chaotic_nipple

Tumor in his heart. They drained excess fluid to make him more comfortable, but there's nothing they can do to treat the underlying cause. He might live a few more months, or he might die tonight. I guess it doesn't matter if we start feeding him human food again.

At least the end of it was. One moment I am happily washing dishes when I hear a "thump!" and then naughtyaelf yelling for me from the living room. I run over and see Buddy lying on his side, twitching. She said that at first it looked like he tripped over something, but then he stiffened up and fell right over, which is what the sound was. Now, his eyes are darting back and forth, the muscles on one side are all horribly bunched up, he's peed himself, and he's not responding to our patting or our words. My first thought is that he's having a stroke.

I call the after-hours vet clinic at the UW, and after a few minutes on hold, call a different clinic (The UW one never actually answers, but I don't blame them if it's an unusually busy evening0. When they answer, I pass the phone over to Aelf, as she was the one who saw it all (and I wasn't up to coherent speech anyways), and I go back to attending my dog. He's no longer twitching, he even seems to be somewhat aware, but he's not reacting to a hand in front of his eyes, and he's not responding to anything I say either. But his nostrils are flaring when I hold my hands on front of his muzzle, so I think he knows he's not alone.

While Aelf handles the details with the vet, Buddy gradually becomes more aware. He starts looking around and seeing things, and he seems to be less worried about what's happening that Duchess is. After a few more minutes, he tries to get up, and a few after that, he succeeds. He walks over to his water bowl, and loudly slurps his fill; I think that's where he was headed in the first place.

We were prepared to carry him out to the car, but he's perfectly able to walk, and is excited to go on an Adventure. He's notably more anxious at the vet than usual, but the veterinary ER is a noticeably more anxious place for humans too. He wouldn't actually go into the triage area without one of his Humans, but with Aelf by his side, he's well behaved. Aside from mild anemia, they can't find anything wrong with him, so we head back home. Tomorrow, I'll call his regular vet for a more thorough examination.

Oddly enough, he seems even more alert and coordinated than usual now. I hope this was a one-time thing, but we'll see. In the meantime, I guess we'll have to get used to sleeping with puppy-pads under his butt in case of further incidents. We WILL NOT banish him from our bed though. He's our puppy, and that's all there is to it.

So, I was working in the yard with the dogs "helping" when I heard an utterly piteous "SQUEEEK!". I turned to find that the fierce predators had cornered a baby rabbit. Taking pity on the lagomorph, I called them away and then went to inspect their prey. Aside from dog slobber, it looked fine, so I coaxed it out of its inadequate hiding spot so it could go and squeak another day. It hid under the woodpile, whereupon I went back to working.

A few minutes later, I looked up to find that Duchess had finally lived up to her bunnicidal mini-dachshund heritage, and the only thing left of Fluffy was a head, which she was happily chewing on. She glared mightily and defiantly swallowed that sad remnant when I tried to take it from her. Given the lack of further squeeking, I assume it was a quick death at least, but why didn't the idiot creature just stay hidden? Horrid dogs will no doubt be especially flatulent tonight.

Enough to demand that a referendum not be allowed on the ballot because the petitions allegedly had the wrong font size. Never mind that the printer who made the petitions testified that it was indeed the right size.

When I first met Buddy, he was more timid than he is now, but he also got underfoot more often too. As a result, accidental kickings were very common, which always resulted in a horribly betrayed look on his face, which took minutes upon minutes of scritching and reassurances that we were not like his original humans to erase from it. Nowadays, he's less shy, gets in the way slightly less, and accidental boots-to-the-head result in confusion instead of despair. Progress!

Duchess is a whole other idiot. To the best of our knowledge, she was never in an abusive home, so she never learned to fear her two-legged packmates. Yet she gets underfoot more than Buddy at his clingiest ever did. So how does she react? With prancing and tail-wagging JOY! She interprets pretty much any physical contact as an attempt at play, so she just assumes a foot that sends her skidding across the floor was clumsy eagerness rather than malice. Silly little sausage. :-)

I do not care if the perpetrator of the latest massacre in Afghanistan had had a brain injury. I do not care if he was drunk, or had PTSD, or even if his dog died at the World Trade Center. He needs to DIE, after a fair trial of course.

Will sympathize with the mother orangutan here:




And anyone with any soul at all will d'aww at the sight of papa and baby orang nuzzling:

So, we have here an author, Tim W Lieder Tim W Lieder. In a discussion on ebook piracy, he naturally takes the position that it is bad. Fair enough. However, he acts like a completely self-righteous prick about it, deeming unauthorized copying an offense deserving of death. But then, he cheerfully admits that he writes term papers for money.

So let me get this straight: Piracy is theft and steals bread from the mouths of starving artists and EEEEVIL, but helping cheaters defraud institutions, inflating the grades of those of us who don't cheat... is apparently legal, and so not worthy of condemnation at all. The hypocrisy, it astounds. Given the small number of published works with his name on them, I wonder if the cheater-enabling is his primary source of income?

My Kitten, Let Me Show You Her:



Say hello to Bart, named by a child who was unaware that calicoes are almost always female. But then again, being a chromosomally abnormal male might explain some of her peculiarities. I guess we'll learn for sure at the vet's tomorrow. The picture actually dates back a few weeks before we got her, a better quality, a more recent one will soon be posted.

So, I was stuck in traffic behind an elderly gentleman with a very prominent 3d Infantry Division bumper sticker. From what I could tell, he might have been with the Mighty Third in WWII, he was so... distinguished. And try as I might, I could NOT remember the tune for the Dog Faced Soldier Song to play on the car horn. I coulda made an old man's day. Or given him a heart attack, so maybe it's for the best.