The Homecoming

I arrived at the animal hospital at 11:30 this morning to take our Toni Louise home. She was happy enough to see me, but she seemed to like the new vet as much as she liked me. Remember, she is the dog of HeWho stayed behind to handle all the folks needing propane.

I was shown how to manually express her bladder. The tear in her bladder was up high where the ureters from her kidneys empty into the bladder. We need to completely empty the bladder to prevent infection and to help her bladder tissue resume it's normal size. It was stretched so big, it tore! Then he went over all her medications. She has some pain meds and some powerful antibiotics, as well as medication for nausea. She is still very sick.

The vet admitted to me that he was not optimistic about her prognosis when he took her into surgery. Two vets and a technician worked on her for almost 3 hours. Not only did they have to clear her bladder of all the stones and blood clots, but they had to irrigate her abdomen and get all the urine out. She handled the ride home just fine.

When she saw her master, though, her tail wagged like crazy. She is definitely happy to be home. Cujo and Wall-E were ecstatic. I am sure they thought she must be in heaven with Oscar. Toni Louise wasn't as happy to see them as they were to see her, and she let them know it! As they attempted to sniff and lick her she growled at them. This is when I knew she would be fine.

My little canine family is intact again and I am looking forward to a good night's sleep. I shall now go squeeze my dog's bladder before I lay me down to sleep.

Toni Louise

I suddenly feel drained. It has been a long day. The vet just called to let us know that our Toni Louise made it through surgery. We had no idea just how sick our girl was.

She has been acting strange since we lost Oscar, but all three of them have, so I didn't think much about it. For about a week, though, she has been listless and not eating much. Again, I didn't think she was sick. Last week when we went to bed,  lifted her into our bed the others and climbed in next to them. To my utter surprise, she stood there and peed!! In my bed ...... on my blanket. She looked shocked, like she couldn't believe what had happened.

The blanket, my blanket that I sleep with every night, did save the sheets. We scolded her and HeWho is her master took her outside again. Our routine was regained and I didn't think too much of it.

Yesterday I knew something was wrong. She didn't want to eat and she could not seem to settle anywhere. Toni Louise has a special place she likes to stay when her master is absent. She created a dark lair behind my chair and under a blanket stand. When her master is present she is in his lap gazing lovingly into his face. Last night she didn't want to sit with him and I discovered that she had vomited. Twice. It was undigested dog food.

Bedtime was a nightmare. For me, anyway. HeWho sleeps deep was unaware. Poor Toni Louise was restless. She would tap-tap across the wood floor, her signal for me to get up and lift her into the bed. Once there, she would lay down then get up, then come over to me and position herself next to me as close as she could. She was trembling, so I knew she was either scared or in pain. Since there was no thunder, I figured she must be in considerable discomfort. She was in and out of bed all night and vomited 3 more times.

My vet has closed her practice, so I spent the morning researching vets in our area. I have used the vets in our town before and found them to be lacking in compassion. We got an appointment with a vet in my Walmart city.

A soon as he picked the dog up he knew exactly what was wrong. She had peed on me in the car. It was dark, but hard to tell much about it on denim other than the fact that it smelled wrong. Really pungent. He said her bladder was as hard as a rock and whisked her off for an x-ray, saying it could be stones or a tumor.

We sat there in silence. I could not imagine losing her so soon after Oscar. I was hoping for stones. After watching cancer slowly take my dad away, I don't know that I would put her through that.

It was stones. Seems crazy to be happy about that. We thought she might have a bowel obstruction, since she kept going outside and assuming the position and producing no results. We were wrong.

We signed the papers necessary for surgery and parted with a considerable amount of money. Toni Louise was rushed away to be prepped for emergency surgery and we headed home to wait for a call.

They took her to surgery around 4:00 and he called after 7:00. He said they removed "a whole bunch" of stones ranging in size from a grain of sand to a marble! And, she had a hole in her bladder, urine leaking into abdomen.  I am amazed that she did not complain more. She whimpered a couple of times today, but a stranger would not have thought anything was wrong. She was as loving as she always is and wagging her tail. She greeted the vet tech and was eager to go through the door to get pictures of her belly. She is curious about the world, while my Cujo would refer to stay right here for the remainder of his days.

We don't know when we will get our girl back. We have wait for tomorrow to see how well she responds to the medications. The stones will be sent off and analyzed to try to determine what could be causing them. 

In the meantime my dogs will be dinking bottled water. Our well water is hard and full of minerals. We are missing Toni Louise. Seems strange to have only two dogs!   

I Must Be A Detective

I learned something this past weekend that I found to be disturbing. Someone stole a battery from one of my seasonal campers. We have never had a serious theft problem here. Maybe some firewood. Just this weekend a camper decided to help themselves to freshly split wood.

Favorite Kamper DJ and HeWho delivers wood to site were busy downing trees and splitting the wood where the felled trees were, then loading the split wood to take to the wood pile. The people even asked me if the wood was free for the taking.
I assured them that it was not free and gave them the price for a bundle of wood. They did not offer any money or order any wood.

I gave the incident no more thought. It was pretty cheeky to assume the wood was free, but it was certainly not the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. The people even commented that they could not imagine working that hard to give something away "for free". I learned later that didn't stop them from taking what they wanted.

HeWho splits wood witnessed the taking. He says he told them that the wood was not free ........ but did not ask for payment! Sometimes I just sit in awe of him, and not in a good way.

But, back to the battery. I know who did it! A few months ago I had a woman call me to say she wanted to live here to "get away from my abusive husband". She was calling from another state and told me this because my initial reaction was to say that I was not having this in my park. She then went on to tell me that her husband had struck her child and was going to prison ........ BUT, she was not planning to divorce him, since he was retired military and she felt she deserved the benefits due her. I really didn't care, but for some reason people feel obliged to spill their guts to me.

Now the woman hands the phone to her mother and the woman gives me her credit card information and goes on to tell me to charge the first month's rent to this card and "anything else the kids need". I agree to do this, all the while thinking "the kids" she is referring to are her daughter and grandson. You know that old adage about assumptions .....

The day comes for the arrival of the woman fleeing her abusive husband. She comes in to register in a questionable "outfit".  Not everyone can pull off the "Daisy Duke" shorts. Most especially those of us who might be prone to carrying extra pounds. Then the BOYFRIEND came in. A string bean of a man, about half the size of his companion. I was thinking the shorts she had on would have fit him better, as I waited for her to fill out the information. The boyfriend decided to engage me in conversation and I was appalled to see the condition of his teeth. Meth mouth is what we call it in these parts. I see it a lot in the local population.

In retrospect, I should have just turned the around and let them find another place to live. But, the mother vouched for them. I have been surprised from time to time when I give people the benefit of the doubt, not often, but occasionally. This was not going to be one of those times.


So, they pulled in and set up. She seemed to have an endless supply of short sorts that were too small, but would pour herself into every day. It was just the two of them the first two weeks, then suddenly they were gone for few days. They returned with a U-Haul full of household items. I happened to be across the road at another site to witness the assortment of belongings scattered all over the site and may I just say that it was quite a sight, indeed.

Noticing two children had been added, as well, I took the opportunity to tell her she would have to clean up the site, I could not have all the furniture and personal belongings scattered about. I knew then that I would have tell them to move on at the end of the first month. Things just got worse as time progressed. The motor home they arrived in belonged to the mother and looked okay.  However, it was brought to my attention that they were washing dishes outside in two coolers with no lids. They were not hooked up to the water hydrant, but had a hose going in through the door.


On the eve of their departure, many of their neighbors wondered how they would make their escape, since it was well known they had a dead battery. When Kamper Jackie was telling me the story of checking the camper batteries of their camper an their son's ......... I suddenly knew who took it. Just call me Sherlock.

I Voted!

One of the advantages of living in a small community is the short voting line. Wait, did I say line? There was no line!! I walked in and presented my driver's license and was handed the ballot. Easy.

Got my sticker and am home again. Not even 30 minutes out of my day. I am really looking forward to the end of the political ads. The Wi-Fi is even working a bit faster today. When Sprint repaired the whatever on the tower they slowed  everything down. It is driving me crazy. I am typing faster than the letters are appearing. And I don't really "type", I do a two finger pecking thing.

The weather has been crazy warm here and today we have a cold drizzle. Winter is coming. Time to gather all my potted plants and find spots to put them for the winter. Today I will be digging up the banana tree that still holds four lonely green bananas. I will harvest them and place them on the counter to see if they will ripen. I am not all that hopeful.

I hope you all vote today! I am off for  date with a shovel.

Wi-Fi Has Been Restored!

No internet for THREE days! So wrong to deprive me of my daily pleasures! Just wrong. Sitting in the office with no entertainment. No blogger, no pinterest, no spider solitaire to while away the hours. Not to mention being unable to check on-line reservations.

So many opportunities for a scathing depiction of idiocy to relate to my readers. Now that I can, I can't think of one. My coffee has grown cold and a fence waits to be painted on this last warm day before rain hits. I can sit no longer as the great outdoors is calling to me.

He Might Be A Redneck

Today marks two weeks without Oscar. In an effort to cheer myself up, I left the property and went to lunch with my friend, Martha. We had a good time gossiping and talking about our husbands and all the things they do wrong. It was a very long lunch. Can we help it that they give us so much to work with?

I stopped and shopped a bit. Found nothing I could not live without, except the peanut butter for HeWho eats it every day. We have peanut butter aplenty of the creamy variety, but just last night he expressed a desire for some crunchy. I am such a good and loving wife, I even bought ice cream for him.

I fielded reservations all day as I drove and ate and shopped. Now that I am home I settled down with a glass of tea to read a blog or two and found myself to be inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, Hillbilly Mom, aka Val, the Victorian.

We shall be calling her Val here. Val and I seem to have married the same man. So many times she will describe something her Hick is doing and I realize that HeWho is married to me does the exact same thing. Birds of a feather, two peas in a pod.

Today Val was highly irritated about her gravel driveway. She knows he has done something to it, but he will not own up. I frequently have the same feeling and can empathize accordingly.

You will all recall that I sometimes refer to HeWho hoards as Fred Sanford. If you don't know who that is, you just might be too young to be reading this! This year, a tractor became available and HeWho hoards promised to get rid of several items in order to be allowed to purchase this tractor. It is not that I tell him what he can and cannot have, it is his choice to endure nagging or not.

We need a tractor, yes, we do. But, we already have a tractor of sorts. This was purchased brand new and was nothing but trouble from the get go. Off brand, it was always a pain to get parts for and had to go back to the dealer to be worked on. So, HeWho fancies himself to be mechanically inclined started to tinker on this and that. Before you know it, the tractor is in many parts. Many men who swore to know about engines of all kinds have tried and thus far all have failed to reconstruct this tractor. I have since named the pile of greasy parts Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty was supposed to be among the items I wanted gone. It is all still here and the new used tractor was indeed purchased and is being used for lots of things. One is grading the gravel roads and filling in the potholes. The roads and the sites are gravel and must be maintained if you want people to actually stay here.

Before he got the new used tractor, though, he would have to rent or borrow a piece of equipment for this task. Well, that was until he had a better idea .......... A long time ago (right after we bought the campground) he purchased a truckload of chain link fencing and the poles that go with it. It was one of those purchases you make thinking you will need it someday. I buy sewing and crafting supplies like this and I most always end up using them.

We used it for the dog park several years ago. It had to be pulled out of the big field behind our bill board and moved to the location of the dog park. This was done with my Jeep and the trailer. But, when the remainder of the fence not used was to be picked up, he simply tied a strap to it and drug it to the barn (to further enhance the beauty of this area) behind my Jeep. It was then he discovered a new way to grade the roads!

After Humpty Dumpty and before New Used Tractor, HeWho spent many happy afternoons driving round and round the campground dragging his fence. He might be a Redneck .....he just might!

Oscar Is Home

Oscar is home where he belongs. I must confess that I sniffed the paw print. HeWho loves me laughed at me. He promptly informed me that there could not possibly be a hint of Oscar's scent on that paw print.

He is wrong. After I inspected the casting, I presented it to Oscar's former pack. They all sniffed carefully and tails began to wag excitedly. Wall-E yipped and yapped, while Cujo began licking. Tell me there is no scent left! Toni Louise wagged her tail, as well, although she was a little subdued. Perhaps thinking her old rival was back and ready to take back his kingdom?

It was bittersweet, holding his sweet paw print in my hand. I know I did the right thing, ending his pain. But, it still makes my heart hurt.

This is Oscar in his prime. You can see the mischief in his eyes.

 Oscar and his lovely wife, Emmy. Emmy was more photogenic that he was. He looks a little arrogant here ....... because he was!

Time for a nap. My little awards, Oscar and Emmy. I miss them both every day.