it’s a fuzzy fuzzy world…

Short update until I have time to post more. I have a new foster dog (who currently needs a name). He’s an English Setter, very sweet, picked up as a stray in New Castle, IN, a few weeks ago. I picked him up from the shelter yesterday and ran him by Caring Hands for bloodwork to (a) check his heartworm status and (b) pull pre-op bloodwork in hopes that heartworm would be negative and I could schedule him to be neutered ASAP.

Unfortunately, my vet called me this morning to let me know the heartworm test was positive, so I guess he’ll be with me for awhile while he goes through treatment.

More when I know it. Working with my vet and the rescue to formulate the plan for going forward.

Tuesday was annual check-up day for Drummer and Thunder, so I bundled them both into the Trooper and we headed off to Caring Hands to see Dr. Roach. I’ve been considering changing vets and finding one closer to the new house, but I really like Dr. Roach, so we made the trek.

Thunder’s been fighting an ear infection, but he’s in perfect health other than that. When I got him, he was fat and had skin problems. Now his skin and coat look great, and he’s lost 20 pounds (down 30 from his high weight according to his records from his previous vet). At 64 pounds, he’s a little on the ribby side, but Dr. Roach said he’s perfect and she loved his muscle tone. He got his three-year rabies shot and had blood drawn for titers, and I’ve got antibiotics and an ointment for his ears.

Drummer weighed in at 34 pounds and Dr. Roach thought he looked fabulous too. Yay for playing frisbee in the hilly backyard… it’s apparently kept both boys in really good shape. The techs had trouble finding a vein, so poor Drummy was more than a little stressed by the time they finally got his blood draw done. He’s got another year on his rabies shot, so he didn’t have to have any shots, at least.

Both boys were really good in the exam room. I wasn’t sure how it would go, having both of them in there together with nothing to do other than play with each other (and me), but they managed not to totally bounce off the walls. They were remarkably calm after the blood draws… I think the subtext there was “If we’re really really good, will you keep the vampire ladies away from us??”

So… one of the hazards of having my email on a different server from my web pages is that I don’t always notice if “my domain” is down, ’cause my email is still working.

A week ago, my domain got moved to a different server. The host did all the work, and the move went flawlessly for all my other domains (which were using the host’s DNS). This domain, however, was using third-party DNS so that I could also have a backup mail server, and someoneWhoShallRemainNameless forgot to forward the notice that we were moving servers.

Oops.

It took a week before one of my friends pointed out, via Twitter DM, that this site was offline (thanks, Nancy!). Found/fixed the DNS problem and life is good again. Upgraded WordPress while I was at it, since there was a security patch.

Maybe if I posted more often, people would notice when this place disappeared. I should do something about that, eh?

Mr. Murphy, originally my sister’s foster dog but who became a joint project when she moved back east and he stayed in Indiana with me, finally found his furever family and went home this weekend.

He’d been taking his time about the whole process, having had meet-and-greets with a couple of other families before this one, but we were really hoping for that sometimes-elusive “perfect match”… the one where the humans fall head-over-heels in love with the dog, and where the foster mom (or moms, in this case) thinks “Oooh… I like them… I like them a lot!”

( details and pictures back here! )
As much as I miss the little guy, I’m thrilled that he finally has the perfect family of his own. He’s got a Shiba playmate who’s just a few months younger than him, and people who love him and want the best for him. He’s settling in nicely and looks happy and relaxed in the pictures from his first night in his new home.

I finally managed to get camera, camera battery and then card reader into useful locations and I have pictures of Murphy, the household’s foster Shiba Inu. He just turned a year old, and he’s turning into quite the nice little guy. He’s also generally an excellent housedog. Of course, as I typed that, I heard crunching noises and found him munching on the buckle to one of my sandals. Thankfully, he hadn’t done any damage yet when I redirected him back to a bone and a toy.

( pictures are back here! )I hope you enjoyed the tour of Life With Murphy!

Since I moved into this house, back in July, my primary living space has been the huge walk-out basement. My bedroom is down there, and my big-screen TV and comfy squishy sofas, perfect for lounging on with dogs and cats while working (or playing) on the laptop. There’s easy access to the backyard, by way of the screened porch, and it’s just an altogether more convenient and pleasant “critter space” than the upstairs. (It also allows me to keep the upstairs relatively cat-free, since I have friends and family who are allergic to the feline members of the Reddogs clan.)

Last night, having spent most of the day upstairs doing laundry and unpacking books and generally doing rainy-day chores, I headed down the stairs to grab a laundry basket and realized that the carpet looked funny. Then I got closer and realized the carpet was drenched. Oops! The basement was flooding

As I started the process of contacting the insurance company (who ultimately didn’t cover it because it was a “groundwater incursion” for which I’m not covered) and moving furniture to the dry side of the basement, I also relocated all the animals to upstairs. The cats all got caught and stashed in the small bedroom, where they’re safe from the possibility of escaping while workers are in and out of the house. Conveniently, that room opens onto the main upstairs bathroom, so I can go into the bathroom, close the hall door, then open the bedroom door to go in and feed/water/snuggle cats, letting the bathroom act as a kind of “airlock” to keep kitties from escaping.

Then I drug all the dog crates upstairs and stashed them in the master bedroom, which is my temporary sleeping space (on a twin futon… bleah) until the Big Noisy Fans are gone from downstairs and I can have my room back. The dogs have taken this in stride, ’cause they’re pretty much just happy to be wherever I am, and they can still hang out in the living room with me (Thunder the English Setter looks very elegant sprawled on the leather sofa). The cats, however, are extremely unhappy about this turn of affairs. They’re used to being able to sleep with me, and to snuggle against me while I’m working on the laptop. They do not like being banished to a single room, but we’ve got at least three more days of contractors being in and out of the house to finish drying out the basement and I can run the risk of freaked-out kittie escaping through an open door.

I want my bed back… and my DVR (it’s hooked up to the big TV downstairs)… and I want my house to not sound like I live in a wind-tunnel. But we can all survive a few more days of this, and the good news is that the water was limited to the floor… the walls aren’t wet, and the carpet is probably okay (yay for really good water abatement crews!), and in a few days life will be back to normal.