Nail and tail

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Friday evening I walked the dogs up to the new house to make sure the air conditioning was working (it was). On the way back down the drive, Zeke saw a fox cross Lavender Trail. He lunged, and I slipped on the loose gravel. Rather than fall, I let him go, so he tore off across the road and into the woods, dragging his orange leash behind.

As usual, he stayed gone for a while. I found him an hour or so later laid out on his side on our neighbor’s grass. When I leaned down to pet him, I noticed that the dewclaw on his left leg looked odd. I checked closer; it was twisted 180 degrees from normal.

I grabbed this blurred shot of his claw Saturday morning before I took him to the vet.

twistednail

The claw is supposed to curl backwards, towards his belly. It’s now curved forwards, towards his chin. I was afraid he had wrenched the dewclaw completely around.

The vet we use now doesn’t make appointments, so I just took him in as close to 8 am as I could manage. The waiting area was full. As we stood there, the nail came off his thumb, leaving a little bloody stub of quick. So his dewclaw was not dislocated; he had just torn the nail away from the quick. You can actually see the quick in the photo above if you know what to look for. I shudder to think of how that would feel to a human.

The vet was not too concerned. She stanched the slow dripping of blood and wrapped his foot. The bandage can come off Sunday.

zekebandage

The dewclaw is high enough on Zeke’s leg that it doesn’t actually touch the ground when he walks, but he’s still limping. That may be partly because of how tightly the bandage is wrapped around his toes. We’re giving him pain medication. We’re sure it’s painful. He did almost the same thing a few months ago. Unfortunatley, I don’t think he will learn anything from this.

He has been acting just slightly lethargic and needy lately. He plays fairly actively with Sam, although he usually spends a significant amount of play time lying on his back pushing Sam around with his legs. A pet owner waiting with us at the vet’s asked if Zeke had a few years on him. He does – we’ve had him for 10 years and he was at least a year old when we got him. I was a little surprised that his age was that obvious. It doesn’t seem that way to us. I suppose part of Zeke’s somewhat different behavior could be at least partly due to age.

And now, a Sylvester report. I told the vet about Sylvester’s drooping tail. She said it might be just a sprain (a sprained tail?). She said to give it a month, and if it doesn’t get better to bring him in.

The worst-case scenario is a dead tail. In that case, she might have to amputate. We have been considering renaming him if that happens. My suggestion is Bobtail Catthwait.

A cat’s tail

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We think Sylvester might have a broken tail. We noticed it about a week ago. In the past he often held his tail straight up, with maybe a little curl at the end, a typical cat tail posture. Lately, though, he can’t seem to “get it up.”

This is about as high as he can raise it.

backview

He hardly looks sassy with that loopy tail.

It also tends to droop to his right side.sly3

He followed us down Lavender Trail Thursday night to see how the painting and HVAC are going at the new house. This is typical Sylvester behavior; he hangs back crying like a little kitten, and then trots up to us

Normally his tail would be either up or almost straight out behind him. Here you can see it drooping to his right, dangling with no apparent control.

It seems to us that the first couple of inches of his tail are normal. He can move that around and raise it up normally, but from that point to the tip of his tail, it seems to just hang there. We haven’t been able to inspect his tail closely, but there doesn’t seem to be any visible injury. We have no idea what might have happened. If a car had run over his tail, I would expect there to be some serious abrasions. If he just managed to escape a coyote by the skin of his taily-tail-tail, there should be some sign of that. But nothing, as far as we can tell.

I suggested (hopefully) to Leah that maybe Dusty bit Sylvester’s tail, but that also seems unlikely. Does anyone have any ideas?

June berries

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You may remember last year when I mentioned that Zeke loves blackberries. This year we have a large crop down near where Fouche Gap Road crosses the top of the mountain. They are mostly tiny, green pebbles, but a few have ripened. They are pretty small.

earlyblackberries

It turns out that Sam likes them.

samblackberry

Zeke got one, too.

zekegetsblackberry

Most of the blackberries are quite small. Northwest Georgia, including out part of Floyd County, is currently in severe drought conditions, so I suspect that they will remain small unless the weather pattern changes.

The mulberries seem to be ripening reasonably well, and they seem to be of normal size, which is about the size of a good, wild blackberry.

mulberries

Recently I have been seeing a fox crossing into and out of our yard in the afternoon, much earlier than we usually see one. Leah is not leaving unattended cat food out, so I couldn’t figure out what the fox was doing. And then I noticed black fox poop under the large mulberry tree in the yard. The mulberries are dropping onto the ground, and the fox is eating them.

Wednesday afternoon after our walk I took Zeke and Sam by the mulberry. I picked a few and gave them to the dogs. I tried one last year. To me it tasted a lot like a blackberry. The dogs have offered no opinion on the taste other than to eat them off the ground.

Power up

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Two Georgia Power trucks passed me and the dogs on our walk Monday morning. I was expecting a crew, so I turned around and hurried the dogs back up to the new house. It was good that I met the crew there, because they were ready to leave. They expected to have to dig a trench from the temporary power up to the house, and they didn’t know where to put it. I explained that it had already been done, so after a consultation with the Georgia Power engineer by radio, they got to work.

backhoe

All they had to do was dig up the line from the street at the temporary power drop and splice the cable there to the one that leads up to the house itself.

They have a tool for everything. This one cuts the big cables.

cutter

This one strips insulation off the big cables.

stripper

This one clamps the two bare ends together.

crimper

And this one heats the heat-shink tubing that insulates the splice.

heatshrink

It’s a propane torch. When its heat is applied to a plastic tube, like the one you can see at the toe of the worker’s right foot, it shrinks down to grip the cable tightly.

It didn’t take the crew long to finish. They pushed the dirt back into the hole they had dug and were on their way in under an hour. Later in the day, Leah and I went back to hang the door between the kitchen and garage. After Leah went back home, I flipped some circuit breakers and then some light switches.

litkitchen

And just like that we have lights in our new house. This is the kitchen. We have six recessed lights and the small ceiling fan with lights. The bare wires hanging from the walls will attach to under-cabinet lights one day. This will be a well-lit kitchen.

What you can’t see above the ceiling lights is blown-in cellulose insulation. I and two helpers did about a third of the attic on Saturday. Cellulose insulation is finely ground paper with a flame retardant. I brought 100 bales to the house Friday evening and Saturday morning. One helper emptied bags into the hopper of a special blower that chewed it up and blew it about a hundred feet down a plastic tube, the other end of which was attached to my hands up in the attic. We blew 50 bundles in from around 11 am to about 5 pm. It was a hot and incredibly dusty job. I have to get about 50 more packages to finish. I think we’ll get it done next weekend. After that, I expect never to go into the attic again.

In the meantime, painting is supposed to start on Wednesday, and hardwood flooring on Monday.

This stick is mine

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Sam is always on the lookout for something new to chew. If he finds it on our walks, he’s a happy dog.

Sticks are good.

sam_mystick

Plastic straws, too.

sam_stick

Sometimes a cup.

sam_cup

Or a plastic parfait cup (McDonald’s?)

sam_parfaitcup

He’s very proud of all of these things, but he really likes things that flap around when he shakes his head vigorously.

A Doritos bag is good.

sam_doritos

His real prize is an old hedgehog left over from when Zeus, my last doberman, was alive.

sam_hedgehog

He will eventually chew holes through this poor, old hedgehog’s skin and pull out all the stuffing. But don’t worry; we have a replacement hedgehog available.