Enjoying the day

Two sheep

Three sheep (can you find them?)

Tux doing well on Valley Fever meds

Fluconazole

Tux starting Valley Fever meds today. One and a half tablets for the next six to twelve months. Liver test needed in three months, blood titer in six. I need to watch for a bad reaction to the drug during the next week.

Valley Fever

It's confirmed. Tux has Valley Fever. A serious case. Her titer was 256, that's usually as high as the test is run. I don't know yet what medication she'll get. It will be ready to pick up tomorrow and we have to expect even more lack of appetite and refusal to eat with this stuff... after I finally got her eating again this past week. An egg, hamburger, veggie and rice scramble with a bit of soup base has been doing the trick. I now have three different diets to dispense for the dogs and am doing more food prep for them than for us! Anyway, I hope there will be no complications from the meds, but we are in for a very long haul with this disease as the vet won't even do another blood titer to check for improvement for six months. Keep your fingers crossed that the meds aren't outrageously expensive as I've already got the questionable $70 a month probiotic for Hooper in addition to her expensive prepared kidney diet. 

The desert with it's rattlesnakes, deadly heat, cactus spines, poisonous everything and deadly fungus turns out to be a far more dangerous place to live than the wilds of Alaska.

A Vet Visit

No good news today. Blood tests were needed for Hoopie and Tux.

Hoopie's creatinine level is up again. She's going on a low protein diet and Azodyl, an expensive probiotic that is ineffective according to one study I read about online. Oh well, the vet recommended it.  She wasn't crazy about the new food at first try so I'll add a no-salt bullion cube for a little flavor. I guess it's only a matter of time before we lose her. My sweet girl.

Tux's blood values were all over the place and x-rays showed abnormal lung tissue. She's lost ten pounds in the last couple of months. Either she has cancer or Valley Fever, coccidioidomycosis, a fungus found in desert soils. We won't get results of the test until next week. She can be treated for Valley Fever, but it will be six months to a year of anti-fungal meds - that recently tripled in price - and possibly a life long need for it, in addition to her Pannus and arthritis medications. If it's cancer she won't be with us long.

It wasn't Tag's day for an appointment and after Hoopie and Tux, I'm afraid to take him in.

There is something to be said in favor of letting these guys just live out their lives naturally, without a lot of invasive medical intervention. I've felt more like I've tortured Tux the last few months than helped. I gave her some nice fatty hamburger with dinner tonight and she was happy to eat again, but poor Hoopie was smelling it cook and then only got the disappointingly bland low protein food. Why not give them ice cream and steak and let them be happy in their final days?

The End of the Alaska Era

The Homer cabin sale closed today. Now there are big decisions to be made and
the search for a new place is on.

Desert Big Horn

There is a really big old boy in the group of rams in this video.

Homer Cabin, Tux's Nose and Desert Things

The paperwork is signed, the cabin is emptied and the deal is scheduled to close on the 20th. Yeah!

Crazy as it sounds I'm thinking Tux was bit by a snake and maybe that had something to do with her refusing to eat. I've been watching two spots on the side of her nose that look an awful lot like a small rattler snagged her. There were a few days that she spent sleeping in the bathroom when she was looking real old, face a little swollen, hair sort of standing on end, definitely not a happy dog, and I thought at the time she looked snake-bit but brushed off the idea because it's just the wrong time of year and the swelling wasn't severe. Now the skin is sloughing off on these two spots and I'm thinking it might indeed have been.

Tux's poor nose

Cloud drama yesterday

Elephant's Tooth

Gorgeous day for a walk today

Looks like burros dug these pits against a high bank as shelter during the freezing wind

Ground cherry pods (filled with fireflies to make little lanterns in The Unforgiven)

Drought Monitor

Keeping an eye on water.

Cactus with hats:

Morning cloud watch:

My skin-and-bones girl. But she is eating again.

Skinny Dog

Here are a few pictures of Tux. She stopped eating for a while, refusing to take meds, and got frighteningly thin. I didn't think to take pictures at her worst. She's eating normally again and filling out a little. I think it was the bitter Tramadol she was avoiding. She caught on to all the ways I was hiding it in food and just refused to eat anything, even throwing up the pills if I put them down her throat. 

So the Alaska vet prescribed a compounded version of Tramadol, in a supposedly taste-good liquid form, and then I once again changed her feeding routines and foods to shift her away from avoidance. So far so good, although she does not like the liquid Tramadol either, and I don't blame her. It smells like cough syrup, not something a dog might like. I'm not disappointed about it though. The compounding costs $50 for the same supply that costs $7 in pill form. That was a one time only purchase! 

So in the morning I'm able to give her one Tramadol in pill form and one Novox, by rolling them up in a shave of cold butter and offering it to her along with three or four pieces of Vienna Sausage (whatever works!) so she swallows them quickly without chewing. Then she gets the Pannus medication in her eyes. I don't offer her food until after the morning walk, the other two dogs eat before the walk, and if she doesn't finish I take the food away and offer at noon. Also, I'm not getting the expensive Prescription food for a while because she was avoiding that but readily eating the other dogs' food. I give her the liquid Tramadol a half hour or so after the evening meal so it won't become another food thing.

Poor dog must hate me after all this torture.

This is just so.... wrong

I am following news from the north Olympic Peninsula before committing to moving there. While there is much we like in the area, there are things we find disturbing. Like the Poop Nazi we ran into last spring at the campground, challenging us about the dogs being off leash so they could jump into the back of the truck then pointing out a piece of poop across the road and asking if it was ours. Gotcha! Oh yes, the Poop Nazi wears a gun to do his job and takes it very seriously.

So I read there is a new management plan for the Dungeness Refuge. Apparently only walking is allowed on the five mile long spit. No running, no jogging, no trotting. Only walking. (Presumably the law doesn't apply to deer and other wildlife, but maybe I'm wrong.)

Well the new plan is going to allow some jogging! Yes, jogging will be allowed on a half mile stretch of beach or the trail adjacent the parking lot. That's not a lot of jogging if you're out for some exercise. Oh well, you'd probably just step in horse poop anyway since horse riding will be allowed on that same stretch of beach... IF you can get a horse there. There are no access points for horses because they are only allowed on this half mile section of beach. You have to get permission from a private property owner to get there with a horse or maybe drop in from a helicopter - if a helicopter is allowed.

And no doubt there is a gun-toting ranger to enforce the law and protect law-abiding walkers from reckless joggers and illegal-entry horses.

Surely, you say, there must be a good reason for this walking rule. Why, yes! There is! There hasn't been a study yet to determine the effects of jogging on wildlife.

Oh.

I think... my head... is... exploding. (Is that allowed?)

Spider

Female tarantula wandering around yesterday evening. Cool factoid: males can live ten to twelve years, females twice as long! 

Sheep Again

This time I went back home and got the camera. We counted 22 sheep, a mixed group of males and females, one of them a big ram. There was some jousting, attempts to mount the females, mostly just feeding. Very cool.

Big ram

Riding the Rhino

Boundary Cone in the background

They love riding in the Rhino

Sheep slope in foreground

Desert big horn