Earthquake!

We just had one.

The TV news says it was a 5.8, centered near Chino, just a few miles from my home. As far as I can see, we have no damage to our house. I do have a lot of pictures on the walls to straighten. There was a small aftershock a few minutes later.

It was a first for our little puppy, Jazz, I looked for her right after the shake, and found her in my bathroom. She is totally confused, of course. Bogie and Lucy seem to have taken it in stride. They are begging for their lunch. I guess I should feed them, then straighten some pictures.

Bogie Is Home

Bogie came home from the hospital this afternoon. When the vet removed the sting ray chew from his esophagus, she also attempted to insert a catheter in his right leg. Unfortunately she nicked a vein in the attempt, so his leg has a bandage on it. They put one of those plastic cones on him to keep him from licking the leg or chewing on it. It looked really ugly, and limited his peripheral vision. So we exchanged it for a cloth one. Bogie will be looking like a clown for the next week or so.

We have trashed all of those "edible" chews. It was an upsetting and costly lesson to learn. At least he will be ok from now on.

Period of adjustment

Bonnie and I are so excited about our new family member, Jazz, that we decided to catch her puppyhood with a camcorder. So as Jazz, Lucy, and Bogie go through that period of adjustment to each other, I am trying to adust to making home videos with the new toy we just bought. This is my first attempt to capture their period of adjusment:

Jazz and Lucy are, of course, slowly warming up to each other. They are playing much more enthusiastically now, just a couple of days after I made the video. Bogie is accepting it all, or perhaps tolerating it--he's more than a little past the puppy play stage.

A Real Survivor

Bogie is almost 14 years old. Since the average life of a Shar pei is about 10 years, that is impressive.

But Bonnie and I wonder that he has made it this far. He has had at least 4 narrow escapes so far: One day we came home to find that he had swallowed a handful of Bonnies presription pills for high blood pressure. Vets at the emergency room induced vomiting, and he came out just fine. Then, he had an attack of "the bloat," in which his stomach virtually tied a knot in itself. Emergency surgery fixed that, and he again recovered just fine. Not too long ago he started to choke on a piece of rawhide chew--Bonnie's quick application of the Heimlich maneuver saved him. Today, he was chewing on a large piece of dried sting ray tail and, of course, tried to swallow it. The Heimlich did not work; we rushed him to the emergency vet, who extracted it. So Bogie survived again. We are, of course, relieved and thankful. Bogie survives to continue a long and happy existence.

Bonnie and I have learned our lesson, though. Chewing is the natural precoursor to swallowing. Swallowing is the natural consequence of chewing. You cannot count on a dog to reduce a piece of rawhide, or anything else to a digestable size before he tries to swallow it. So all of the 'edible' chew toys are now banished from our house. Other dog owners would be wise to follow the same course of action.

Welcome, Jazz!

The Poochie Williamson clan has a new Member. Her name is Jazz.

Jazz was born on May 18, 2008. On July 13, she left her home in Charlotte, NC, to join us in Yorba Linda. She is as loveable as she looks, and she is getting along well with the other members of the pack, Bogie and Lucy.

Bonnie and I are not getting quite as much sleep as we did before she came, and there are a few damp spots on our carpet. But we are really enjoying our new family member, and she seems to like us, too.