The Day The House Went Quiet - In Memory of Nin

Cinder (Nin)

July 2, 1995 to June 30, 2015

It is with a heavy heart I share with you that two days before his 20th birthday we had to say goodbye to our boy. He sang until the end and was surrounded with love.

We will celebrate his life on Thursday in honour of his 20th birthday and we hope you will join us then.

Nin - thank you for 19+ years of love and companionship. Your trolling, singing, and always being in the way will be missed more than you can imagine. 

The Lady, The Man, Hailey and Zaphod

My Dock Dog

Saturday was beautiful so time to go to the beach.

Off we go.

Phod always starts by carrying his water toy, but drops it and I get to carry it. 

Here is our little beach. 

Now time for the fun. Phod - the dock dog! 

We own a piece of this community dock (we share the beach with 3 other properties currently) not for a  boat, but for a Phod!

Mischief Monday - The New Kid In Town

As Man and I were putting our shoes on last Thursday to go and pick the pups up from camp, our new friend was at the front door.  We would like to introduce the world to Mischief Mickey.

Mischief Mickey (named because being that cheeky in a house with dogs is going to cause mischief) is what appears to be the last surviving groundhog baby. There were 3, but he/she is the only one we have seen lately. We have seen the fox around and believe the fox may have caught a few. Nature is not always kind. 

Since the dogs have returned we have seen a little less of Mickey. We believe he/she is living under the deck. Hailey's sniffing suggests Mickey is still around.

We are not sure if he/she is Goldbie (the groundhog that has lived between our house and the neighbours and was named by them) or Lazarus (who is living in the backyard). Some may remember Lazarus is the second baby who appeared last year after Hailey was kind enough to save the world for another baby. 

We will see what mischief Mr. Mischief Mickey brings this summer!

Black and White Sunday - Happy To Be Home

Lady's Birthday Adventure - Part One

I had originally planned to go to my number one dream location Russia (childhood obsession with the Kremlin), however given the political instability there decided to move to number two on the list which was . . . . . . . .

Iceland

People are always shocked to hear that Iceland was number 2, but it has been for at least a decade (so it isn't just a Game of Thrones obsession or anything). After 10 days there, it is now my dream place to move to. (The Man is rolling his eyes as I have told him and everyone I know since my return that I would give up my life - except my dogs - and move there. I have even looked for a job there!)

I hope I can share with you all the reasons I loved it so much in the coming weeks, but before we get to that, a little about our trip.

A bit about Iceland - about 325 000 people call it home. 200 000 of them live near the capital in Reykjavik. The sheep outnumber the residents.  This year it is estimated they will have 1 million tourists. This is probably good for the economy that was really impacted by the global recession in 2008.  The country is clean,  the water is amazing, but it is a pricy place to visit. 

We had 10 days and slept in 9 different places. We slept in all kinds of other places (I will do a post just on that later).

We (by we I mean the Man) drove the ring road counter clockwise around the island. We drove about 2700 km in those 10 days.  Our GPS  only tried to kill us a few times by taking us on roads suited only for 4 wheel drives (called F roads) or having us drive where no road could be found. 

Food: I can't eat gluten and shouldn't eat too much dairy. As both bread and dairy are huge staples in the Icelandic diet, I was good with gluten but ate dairy. I also ate a LOT of lamb - 8/10 nights it was my dinner. Thank goodness it is one of my favourites as neither the Man nor I eat fish and when you take out gluten in these tiny, tiny communities it doesn't leave much left.  I have never had lamb that tasted soooooo good! Skyr - a yogurt/cream type product is excellent - but I only ate a little of that. 

24 hours of daylight: I could still sleep but I can almost always sleep, so that isn't a surprise and I use a sleep mask all the time which probably helped. I am also a vivid dream and the side effect of the daylight I think was I had extra vivid and crazy dreams. The Man, who isn't as vivid a dreamer had the same thing happen. 

I will share more about the trip next Saturday, where I will feature, places I slept and I think week 3 will be wildlife adventures, and we will go from there! 

For now, here is my favourite picture, I think it looks like a painting. 

We Are Back!

Ok, we won't be fully back until Saturday (someone has a little jet lag and all that return from adventure  stuff to do), but we thought we would post a short note!

Here is a brief update:

Hailey and Zaphod survived camp. Unfortunately, they couldn't play with other dogs because Phod insisted on mounting all other dogs and if they didn't like it he became a little aggressive. We have never seen that before and will have to figure out what to do about that.

Nin is still alive. He had a good time with Uncle Chris and Emma. Please be sure to come back a week from today (July 2nd) to help us celebrate Nin's 20th birthday (knock on wood).

Lady and Man had an amazing time away!  Lady plans on sharing some of her adventures in the coming weeks.

For now here are a couple of pictures to get you started. Can you guess where she went?

How have you all been?

Let the Adventures Begin

To celebrate turning old, Lady has planned a big adventure. This adventure is going to have us offline for a couple of weeks. Don't worry we will be back with stories to tell! Sorry we haven't been around much this week, getting ready for all of this (mainly getting her work all done) has had the Lady super busy and the night she had for visiting, we had no power! Sigh!

Be good to yourselves and each other! See you in a few weeks!

See Beautiful - Man and Nature

When I think of beauty, I generally think of nature or my pups. However, recently I was looking through pictures of our trip to Bali in 2011 and thought there are some great examples of Man and Nature being beautiful together. Here they are:

Wordless Wednesday - Rub My Belly

What Vet Techs Really Do

The Lady: As someone who has been a pet owner for 20 years - a week, and has lots of experience with the vet, I admit to not thinking enough about the Vet Techs. I am possibly biased because my vet is a family friend so I know him really, really well. Whatever the reason, I am happy to share this information about vet techs with everyone. 

Andrea from veterinarytechnicianguide.com

There is so much heart in pet owners parents. When they bring their Toby, Lola, Hailey or Zaphod, to our clinic, you can tell these are no ordinary pets, and they most definitely don’t have ordinary parents.

What you see is a true family coming to be seen by the Pet Doctor, AKA the Vet. And just with any family, problems at home can lead to problems with your pet.

This is significant, because many times when a golden retriever is refusing to eat or lost its spark, it could be a symptom of depression and not a disease.

We have seen quite a few cases such as these, and even we, as veterinary technicians, can tell if Toby is really sick or just depressed. This is just one of the things they don’t prepare you for when you are trying to choose a career as a vet tech.

The silver lining is that no matter how bad it can get with one patient, the sheer number of good people and animals that come our way, brighten our mood so much so that it is still the most amazing job I could have ever asked to be a part of.

We love hearing the pride in dog ladies and cat guys, it truly makes our day!

So if you love animals, and want to become a veterinary technician, make sure you go into this career with more than just your heart! :)

You can find out more info on what vet techs do in my main article.

A Celebration

We are skipping our regular mischief post (oh and there has been some mischief, mainly barking at wind in the middle of the night and wanting to get up really, really early on the weekend) to wish our Human Cousin Maggie a Very Happy First Birthday!

Even Maggie can't escape the Lady's need to dress things up at her own birthday party. Lady had to stick the big bow on her head. Love Maggie's WTF face! 

Black and White Sunday - BFFs

I love that Lee and Nin are truly best friends. Any chance I get I am taking pictures of the two! 

Confessions of a Dog Lady - My Old Cat is Eating Junkfood

I guess today is really confessions of a cat lady, keeping with 3 days in a row about our Nin!

I have had a cat for 20 years in 2 weeks and dogs for 15 years or so. I have always prided myself on feeding them well to help keep them healthy. Heck, they probably eat better than I do most of the time!

There have been two exceptions to this:

1) When angel Loki our first dog was dying and not eating, we gave him whatever he wanted. The vet actually said to do this.

2) The last few months I have moved Nin, who will be 20 in less than a month, from a premium food to cheaper food. We moved him from the creme de la creme hard food (at like $60 a bag) to a moderate hard food with low protein as suggested by the vet (which is about $25 a bag). We can't tell how much he is eating because we think he is sharing with the mouse.

We finally used up all the canned food from the vet, that was also premium and like $4 a can (and that is just tiny cans). It took forever to use it up as Nin ate very little. The Man and I had a discussion and decided that we would try canned food from the grocery store.  No surprise, Nin LOVES it. He is probably eating more than he was of the expensive stuff. I realize that this isn't as good for him, but at this point he is happy and eating, so I am happy. Although I do feel a little bad about it. However, I remind myself that  at this point probably doesn't really make a difference.   I hope when I am a hundred I can eat cake at every meal if I want!

Feline Friday - Mystery Solved

On Saturday we took the dogs to camp, got groceries (because camp is half way between our house and the grocery store) and then came home and got ready for the wedding.

After the Man's bath he accidentally left the bathmat down. I was doing my hair and I looked over to see Nin finishing his pee on the bathmat. 

Now we know for sure who the bathmat peer is!

I am old and I will pee where I want to

Hug A Cat Day

Somewhere on our trek through Blogville we saw that June 4 was hug a cat day.

Fortunately we still have a cat to hug! He was less happy about all the hugs:)

Wordless Wednesday - Two

Tasty Tuesday - A Prize

To continue from yesterday - after a day in camp, the Lady came home smelling like a traitor. We would have been really mad, but she had this in her arms:

She had gone to the AutismSpeaks Canada 3 km . As a participant she was given 5 raffle tickets. She got to pick which items to try and win and she picked the basket from Critter Jungle, a local pet store. She was very excited to see after the walk that she had won it! The organizers told her it was valued at $150.  All her coworkers were like "of course you won that!" teehee. 

Here is a better peak of what was inside.

One can never have enough poo bags

Lots of yummy treats and food

A new baby

We are very excited about everything that is in it. Since the bed is a little small for us, we think we will give it to cousin Emma.  If she doesn't want it, we will donate it somewhere. 

We guess our weekend worked out in the end! 

Mischief Monday - A Winner and a Very Bad Lady by Lee

First, yesterday afternoon, the Lady programmed all the names of the people who commented on Thursdays post about DIY fences in her Roundom app and the winner is . . . . .

Congratulations Bella, Roxy and Dui! Please email Lady at leeandphodATbellDOTnet to work out getting your prize.

Now the mischief. On Saturday we were so, so excited to be going in the car. So excited that as Lady was getting our stuff ready, Hailey had to pee on one of our blankets that was packed. Lady had to come up with a plan B for a second bed as we needed one where we were going.

Our joy was quickly ended when we arrived at our destination - a new camp. We had to spend a night at a new camp. We had to stay because Lady and Man were going to go to town for a wedding and it was going to be a pain in the butt to come out and care for us. Also they wanted to try this new camp out because we are going to have to use it when Lady goes off adventuring.

Phod peed on a plant in the lobby when we arrived and then when we got to our room, went out in the run and peed on the dog in the next run.

Hard done by Phod

We apparently were good at camp. Phod had one altercation with another dog when the other dog mounted him. They said their pieces and then had a little stand off before sorting it out. Hailey was very shy as always and one time played the "I am free and don't have to go back to my room game" and ran around (all in a safely enclosed area) before reentering her room.

Hard done by Lee

Lady would like to say she had a lot of guilt about leaving us, but thinks we were ok. We might not make her feel too bad except when the Man picked us up, the Lady was not with him. Then when she came home she smelt like this:

While we were in jail, she was off being a traitor. This is Moose. He is 9 weeks old. He was adopted 2 days ago by someone who works with Lady.


We may be able to forgive her for all the traitor stuff because she brought something else home. Come by tomorrow to see what it was!