Rotty3's Blog

Skye: the Dom-E-Cile in my Avatar is my lil' place - before I moved in (20 April 2009).

Wow, you've been in chicken for a while, haven't you? And you have just now found a double one? Amazing. I had funny enough, more at first than now. Now there are super large egg yolks usually.

Thank you for the wishes for the garden to survive. I sure hope it will. Nothing like the 2010 January cold were we didn't make it above freezing for 14 consecutive days.

miyuki: thank you for asking. Sharpy is doing well, although she has some fluid filled swelling that I need to consult w/ vet tomorrow. Not happy it's almost the size of the tumor we took out plus it's filled w/ a mix of serum and blood (though I only drew about 0.5 ml). But it's really nothing that is bothering HER. It bothers ME... lol.

Dome: I love my Dom-E-Cile, though it does have a pretty fragile Ego. No funny jokes like "that eeeg-lou" word, but otherwise, it's very sturdy. 5 inches of icynyne foam, 3 to 4 inches of concrete and lots of rebar make it a formidable place to be in during a storm :) Only weakness are window/door openings but then, that's what all houses have. Since it is a single built structure, there's no roof to lift off or walls to fall. Takes a little bit to get used to rounded walls and hard to put any nails into the concrete (facing inside of rooms), but I handle that draw back. Therefore, I'm having a super low electricity bill, even with all the halogen lights I use when tending to the equines.

H2BR: glad to hear all is improving. Hope the repairs in FL have finally ended for you. What a nightmare that must have been.


Thank you for the hugs and right back atcha! Let's hope 2012 is a good year. Funny enough, I am actually typing 2012 easier than I did 2011. That might be a sign of good things to come this year.

Though I probably will be one equine and one canine short. May add a feline to the barn population... that is, if we can make the transfer from the Carolinas to FL happen. If not, there are lots of free kittens around here in the spring, I'm sure... though I think Little Miss would prefer any company right now. The last few nights I watched her as she was peeking around the corner of the hay barn before settling into her feeding crate - the way she used to look for her Mom. I know she still misses her, despite the spats they had in the past.

May this coming year be a great one for everyone. :)

Well, back to working through that last chapter (written one that is.. need to still finish Ch 7 and write an introduction portion, but that should be the last after all the editing has been done...). Got someone who will look this over and then hopefully I'll get some good feedback and will be able to complete the degree within the limitations of time.

trauma, H2BR: yea.. what happened to FLORIDA?! Oh, wait... it's N. FL winter LOL.

Yea trauma, 16F/-8C for me, too. Errrr heat lamp? OOPS.. I s'pose my chicks are hardy "nature gals"? They are huddled alright, but on their roost bar w/ some feed bags for curtains. Still have provided me with 12 eggies today - that's only one hen not having produced. So I guess they're okay? When we had that one overnight flop (that was supposed to be BARELY freezing and ended up with like 22F/-6C) they survived just fine - without any extra help.

Fortunately weekend has temps go back up to the 72 to 77F range (23 - 25C) even though a 40% chance of rain. Good thing it's warm b/c I have to do some badly needed fence work before the baby gets back from training. When the fence charger had been broken, he shredded the wire fenceline. Sigh.

Now that Phase II of writing is done and I'm waiting on someone to proof read it for me before sending it off and waiting on comments from prof, I plan on taking one day this weekend and doing the badly neglected fence work. Rest of the stuff will have to wait for a while longer.

Hopefully April will be the time for lots of repairs, garden work, etc.

For tonight, I just hope my lettuce survives. The cruciferous varieties (kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli, etc.) and the spinach will survive, I'm sure. Lettuce.. questionable... It's all covered, so I HOPE it will survive. Along w/ the re-emerging (and budding!) hot peppers that survived the last freeze in November.

Miss Sharpy is doing well, though she wants to move around and know she's not supposed to. Poor baby. She DOES like the warm house though LOL. According to vet, she's doing better than expected. Hoping the biopsy results will equally prove better than expected...

Tonight, outside it's 25F/-4C already, inside w/out heat running, the Dom-E-Cile is holding steady at 69F. We'll see how the mandatory influx of chilled outside air is bringing it down by morning (though it will be up in the daytime as long as the sun shines).

well WU ate my post.. again... so here I try to recreate:

Sharpy Update:

It is NOT a hemangiosarcoma (HAS), but a Grade 2 aka intermediary Mast Cell tumor. However, the mitotic rate is high to very high. Reason for vet to think it was HAS came from the fact that this mast cell tumor was not like “normal” ones in that they peel out cleanly, but the margins were extremely uneven because due to protruding “fingers” that have grown into the surrounding tissues.

His predications / prognosis aren’t better than for the HAS, but he thinks that prednisone and Vetalog might buy her some longer quality time. So, once the incision has healed up, we are taking stitches out and starting her on prednisone . Any suggestions for the cheapest place to buy a 500 ct. bottle of preds?

He said the next step would be chemo if I wanted to go that route. He noted that injectibles are hard on the dog’s quality of life and the pills are several hundred dollars / month. At this point, the vet and I discussed the open choices and have opted to not take her through the chemo route, but to let her have quality rather than quantity. With her positive attitude, she may beat the 6-12 months prognosis by a wide margin. I pray she will as she deserves a lot of great time to be a real pup.

Ylee: yes, she is a delightful pupster to be around. Always laughing, loving life to the max. Wonderful positive attitude and just happy all the time. Occasionally she barks, but it's nothing like my dopey-head (errr... dobermuttpup who can carry on for hours out of boredom, sigh).

Writing:
Dix: It has been forever, not only feels that way. Got 290 pages and 190 more of material that needs to be decided on where to put (no, not where your pain is, but within the text lol) or if I slate it for deletion. So, all things told, I have written about 700 pages, of which about 350 will survive.

Weather:

Code: thank for the offer. All is well here. :) I'll keep in mind though.

Looks like everything survived the -9C/15F here this past Tuesday night - excep the young pepper plants that grew after the initial -6C in November. I didn't expect them to survive truth be told.
Funny, the lettuce plants survived just fine. And the rest are winter veggies, they came through w/ flying colors.

Horses made it just fine. Their thick coat keeps them toasty. The baby is doing fine in training, he'll be coming home next week. Since he is stalled overnight, I didn't worry about taking a blanket to the training facility. Here at the house, horses get to stay out all the time :)

Tomorrow is fence repair day. Was inside all day today working / reworking part of that writing. Ylee, yes, charger has been up and running well since I got it back. Even a single strand of 14 gauge aluminum wire on fiberglass posts has held back even the pushy young'un and made him think twice about the grass being greener on the other side. I will keep the current perimeter hot fencing where it is, but tomorrow I will add another roll of fence (2x4 horse fence) to make sure there is a real physical barrier too.
Oh yea, the charger did get zapped by lightning / overload of currency back in the spring, that's why it wasn't working right - and that's why nothing I did could make it work right.

Dix, I hope your PITA is going away soon and no longer give you pain. Here's to a speedy and painless recovery.

Skye: I can't wait to ride more trails again. Was longing for doing one yesterday but this writing must be finished (sorry for the whining, I'm sooooooooo over it... wouldn't have been so bad if the person standing between me and the degree wasn't such a nasty one - acts like a weathervane. Depending on what side of the litter box said person wakes up, that's the attitude one gets. Can be semi-nice, but most of the time just nasty. No mentoring like it's supposed to be. But, I will make it and then I will be able to ride again. :)

Yes, cold does make the winter crop sweeter. It chemically changes structures inside the plants and therefore the plant produces more sugars (not table sugar of course lol).

I will research Colloidal Silver. In fact, I have a bottle here. It's ancient though, but I might try it... At this point, I don't think it could hurt. I gave her the last antibiotic pill yesterday, so hopefully the healing is continuing w/out problems. A friend lost a Rottie to MRSA UTI. And someone else replied that their friend lost an English Mastiff after knee surgery to the very same thing. With Sharpy's "bump" not going down much, I wonder about that... but so far, it's not warm to the touch at least. Just squishy. We can only hope for the best.


Off to feed horses, do fence, then work more on the writing... sigh.

Thanks for the posts, everyone. I'm just in and out tonight. Exhausted as I'm going into the first bend that hopefully leads to the homestretch.

Left work at 430 yesterday, delivered some eggies to someone and the came back to work computer, worked w/ my editor until I finally gave out at 8. Extremely busy days at work too, so I am just wiped out. But, I've added back in about 15 pages that I initially cut (did I mention I had lots of "junk piles"?). So now I'm waiting on editor to make the last pass over it and give me green light to send off to prof. Hoping to get Ch. 1 to everyone tomorrow. 2 and 3 are being re-edited and hopefully finished by weekend. And then by following week I hope to have the remaining 3 chapters ready for send off. That leaves me about 3 to 4 weeks for re-editing before defending. Keep fingers crossed the prof will not back out and drop things. (you can tell what's on my brain right now... right?)

Miss Sharpy is doing well. She is very happy to get ANY food. And she's getting SPOILED LOL. I've started cracking an egg into her bowl on a nightly basis. WAnd for the antibiotics pills, she got about a teaspoon of rondele (fancy cream cheese spread). Now, she's expecting it every time she looks into her bowl. Gotta love 'em pups :) But I'm very happy to see her be so full of life (esp. since I notice another bump - about walnut sized on her waist area. Already decided, not going to take that out as I'm not going to put her under this fast again).
fwblinda: I'll look into it. Thanks!

Weather: It's been a doosie... Got about 1.25 inches since mid-morning. Pastures showing significant puddling and pooling and some of the sand is turning into almost quick sand like stuff. The joys of livinog on top of a paleo beach. Anyways, wind wasn't bad, rain came in hard though as it blew quite a bit into the barn and hay barn.

Horses doing well though... "Baby" coming back this week from his first real saddle training. The sweet old gal misses him a lot I noticed. Even the not so pleasant mare that got me injured in the summer seems to pine for her pasturemate.

Eggie production doing well. Average still about 10 / day.

Well... gonna crash 'n burn here. Another few crazy days starting up.

Whew.. I was going to wait till tomorrow when I get Miss Sharpy back from the vet, but I have a few minutes before I leave work :-D

Arbie: busy? Nah... just trying to keep out'o trubba ;) Seriously, don't know what to do w/ myself when I get done w/ defending in March.

Skye: no, the "baby" is a 17.2 hh gangly soon to be 5 yr old warmblood (the red boy in my photos).

The TB is the other "boy" - he's a bay (to be technical, he is actually a sabino bay, but, that's not a recognized color by the JC).
The other equines are the 40 year old bay mare and the 26 year old chestnut mare you see in some of the shots.

Ylee: it was chilly last night, gone down to almost freezing. BUT I guess I spoke tooooooo sooooooon on the bad weather.

Last night I got to see the baby for the second time under saddle (first was in Nov 2010 when the person working with him got on him and walked him a few steps and got off b/c he hadn't done more than that with the gangly teenager).

Let it suffice that the wind gusts hit around 35 mph. Here he was, just been mounted in the round pen (by trainer, not me). It was dark, flood lights shining leaving shadows everywhere. About 10 seconds after trainer got on, a big ol' sycamore leaf comes tumbling down the round pen floor, heading straight for the baby's feet. About 8 ppl standing around watching held their collective breath as we watched rather in amazement as the leaf tumbled through the front legs, under his belly, out between the back legs and this youngster NEVER moved a muscle. Stood like he was cast in bronze. Then, walk on when asked to do so. No buck, no bolt. Someone joked, that's worth 2 $10,000 bills. I hope he keeps his sanity when I get to work more with him. 17.2 hh is a LOOOOONG way down!

So, after that, I tacked up the TB and off we went into the arena for a lesson (also under floodlights). By then the wind was blowing steady at 15 - 20 mph, gusting out at near 40 mph. A loose tin was shaking loose and rocking about 6-8 off the frame. It sounded like a jackhammer. To my greatest amazement, the goof boy actually paid attention. Didn't really want to work, but he wasn't offering any bolts or bucks either (except for one occasion, which I kind of expected).
Even may trainer (who was going deaf from the tin jackhammering) remarked on how "unflappable" that boy was in all that ruckus. But don't let a stray plastic bag tumble across the arena or a paper plate wink from the ground. Sigh.

Anyways, recheck for Miss Sharpy tomorrow. Probably new blog entry at that time...

(... naibiting as I'm waiting on committee to comment on Chapter 1 and trying to get editor to finish Chapters 2 - 6.)

Okay, final entry here (wrapping up older postings here).. new entry already posted:

Ylee: yes, he's a keeper. Very laid back, thankfully, although he can kick up a massive storm - don't want to ride out a buck-kick with his hooves hitting 2 feet above his elevated butt when he kicks.

Skye: I HOPE not!!!! I keep telling him, I'm gonna not just put a brick, but the whole dang Dom-E-Cile on him if he doesn't start growing in the WIDTH.

As for riding early, I don't believe in that... I could write you a whole diatribe about why I think it's wrong to start horses under 3 1/2 (yes, even QHs), but I shall refrain from that. Maybe I'll make it into a dissertation some day ROFL.

Dix: So sorry you lost that little gig. Keeping fingers crossed you find something to replace it. Maybe some info on Craigslist or other local advertising places?

Did you finally get the machine fixed? My computer guy warrants his work for a whole year (which is nice), so when I have any issues, I can just call him and say, hey, this isn't working. What's going on?

Hope the PITA has subsided and no longer bothering you at all. And here's fingers crossed that nothing more will come of any of that mess. Lots of health to you from here on out!


Arbie: yes, I do have them in all ages, don't I? The goofy TB boy is going on 9, so he is ALMOST in the double digit bracket, leaving the "baby" at almost 5 and the other two ladies in their twens and above.

Congrats on the boss loss. Some bosses (my old one included) get promoted to inability and then eventually SOME get lost. Not all... In my case, I moved on to another position with a different boss.

code: I'm trying :) Need to finish the writing and degree first, then I can do more "shaping."