It’s Weather and Dogs!

I am now less than ten days out from the Death Valley Encounter ride. So, of course, it's time for things to get crazy!

Mac (last mentioned when he lacerated the roof of his mouth two months ago) managed in spectacular fashion to fracture his upper right canine. Well, that rather turned out to be the tip of the iceberg.

The story starts with our morning walk on Friday (12-17). Fairly early on, Mac, Jazz, and Ash (aka "Team Fluffy") tore off after some unidentified critter. I didn't notice right away. By the time I did, they had disappeared into the rocks and brush. We continued walking and called and called. Roxy at one point heard them and started running ahead to meet them. I didn't like her being alone with her rickety back end, so I ended up running down the hill after her. There were several tense minutes of calling and whistling when Ash and Jazz came running back. But there was still no sign of Mac.

We continued to call and whistle. I thought I heard Mac bark once. He's supposed to make a lot of noise when in pursuit, but this isn't a lesson he's gotten a good hold of. I was pretty sure he was after a coyote, not a critter I'm real comfortable about him dealing with alone. After several more minutes, during which we turned around and headed back up the hill, Mac finally came running back to us.

When he got back to me, I noticed Mac had a little blood on him. I checked him over, finding minor wounds on his chin and upper lip, and a scrape on his right wrist. I lifted his lips and inspected his teeth. I found nothing out of the ordinary. We continued on home, where I fed breakfast and we loaded up Hoss for our ride.

Mac did just fine on our ride. There was never a moment that he seemed in the least uncomfortable or unhappy. He was his normal happy self, chasing squirrels and running ahead so he could torment Ash. Jazz seemed a little less than her usual self. Indeed, I noticed that she has a very slight limp on her right front at the trot. She was staying pretty far behind, and a few times I felt the need to slow down or stop to let her catch up.

After our ride, I had to very quickly get changed and the truck unhitched to get down to the church. My bell choir group was scheduled to perform at Jungle Bells and I was one of the "designated drivers" to schlep bells to the zoo. We arrived at the zoo, got the bells stowed, and went to "high tea" with the rest of the group. Unfortunately, it started raining. Because our bells are brass and our music paper, we were unable to perform. So, we loaded the bells back up and returned them to the church, then headed home.

When we arrived home, I fed the horses their dinners before coming in to take care of dogs. My husband at one point grabbed Mac by the face, something he does regularly, only to have Mac cry out and pull away. Suspicious, I leaned down to inspect him, thinking the reaction was far more serious than the injuries I knew about warranted. I lifted his lips and immediately noticed that his right canine was virtually gone.

I brought him around to show my roommate the injury, whereupon I discovered she'd been waiting to tell me there was a significant amount of blood on the floor and walls in her room. It was immediately clear that Mac had done most of his bleeding in her room. We found a blood trail that led back outside. What happened to cause this we have no idea. We can only guess that he was somehow in her room when the tooth broke free.

It was late in the evening and I knew there was no point in taking him to the vet at that late hour. They would only be able to give him pain control and keep him over night to take care of the extraction of the broken tooth in the morning. I have Tramadol and Rimadyl in the house. I gave him a dose of each of those, plus we applied some Anbesol to the broken tooth. I called the vet's office and let them know there'd be an emergency extraction in the morning!

We took Mac to the vet's office in the morning and left him for his dental cleaning and extraction. They called me some time later to let me know that he didn't have just one fractured tooth. He had three fractured teeth plus two incisors that were falling out! Poor guy lost five teeth!

We don't know exactly how this happened. The working theory is that he got ahold of that coyote and they scrapped. We're hoping there's a very dead coyote out there somewhere!

In the midst of all this, the rain started. I had three days of work scheduled. It rained until late Wednesday night. I had work planned for Thursday, but also an appointment with the orthopedist for my shoulder. This meant we only had about five hours to work! And we couldn't work Friday because my assistant already had something else he had to do. So, we were on the muscle and got four full shoes down, plus three trims.

This, of course, does not mean I'm caught up. I still have those two days that didn't get done. So, when I've finished with Death Valley, on Monday morning I have got to get under some horses. I have four days of work scheduled, and not simple, short days, either. And Warner Springs is the next weekend, for which I am also entered. I am going to be one very tired person!

In the mean time, I am frantically getting ready to go the Death Valley, and stuff keeps cropping up. My daughter is going with me, and we've decided we are taking the two eldest dogs with us. I counted pills, and discovered just today, the day before we leave, that one of the dogs would run out of a critical med before we were done! Not just that, but I wouldn't be able to refill this without doing bloodwork on said dog, first. So we ran him off to the vet's before church, and did a great deal of running around after church with his little butt in the car. We got home late, and I fed and blanketed and had some dinner, then started trying to figure out what I need to pack.

At the moment, I am mildly freaking out about what I may have forgotten or might forget. I keep running through things in my head, and the only stuff I can think of cannot be packed until tomorrow. My worst fear at this point is forgetting pillows. You have no idea how important pillows are until you don't have them!

With any luck, we'll be on the road by 8am. Wish us luck!