This past week turned out to be one of those weeks for us. Throughout all the details that follow I was able to somehow keep my sanity and keep my schedule in regards to the Secret of the Stole KAL. A huge THANK YOU and a big CYBER HUG go out to my friend Reba for helping me keep the group on an even keel during our travels. So, here is what happened.

It all began on Tuesday when we took our dog Aubie to the vet because he wasn’t feeling well. As I said in the last post we were leaving on Friday for a 10 day trip to Colorado and we needed to find out what was wrong with him so we would know whether to board him or not. I won’t go into all the particulars, but, on Wednesday we were informed that his one or more of his organs was failing and the dog that just the day before was following me around the house, would not make it through the day. We rushed to the vet and I was able to hold him while he breathed his last. The dog that gave me over 14 years of happiness and completely unconditional love was gone.

Since neither DH, myself, or our remaining dog, Blazer, wanted to be in the house with the memories of Aubie everywhere, we decided to leave a day early for our trip. The trip to the cabin was quiet and uneventful. I was planning on knitting up a storm and couldn’t manage to do but a few rows. Blazer was given the king’s throne in the car and seemed to enjoy it. After 1500 miles and way too much junk food, we arrived at the cabin in Creede, CO (altitude 11,000 ft) mid-day on Saturday.

On Sunday, we found Blazer lying very still and lethargic on his bed in the motor home. This is highly unusual for him since he has for the past 14 years been extremely vocal and interested in anything that was going on around him. He slowly emerged out of his grogginess and we thought it was just an “altitude” issue. Until later that evening, when we were checking on him and he had a seizure, stiffened up his body, flailed his head back and briefly stopped breathing. When the seizure was over he was once again lethargic and mostly unresponsive, leading us to believe that that was what had happened earlier in the day as well.

The following morning we called our vet and he basically told us that we should get him off the mountain and bring him in asap. We were stunned and saddened that Blazer was now ill and we would be cutting our trip so short. Tuesday, we left Creede and 1500 miles later we arrived back at home. Blazer went to the vet today and, wouldn’t you know it, all his blood work turned out “normal”. He is not diabetic, anemic, suffering from a heart murmur or even heart worms. That was the best news we could have had this week. We will hear about his thyroid test soon and if that comes back clean then the next thing the vet said we could do is a CAT scan to check for a brain tumor. I found this to be a point of amusement since it was an interesting name for a scan of a dog’s brain. A CAT scan is not happening on a 14 year old dog in my house, so we will just have to watch him closely and keep him company from now on since his brother is gone.

On a brighter note, when we arrived at the cabin William, our grandson, and his parents were already there, as were my mom and dad. It was William’s birthday (2 yrs) and we had a great time visiting with him. The festivities and family time took our minds off our loss, if just for a little while.

To the left is a three generation photo of William, Bryan (his father in the background), and Scott (my DH and Bryan’s dad). The photos we took of William and of Blazer while we were there are just priceless and I will post more of them soon on our personal blog Door Number Three for anyone who is interested.

All in all, it was just one of those weeks…

John Ratsenburger was on O’Rielly last night on the Fox News Channel and I found his interview to be very interesting. He said that someone asked him once why he was raising his children in the Christian faith and his reply was:

“You have to raise your children believing in something they can later accept or reject. Otherwise, if you raise them believing in nothing when they get older they will believe in everything.”

The water in the pond is gone. The fish are easy pickings for the birds these days and the plants are all struggling too. We have been in this drought all spring and the pond has just slowly gone away. Here is what it looks like now:

Spring weather was here at our house just long enough to make the dogwoods bloom and the grass start growing. Now it is dry and cold again. (35-40 degrees at night) The grass did get tall enough to cut though and Scott, trooper that he is, decided to test out his dad’s new lawn tractor. Problem was that his head was cold. Here is his solution to the problem. Is this proper attire for winter lawn mowing????

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. -Age 64 (“Live and Learn and Pass It On” by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)