More Ramblings

Herbie seems to be tiring more easily now. He's asleep nearly all the time now - more than usual for a greyhound. He had a nosebleed last night.

There's someone out there trying to raise the profile of canine cancer - take a look at "2 Dogs 2000 Miles" and the walk to Boston. I'm with them in spirit, even though we're 3,000 miles away.

And for light relief, I've been reading about a tragic Saluki hostage, forced into servitude with (shock horror!) a completely ordinary family...

Zebra!

At weekends, I take the dogs to an arboretum nearby, 100 acres of trees and paths that they can wander round. It's a favourite place for dog-walkers to go, but also for people to take children to, so they can let off steam.

As we arrived, a toddler was being carried back to the car. She saw Holly and did that backwards lean that always alarms parents, and shouted "Zebra!"

Her mother said, "No, dog."

"Zebra!"

"Greyhound", I said.

"Zebra!"

"Just because it's black and white doesn't mean it's a zebra", her mother said.

"Zebra!"

We all gave up. Holly's a zebra.

You Know How Sometimes

... you're just idly wandering round the web, and then you find something so random, you have to come back and tell people about it? I was following a link that said "cancer survivor" and I found this:
http://www.utne.com/2008-03-01/Arts/Pretty-Knitty-Titties.aspx

The ingenuity of people never ceases to amaze me.

Sire, sire...

... the pheasants are revolting... so now I have 18 pounds of minced pheasant in the freezer that the dogs won't touch. My local Freecycle doesn't allow adverts for food...so how am I going to offload this stuff?

Holly has decided she won't eat raw food at all now, it offends her principles or something. Herbie is happy to tuck into raw tripe, and the diced heart was a huge success - though it seems to leak a huge amount of blood all over the kitchen, but he wants a cooked evening meal. If I give him raw food in the evening, he ignores it and tries to barge Holly off her food if I turn my back on them. They are fed in separate rooms, so in theory this shouldn't happen, but if I walk away, or answer the phone, an element of "What's in the other bowl?" creeps in.

I thought I was being so clever, doing a bulk buy of raw food. Erm, apparently not.

Two Years Ago

...today, Herbie got his diagnosis of lymphoma from Cambridge Veterinary School. It was a nightmare drive, six and a half hours due to something on the motorway, and I was jammed between junctions and couldn't get off, so I was late for my appointment, and I phoned them in complete hysteria and they told me to calm down and just get there as soon as I could.

I had to leave Herbie with them for tests, and as soon as I reached home (four and a half hours this time) they rang, to say "It's lymphoma". It hadn't shown up on an earlier biopsy, despite removing the entire swollen node. This time it was obvious from drawing fluid off one of his nodes, but they kept him in for x-rays, to see how far it had spread.

The next day I drove back to pick him up, and he was so happy to see me again - I hope he didn't think he had been abandoned for good. I was then handed a piece of paper that told me his chemo protocol, 26 weeks, mean survival time 6-8 months. I thought, you do 6 months of chemo and then the moment you stop your dog dies? This does not sound good.

And now Mr. Lumpy is still here, and had just refused to eat his yummilicious raw pheasant, so I'm going to have to cook the stuff to see if that makes any difference. It had better, I've just bought a freezer-full because it's nearly organic. I didn't think Herbie and I would be arguing over diet this far down the line.