The Dog Days of Summer

It was the ancient Egyptians that coined the phrase “the dog days of summer”. They believed that the dog star Sirius was responsible for the hot weather in early July through August. I learned that little gem from “The Coffee News” at breakfast this morning.

Being a long weekend, I was planning on going camping. I took Friday off work because Kira is home, but goes back to work on Monday. A number of events transpired in that period between Thursday night and Sunday afternoon. Here’s a timeline of sorts:

1:00 am Friday morning – awoke to here animal on roof…presumed to be racoon but got up to investigate…turned out to be Sasha chasing racoon.

2:00am Friday morning…finally coaxed very large (and suddenly very scared of heights) dog back in through second story bedroom window.

6:00am…awakened by Kira who informed me that she could just not deal with large amounts of dog pooh sprayed on kitchen floors and walls.

7:15am…finished cleaning most foul mess.

2:50pm…Kira returns from vet to inform me dog seriously ill…required to collect stool sample before lab closes for holiday weekend.

3:20pm…jar full of poop…back to vet. (Parvo virus suspected)

I will break from the timeline format here, as I took off my watch for most of Saturday, but suffice to say our camping trip never got off the ground. Had to give Sasha re-hydration solution every 20 minutes with an oral syringe…also needed to get her back to the vet for a re-hydration IV pack.

Anyway…and fortunately…it turns out not to be the fatal Parvo virus, but instead an unknown illness. On the unfortunate side, the lab tests, the re-hydration IV’s, the antibiotics, the anti-nausea pills, and the weird injection of a drug for horses with colic (I actually had to sign a waiver stating I would not slaughter my horse for meat products???), and the very expensive gastro-food diet came to about $600…that’s more than I was planning on spending on my upcoming wedding.

So…like I said we were planning on camping, but the threat of Parvo made that impossible as we had to isolate Sasha from other dogs and keep here inactive (I also had to spray bleach on all her poops in the yard…an unpleasant task considering the volume and nature of recent movements). Instead…we decided to refinish the deck (a job just the night before I had decided that I was not going to get around to). So here’ a before shot. It’s usually not that barren, but I took all the stuff off to stain it, and also replaced some rotten boards. The plan was to stain it brown, but we ended up going with a more radical colour. Navajo Red…the official colour of Mexican colonial cites (ever been to seen Patzcuaro?). We just gave it one coat to give it that “we just didn’t paint our deck yesterday to impress you people” look, and also because it took all freakin day in the very hot sun (although the stain dried very well in the heat…on the brush if you weren’t quick enough). The upshot of Navajo red (admittedly a 70's trailer park colour) is that you can kill people on it and no one will notice (except those damn CSI's with their fancy blue light things).

Today, I finally got around to digging out a bed for the plants I took from my sister last weekend…I hand crumbled all my hardpan clay from the sod I dug…it took three hours to make that little bed...but good soil structure is important.

This last picture is of whats going on in the front yard. The Asiatic lilies and the Crocisimas are beginning to go off…it promises to look good.

5:00pm Sunday…Sasha takes her first drink from the toilet since Friday...hopefully a sign of recovery.