Coonhound Update

After a week of hoping that Shady's wound would heal I finally gave in and took her over to Eric's for some stitches. Because the wound was so old he had to give her anesthesia and trim the edges before he could close it. He didn't find a pellet, so unless she licked it out it was just some kind of a puncture wound.

I had to work that afternoon, but I wanted to keep an eye on her because she was so doped up, so I took her to work with me. She slept for about an hour before she got up and wandered groggily around my classroom. After a few minutes she managed to find a stuffed fish baby toy. It is made of several fabric textures and it has rubber fins and a squeaker inside. She spent the next two hours just standing there looking dazed with that fish in her mouth. Occasionally she would bite it hard enough to make it squeak, but mostly she just stood there. I wish I had taken a picture of her but I didn't think to do it.

I have definitely learned my lesson about taking her to other vets. The one in Kaysville charged me $120 to look at her and give her antibiotics. He told me that if I wanted him to stitch the wound it would cost me about $350. Eric gives me a nice discount, but before the discount his price to look at her wound, give her anesthesia, stitch her up, give her a rattlesnake vaccine and antibiotics was only $180. Enjoy the vet bills, Mom!

Jef, there is a waterfall about 2 miles up Farmington Canyon. I've been going to Adams canyon which is between my house and Grandpa's house and it has a waterfall 1.3 miles up. I also just found out that there is another waterfall in Adams canyon just above the car park. I wish I had known that when I took Mom and Rick up there a couple of weeks ago.

Don't Shoot the Coonhound!

Last week when Mom and Rick came up they brought me a hand-held GPS unit that I can use for hiking. I am thrilled to now be able to statistically quantify my hiking experiences.

This morning I tried the unit out for the first time. Unfortunately it doesn't come with a topographical map, so it just charts my course on a white background. I did find that the trip up to the waterfall in Adams Canyon is 1.35 miles and I gain 400 feet in elevation. I am disappointed that my round trip is only 2.7 miles. It feels like I should be covering a lot more ground in 1 hour and 50 minutes.

Back in June I went to pet Shady one day and discovered a hole in her side. Tuesday night it happened again. I ended up taking her to the vet here in Kaysville this time because Eric isn't in his clinic on Wednesdays. The vet and the vet tech argued over whether or not it looked like she had been shot with a pellet gun. The tech thought that it looked like she'd been shot, but the vet said that if she had been shot the pellet would have driven her fur into the wound. The tech argued that since Shady had been licking her wound she would have licked the hair out of it. The vet said that even if she had been shot it would do more damage to dig around for the pellet so the best thing to do was just give her antibiotics and let it heal on its own. She's a very quiet dog so I doubt that she bothers any of the neighbors and since the hoodlum moved out last year I can't imagine any of my neighbors doing something like that. I also can't figure out what she could be cutting herself on around my house or yard. I don't want the wound to get infected and Tick was never good about keeping a bandage on, so I decided to put a T shirt on her when we go hiking.

Check out this sexy beast! She does look good sporting a T shirt.

She also enjoys making friends along the trail. These two were having such a good time playing together.

Anybody Want Some Wheat?

I have a ton of wheat if anyone wants it. 200 lbs. of wheat from 1985 and 250 lbs. of wheat from 1998. I don't know if any of it still has any nutritional value, but as of last week I was still using it to make tasty bread. Call me if you want any of it. 801-660-5367

Sucks to be Me

Last week I broke out with a big patch of really itchy blisters on my elbow. I had a similar (but much worse) outbreak about 4 years ago and my doctor diagnosed it as hives. When it didn't respond to antihistamines he finally put me on prednisone and it promptly went away. I wasn't too worried about this outbreak since it didn't appear to be that bad, but I had an appointment with my allergist so I decided to show it to him and get his opinion. At first he said that it looked like some kind of herpes virus, but a few minutes later he called me back into his office and said that he had done a little research and he thought that it might be dermatitis herpetiformis, which is a symptom of celiac disease. He sent me over to the hospital for some blood tests, and yesterday he called me to tell me that the tests were positive for celiac disease. This is an autoimmune disease which causes the body not to tolerate gluten. Gluten is found in wheat and most other grains, and is in almost all commercially prepared foods. What this means is that I can no longer have any bread products. No bread, rolls, buns, bagels, pizza, donuts, cakes, brownies, cookies, pasta or anything else that is made with flour. No more frozen entrees or fast food which will probably be the hardest thing for me. I HATE to cook, but almost all pre-packaged meals and fast foods contain gluten.

I went out and did a little shopping today. The good news is that there is a Natural Foods store in Ogden that has a decent selection of gluten-free products. I picked up some gluten-free rice flour and made a loaf of bread this afternoon and it was actually pretty good. Not the same as regular bread, but not bad. The bad news is that specialty foods are about twice as expensive as regular foods. (Mom, have you won the power ball yet?)

Vehicle Dilema & Other Stuff

Driving Shady around to our hiking spots has not been fun. She is not a good car dog. She paces back and forth between the back and front seats on our way to the trail, and on our way home she parks herself on the center console in front of the air conditioning and slobbers on my arm. It has become so bad that I have been thinking of getting a new car. My current car is 6 years old and my plan has been to keep it for 10, but I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a small SUV, station wagon, or cross over with back seats that I could fold flat and fix the cargo area for coonhound transport. I liked the look of a lot of different vehicles, but I wanted something priced under $20,000 and with decent gas mileage. The two that seemed to best fit my criteria were the Pontiac Vibe and the Suzuki SX4. I spent several weeks looking at them on line and I had almost convinced myself to go out and start shopping but in the end I decided that a $30 barrier was the more practical way to go.

All of the barriers that I found at PetsMart and Petco were designed for SUVs and vans, but I found this little thing on the Internet and it works great. I do feel a little bit like I'm in prison when I look into the rear-view mirror, but hopefully I will get used to that.

I also had to purchase a new barbeque grill because my old grill caught on fire. The lines that brought the propane in from the tank were corroded or something, and fire started shooting out of them last time I lit the grill. I went to Wal-Mart and they had this grill on sale for $10. I am now learning to cook with charcoal, and while it does take longer than gas the flavor is much better.

I have also been looking for new places to hike with the coonhound where I haven't yet spotted any rattle snakes. One of JoLyn's co-workers suggested the ravine across from Valley View golf course so we went over there the other evening to check it out.

When you first come down from the road you get a view of the pond to the east and the ravine to the west, and both views are very pretty, although this wasn't the best view of the ravine.

Unfortunately my camera battery died because I had wanted to get a better shot on my way out.

Once you get down and start walking around the pond you realize what pigs people who fish are. (That would be po' people without boats, Nate. JoLYN! Pick up your trash!) There is trash everywhere. Mostly beverage, bait, and cigarette containers.

Skinny-dipping teenagers are also pigs. In this area I counted at least 10 pair of underwear in this area along with other miscellaneous trash.

Kids have also built a fort down in the ravine. I would loved to have played there when I was a kid.

When you walk around to the East side of the pond it gets really gross. Along with the trash the place is covered in cobwebs and cotton.

I wasn't too worried about snakes here, but I did think that this was a place where giant man-eating spiders and/or chupacabras would like to live.

I don't often get nervous when I am out hiking, but this place did give me the creeps. I don't know that I will make this one of our regular routes.

Beware of Pit Vipers!

The heat is on now, and the rattlesnakes have come out in full force. I had my first encounter of the year three weeks ago. The snake was on the trail and Shady was off romping through the weeds to the side of the trail so we were able to get around it without incident.

Our second encounter was a week later. Shady was running down the trail about 30 feet ahead of me when I saw her skid to a stop and heard the hissing and rattling of the snake right in front of her. After that I decided that I needed to look into getting her vaccinated against rattlesnakes. The vaccine doesn't make a bite harmless, but it does give you time to get the dog treatment. My internet research indicates that the vaccine is quite controversial, but I think that the benefits outweigh the risks for a dog who loves to hike. Since Eric doesn't keep the vaccine in stock we had to give him some time to aquire it and Shady has an appointment on Thursday.

Yesterday we took our usual morning hike and we encountered THREE rattlesnakes! Three in one day has left me really paranoid and in quite a quandry. Shady loves to hike, and it is so easy to just let her off leash to run. Even though she does know how to heel she doesn't like it, and she doesn't get nearly as much excercise when we walk through town. I want to hike but I don't want my dog to be killed by a snake. I hate pit vipers!

An Erie Weekend

I arrived in Erie late Friday afternoon to enjoy the hospitality of the Barnes Resort. We were having a nice evening until, sometime around ten o'clock, we lost the Baby. As Ang has already posted about that ordeal I will not add much except to say that much more than the weekend would have been ruined if we hadn't recovered her, and I absolutely cannot believe that we found her. When Nate drove us over to see where he and Liv found her I couldn't even believe that they were searching that far away. Baby had better never put us through that again!

On Saturday we went to dinner at what we like to call Smuggler's Dwarf on Gobbler's Knob. That may not be its real name, but we are sticking with it.

Liv and I took pictures of each other. You can be the judge on who won that photography contest!

Lex was being her usual photo phobic self, so all I got were a couple of photos of the back of her head.

This photo is to taunt my mother and the Beaver with the delicious she crab soup that they missed out on. Sorry about your luck!

I had to take a photo of these festively patriotic ladies waiting for a table at the restaurant. Notice that the cane has both a horn and a rear-view mirror attached to it.

After dinner we drove over to Presque Isle to walk along the beach and look for beach glass. Nate found the first piece of beach glass, but I found the most.

We were planning to watch fireworks on Presque Isle, but after our walk we still had some time before dark, so we drove back to a little burger stand called Sara's at the entrance to Presque Isle for some ice cream, then we went back to find a spot to watch the fire works.

Apparently we didn't pick a very good spot from which to watch. We got a few glimpses of far-away fireworks through the trees. The funniest part was that the very second the fireworks ended people were revving their engines and racing to get out of there. The second funniest part was that, as we got back to Sara's we found another big firework display being launched from the park next door. If we had stayed there to enjoy our ice cream we would have had front row seats to a really good firework display. Better luck next year!

On Sunday we decided to drive out to Lake Chautauqua. Some neighbors had told Angie to go out to a little village called Bemus Point to enjoy the lakes and some quaint little shops. We drove through the town which was packed with tourists and no parking anywhere and we decided to try something else. We drove back toward Erie a few miles and stopped at a little place on the lake called the Chautauqua Institution. This gated community houses about 400 year-round residents and in the summer it also houses several thousand summer visitors in cottages, hotels, and condos. They host a summer lecture series as well as ballet, symphony, and opera performances. It is a cool little place, but we didn't really know what to do there other than walk around and buy ice cream. The houses are all beautiful.

We stopped for a little while at the tiny beach. Literally the entire beach was captured in this photograph. We decided this is a lake for boaters, not for beach goers.

Everyone needed to take a little rest in the grass to regain their strength.

Later that evening we stopped at the race track and watched a couple of horse races. I was unable to pick a winning horse either by going with the prettiest one or the one who looked the most muscular. Lex picked the winner on the first race, and Liv picked the winner on the second race.

On the way home from the race track we saw a groundhog sitting in a yard. Now that I have seen a live, wild groundhog all of my dreams have come true and I can die happy.

Thanks for a great weekend, Barnes family!