Earth Calling Cloud Nine

Unfortunately today I had to come back down to earth.  It was a fun weekend, despite the fact that the weather just really sucked.  Running two dogs in different rings, more often than not at opposite corners of the field, worked out okay, although sometimes it was straight from one ring, back to the tent to switch dogs, and then straight to the other ring. Hopefully I'll get a post done about the weekend in a day or two.
Today it was back to reality.  Looking out and seeing April the sheep, who has been having real mobility issues these past few days.  She doesn't seem to be in pain, and is still eating well, or well for a senior citizen, but her time is drawing to a close quickly.
Back to the hospital in White Rock to visit my mother.  It's the seventh day since her stroke.  I'm certainly not seeing any great positive changes.  Her mind is pretty good , but I still notice some things.  Her left leg has stopped spasming, but I don't think she can move it as much now as she could before.  I stopped by her place to water a few things, take in the papers, feed and brush her cat.  Now I need to go through the fridge and sort things out.  I can't see her being back there anytime soon, maybe not ever.  It's all rather depressing.

Cloud Nine:)

Quick update

Despite the stinking weather (rain or drizzle most of the day, and cold), it was a great day at the Regionals.
Jake had three awesome runs.  I didn't take the time to check the results, as we just wanted to get out of there at the end of the day, but I know he will have placed high in all of his classes.
I was really happy with how Luna did as well.  When I am running her, it always feels like I'm just barely holding imminent chaos in check.  She has no respect for the equipment, and sometimes it seems like she is just trying to do one obstacle as fast as she can (without caring HOW she does it), so that she can get to the next one, and then so on and so on.  She did get a few faults, but I was really pleased with how she did.  In the last class, jumpers, she would have had a clean run except I forgot a little bit where I was going, and didn't get myself in the right place.  That resulted in her continuing on and taking a dummy jump in the corner, which was a 20 point off-course penalty.  That was totally my fault.  I was just thrilled that she didn't knock down a bar.  It might all go to hell-in-a-handbasket tomorrow, but today I'm riding high!

The Week Isn't Over Yet

Tomorrow and Sunday are the BC/Yukon Regional Agility Championships.  Luckily they are being held here in Abbotsford, or else I probably wouldn't be going.
It's been a miserable week, what with my mum's stroke and all, and I haven't really given the Regionals much thought, and I'm not really 'into it' at the moment.  I'm running both Jake and Luna tomorrow and Sunday, and who knows how it is going to go.
Yesterday was a very depressing visit with my Mum.  She seemed worse to me.  Her left eye was droopy, and she seemed more affected by the stroke that the two days previous.  She had been dreaming/hallucinating the night before and must have tried to stand up and walk away from the bed, and of course crashed to the floor.  Fortunately nothing was broken.
Today when I visited, she seemed better, not really physically, as she can't do much at all with the left arm yet, but she just seemed better somehow.  The eye wasn't droopy though, and that made a big difference.
The nurse seemed quite pleased with how much she had eaten, how she had done with the therapy, and just how she seemed to be.  I left the hospital today feeling much better.
When I talked to the doctor this morning, he said there a few days of swelling that happen from the stroke, which would account for the droopy eye yesterday.  It will take about two weeks before they have a good idea of what her recovery will be, and she will probably be in the hospital for 3-4 weeks.  She might be sent elsewhere for more therapy.
Anyway, I'll be entering the competition tomorrow feeling better about things, so let's hope that carries over to our performance.  I'll let you know!

That's a Tan, not Rust.

There's a joke in this area of the province...'we don't tan, we rust'.  Well we can put that to rest for a while at least.  Another beautiful day.  I cracked out the shorts for the first time this year. Went for a four miler this morning about 7am, in just shorts and t-shirt. Yep, it was a bit cool to start, but I sure was glad that was all I had on after the first half mile.  Lovely!

And then back at home I was making my usual fashion statement.  The only thing was though on the bush walk, the bare skin between boot top and mid thigh was fair game for the stinging nettles.  Sure enough, at least one of them got me.

The rubber boots rub all the hair off the back of my legs at the widest part of the calf, and then grind dirt into the pores there.  So then if I go out somewhere with that part of my skin exposed, I have to make sure that I remember to scrub the tide line off the back of my legs.

The sunshine also brings out the flies, so it was time to put Pride's fly mask on.  This is the one that I made last year, and I'm proud to say that it has held up fantastically.  Pride is notorious for putting holes in the part over his eyes.  I think he must rub his head on trees. No holes in this one yet.

Luna likes to live dangerously

And the sun is turning the dandelions from
this
<-----

                 to this ----->

I got sick of waiting for the ground to dry out, so planted some dahlias on top of the ground and hilled over them

Like I had done with some potatoes on the other side of the blueberry bushes.

There's my little drainage channel.

This afternoon we headed back to White Rock.  Larry went to visit his mother in the care home on one side of the street, and I went to visit mine in the hospital on the other side.  While I was there, my mum was moved from emergency up to a room on the rehabilitation floor.  There a team of therapists and other experts will give her the help she needs to make the best possible recovery.  There is no obvious improvement in her left arm yet.

Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and best wishes for my mum.

It's only day two, and I'm finding it tough already.  I don't handle this stuff well, and I thought today would be a shorter visit.  Then I decided to stay to help settle her in her new room, and then stay to help her eat supper.  By that point, three hours later,  I was decidedly twitchy, and desperate to be anywhere else:(  

It is a bit of a rocky relationship, my mother's and mine.  It would be nice to have someone to share the visiting with.

This evening we were walking the dogs around the small block.  At one point we looked behind us and there was the dog that injured Calli 5 years ago next month.  Yes, the date is stuck in my head. I was furious, and stormed back that way yelling at her to get home.  She turned into the driveway where she used to hang out (not where she lives).  She is supposed to be contained on her own property as ordered by animal control after the attack.  I'll be calling them in the morning, as this is the third time in as many weeks that Larry or I have seen her running loose.  

There's no point in calling the owner.  I did that five years ago, and somehow, in his eyes, it was all my fault.

Gee, it wasn't his dog that ended up with big medical bills and a permanent disability.

PS... But now that's got me thinking....we have three dogs, and we are only 'allowed' to have two.  Apparently we would need a kennel licence to have more than that. Ridiculous.  So that would mean you could have a subdivision, say each house is on a tenth of an acre, in the space of 10 acres, there could be 200 'legal' dogs. We live on 10 acres, and we are only 'allowed' to have two dogs (without getting a kennel licence).  Now I'm not sure if that is ever enforced.  Maybe it's complaint driven.  So if I complain about the dog that attacked Calli....well the owner would pretty well know who the complainer was.... and would he complain that we have over the legal limit of dogs?  Not quite sure how to handle this now.....

Spring Has Finally Sprung (We Hope)

Turned out to be a lovely day today, and there are four more coming!  Supposed to hit 24 C on Friday... I don't know if we can stand it.

 The same pair of geese (an assumption on my part, as I've no way of verifying that) seem to nest every year right by an elementary school.  Right across from there is a property with a large man made pond right near the road.  The geese graze along the edge of the road and the school playing field, and then stop traffic by all trouping across the road for a swim.  Since they are in a school zone, the traffic is only supposed to be going 30 kmph, so I suppose that helps the geese survive the road crossing.

I could see seven goslings.  I wonder if that's how many hatched? 

I was on my way to White Rock.  I got a call from the hospital this morning. My mother suffered a stroke last night, and was in emergency.  It affected her left side.  

When I got there, she was in better shape than when I recieved the call.  Her mouth was no longer drooping, and she could move her left leg quite a bit.  Her left arm was still just a dead weight.  I was there quite a while, and heard the details of when she fell/passed out around 11pm, to her being admitted to the hospital just before 2am.  Of the long, exhausting, frustrating struggle to move herself enough to pull the phone off the side table by the cord, and the agony of trying to dial a number with one hand by the light of the tv.  Her lamp is on a timer, and had turned off automatically.  The denial she was having; how she didn't want to admit to herself that she might need to go to the hospital. The failed attempt to call us, and finally success at being able to dial 911.  The friendliness of the paramedics, who she was on the phone with the whole time, and had to direct them to where her spare key was, so they could unlock the door to get in.  How they turned on the siren as they were leaving her place, and what on earth WOULD the neighbours think?

I'm thinking positive, and expecting her prognosis to be good.  How it is going to affect her and her lifestyle remains to be seen.  How it is going to affect mine remains to be seen also.

Conditioning

The last month or so I've made some effort to do something that you could officially call exercise.  When you have a farm of sorts, you are always doing some physical kind of stuff, but these days we tend to take our time, and don't work ourselves into a sweat on a regular basis.   I wanted to do something that got my heart rate up and kept it there for a little while.  If that something is a thing that exercises the dogs at the same time, so much the better.  I have more than a couple of pounds I'd like to lose, not that this is enough to shed them very fast, but it's better than nothing.  So sometime between  6:30 and 8:30 am I head down the road in my 'athletic gear' (yeah, I want to make it look like I'm officially exercising).  I have Jake and Luna in tow, well maybe it's more like they have me in tow, but they have got with the program now, and the pulling on the leash is pretty minimal.  I usually start out at a run from our place.  I really am not a runner, but the first part is a bit downhill, so I feel like I want to run.  When I hit the uphill to our neighbours driveway, quite often I walk and then run again at the next downhill.  I go two miles as fast as I can walk it, with two or three little stints of running mixed in.  It takes me about 25 minutes.  I heard by word of mouth that a dog chiropractor said that exercising your dog at a steady trot is an excellent conditioning tool.  When I walk, it's fast enough that both dogs are trotting, although Luna just barely.  When I run, Jake has to run, and Luna gets this great ground covering trot going.  Makes me think of a horse that Meredith had borrowed from a friend to ride in 4-H.  She was a bit long-backed, like Luna, and she had this great ground covering trot also.  The dogs travel in front of me.  Jake likes to walk out to the right, on the pavement.  If I say 'car', he drops back behind me and into the heel position.  For some weird reason though he seems to prefer to be on the pavement rather than on the grass shoulder.  Every once in a while, but not every walk,  he will turn back at me and give me this look like I am the most wonderful person in the world......awwww:)   Or he'll turn to Luna and sniff her face and maybe give her a lick, like she's the best friend he could have.  Sweet Jake:)  

The photos are taken on our driveway, I didn't want to take the camera with me.

This isn't the 'look'.  His whole face and ears would be softer looking

The road we live on is a bit of a commuter route to get to the freeway, so that time in the morning, the cars can be going by pretty fast.  Unless I'm sure I recognize the vehicle, I usually don't look at the driver.  Well I can't really see them anyway through the tinted windshield, and then if it actually IS someone I know, and I don't realize it, and don't wave, they might take offense.  So most of the time I act preoccupied, and then I don't have to worry if it's someone I know or not.  The other day I glanced up and someone in a red car, don't know who the heck it was, waved at me with one hand and the other hand was holding her phone to her ear (illegal here). Yeah, well I'd rather she kept at least one hand on the wheel, considering that I'm pretty sure she didn't know me.  It's always interesting how the cars pass us.  I walk facing into traffic of course, and try to get on the shoulder, but if it's all wet and tall grass, I don't really.  Some people seem to think they are doing you a favour by moving over a whole two or three feet.  Never mind the fact that no one is coming the other way, and that they can see ahead for half a mile or more.  Gotta love the ones that move right over to the other side of the road a couple of hundred feet before they get to you.
Usually I see something a bit interesting, even if it's just a pair of mating crows:)  The other morning I saw one neighbour pull out with his big cube van, and rip the lattice work off a section of the fence he was cosied up to.
The neighbours dog that is chained out it the middle of the front lawn.... well now it's a dirt patch.... barks and lunges at us.  Uggghhh.  At least it's not out here all the time, and I have seen it going out in the truck with the owner sometimes.  Great dog owners they are not:(  I always speak to the dog, and keep meaning to take a dog biscuit that I can toss it's way, but so far haven't remembered.

Yesterday morning I was so organized for the farmers market that I even had time to do my walk/run before I left.  It was about 6:30, and it was a beautiful morning, mild and the sun came out.  An hour and a half later when I got to the market to set up, the clouds there were just about on the ground, and it was pouring rain.

And Luna says...'can we just get going'...

This morning I'm thinking it's time to change it up a bit.  I'm planning on heading out on my bike.  Of course though now I've 'trained' Jake and Luna to expect that they are going out.  I might just ride the bike around the small block across the road from us, to give them a bit of a trot/run,  and then head out to do a bigger loop on my own.  Better get going before the rain (is it ever going to end?) starts up again.