modest sized dog of modest energy level. We weren't seeing modest energy level. To say the least. But we understood that this was a day of entirely new experiences for him, and he was likely to be abnormally wound up.

Sunday, 1:30pm, meeting Ryder, poop and all

Which isn't to say that we weren't seeing some really good qualities in him as well. He was gorgeous; a classic beagle with many of the signature hound characteristics. His walks were almost entirely head down, nose to the ground, snuffling along the trail of every scent imaginable. He didn't bite. He didn't chew anything he wasn't supposed to. He was housebroken. He ate readily. He would sometimes sit on command. He was good with the kids. But he did show the tendency to try to climb people, tables, shelves, kitchen islands, and anything else he could reach standing on his back legs. And we couldn't eat dinner without putting him in his crate.

So there were many concerns as day 1 of our 7 day trial wound down. At around 8:30 or 9pm, Grace cried a little bit, saying that she was afraid we wouldn't be able to keep him. Amp and I were afraid that might prove to be true as well. But it was only day 1, a high stress day, and we would have to see what the future would bring. We told Grace to be patient, and we still had time...

New strange places

And then at around 9:30 in the evening, as we were mulling over the day's events and starting to think about moving toward bed, we all sat down in the family room, exhausted. And Ryder trotted into the room, looked around, climbed up on the love seat between Amp and Grace, and flopped down, his head on Amp's lap. He sighed loudly, closed his eyes, and started to doze off. It was nice moment. We were tired, and finally, apparently, so was he.

After spending a little while petting him, we took him to his crate. He went in easily, laid down and curled up. We all went up to bed, and didn't hear more than a solitary whimper or two. He slept without a peep from 10pm to 6am the next morning...