Animal Interlude

This is just another brief and mostly pointless digression, here only to bring you up to date on some of the other personalities who inhabit my world.

Max continues to do well since the last change in his medications. He gets up slowly, moves slowly, and we try to avoid collisions with the other dogs since they cause him to limp for a couple of days. But he is enjoying the sun and the shade, and has even been known to curl up inside his dogloo.

Yuki is happiest when people are paying attention to her, but she settles for a walk every morning and some ball chasing whenever anyone heads out to the back yard.

And Hershey somehow managed to rip a hole in his side. It was superficial -- no muscle involvement -- but he ended up with stitches and a lighter exercise schedule for a few days. He's feeling fine now, even if his humans don't throw the ball for him often enough or long enough.

The weather here in Dodge is fairly temperate right now -- warm but not too hot, that is. So the dogs spend most of their time in the yard, even though they usually prefer to be inside. But with the work going on inside the house (stay tuned for that delaying tactic), we think its best that no one has to worry about them when going in and out the front door.

The cats are another issue. They don't go outside, but we also don't want them in the way of people who are working inside the house. One of last summer's projects was to cover and screen in the balcony so that the cats could go outside. Since it's not too hot (yet), we have been shutting them out on the balcony while work is going on.

Don't let those melancholy looks fool you. They love the balcony. They are up on a level with the birds in the mulberry tree. There is always a nice breeze. There are comfortable chairs to shed all over and to throw up on. There are cat trees, as modeled by Junior, who did not want to come to the slider to have her picture taken.

We even give them food and water out there.

Sports Nut's cats, Malka and Canti, are shut up in his room when they can't be loose. Future Vet's cats are similarly confined to his room. And that's it for the four-feets.