Meeting face-to-face

I'd like to begin this post by stating how lucky I feel.

I have "met" the most wonderful people through blogging, people I haven't actually met face to face (though I still hope to!), but still feel like I know nonetheless. Even more wonderful are those handful of bloggers (you know who you are ♥) that I have had the incredible opportunity to meet in person.

Such a meeting happened last weekend and it tickled me beyond all belief. I was able to meet up with Sarah from Between the Fenceposts (<--click this link to visit Sarah's blog). Sarah and her husband, Malcolm, drive an incredibly large truck for a living and just happened to be staying overnight in Portland:

Sarah contacted me to see if we'd be interested in meeting up and I couldn't answer fast enough: "Yes!"

For over a year I have been reading stories from Sarah about life on the road, life inside the cab of a truck and life with three Chinese Crested dogs, Paris, Carly and Ella.

I *loved* the moment I got to meet Paris, Carly and Ella in person:

And, not only did I get to sit in the driver's seat of their very big truck, I received the most wonderful loving attention from all of their pups:

Sarah and Malcolm humored Jim and me by letting us eat at the local truck stop. How often do we normal folk get to eat at truck stops?! Never!
So, Jim ordered the pot roast:

It came with mashed potatoes, a cornbread biscuit and a salad. A real stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal. (Just for comparison purposes - and to show you what an eater my man is-, Sarah and I split a sandwich and Malcolm had the soup and salad.)

We told stories and laughed like we'd known each other for years. It was really fun to sit back and realize, hey, we're only just meeting for the first time, but look how comfortable we are.

After dinner, Sarah's and my team of paparazzi followed us with cameras, shutters clicking, taking hundreds of photos of us:

For two people normally behind the lens, this wasn't a comfortable thing for us:

But we tried to relax and have fun. I love the photo below because 1) we're laughing so hard, 2) I can tell that Malcolm is smiling behind the camera, and 3) I can see Sarah's and my image on the screen of Malcolm's camera:

In the end, we tired before the paparazzi did:

Thank you, Sarah and Malcolm, you cutie pies - hope you come through Portland again really soon!

(Look at those wonderful EARS!!)

This just isn't right

One feature of living in western Oregon, aside from all the rain, is the predominance of slugs...

They seem to show up everywhere:

and you just learn to live with them...

...until they show up in a spot where you, quite simply, cannot tolerate them.

Every night, when I head out to lock up my goat boys, Pete and Reggie, I walk past Honey's crate. Honey, you may recall, is my chicken who divorced herself from my bigger chicken flock (<-- click on link for original story) and now lives a life with her new flock of donkeys, cats, llama, and goats. She sleeps at night in a dog crate on my side porch.

Tonight, when I stepped out onto the porch, this is the first thing I saw on the ground in front of me. Ewww:

My garden clippers, however, are swift and sure and he was expedited in the quickest of manners.

I shined my light into Honey's crate just to make sure all is well and wish her a good night ....

What? Wait a minute:

Seriously?!

Five of these disgusting things had decided to bed down with my chicken:

These were good-sized puppies, too:

There you go, sweetheart. That's much better, right? Hold on...what's that over your head?!:

Oh, for PETE'S sake!:

This one had spots. Fancy:

I think it's safe to go back to sleep now, Honey:

That just wasn't right.

My thoughts and love are with Morning Bray Farm

My friends at Morning Bray Farm lost a beloved member of their animal family today.

My heart aches for them.

If you aren't yet a regular reader of Morning Bray Farm, would you mind stopping in and leaving them a few words? We could think of it like a big blog "hug".

Thank you. ♥

How's Roxy?

A little over a month ago, my farm pup, Roxy, had surgery on her left rear leg to repair a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and a luxating patella (floating kneecap). Normal recovery time (when dogs begin to use their mended leg again) is anywhere from 2 days to 3 weeks. Disappointingly, things have not gone "normally" for Roxy and, to this day, she is still preferring to use three legs instead of four. Fortunately though, I see daily improvement and I remain optimistic that she be back on "all fours" again soon.

That said, it has been a really long month. For the first two and a half (almost three) weeks following her surgery, I was her private doggy nursemaid, 24x7. She required meds (a combination of painkillers, antibiotics and an anti-inflamatory) three times daily, she had to be carried up and down stairs (of which we have a lot), and an eagle and attentive eye was required to prevent her from licking and chewing her incision site.

Here's the command center where meds were tracked, cut and dispensed. Copious notes were kept on all aspects of her care:

Pills were deviously disguised in something I dubbed "tempting cheese balls":

Though, this was mostly wishful thinking on my part. Even morsels of one of her favorite treats didn't generate any enthusiasm:

Post-surgery, Roxy completely stopped eating. Getting her to drink water was virtually impossible. She lost almost a pound in less than a week. Back to the vet we went:

Her pain meds were increased and we were given a lovely prescription dog food that made her little salivary glands bounce with joy. She *loved* this stuff:

There was cause for great celebration when she began eating on her own again:

Such a good girl:

Once we had the pain management and food/water intake under control, most vital to her recovery have been long hours of rest and recuperation:




What's that around her neck, you ask? Well....:

Despite my attempts at having a vigilant eagle eye, it seemed like every time I turned around, she had managed to get another suture out of her leg:

It became clear she was going to need (insert ominous music) a cone of shame. We experimented with a number of them, trying to find the one that would work best for her:




We would try to make her happy by taking her, and her bed, outside wherever we were:

The goat boys, Pete and Reggie, even came by for a visit during one of Roxy's outside times. She wasn't really feeling up to company, though:

As of today, Roxy continues to favor her left rear leg and when needing to move fast, does a three-legged run. She will put her repaired leg down only for balance and when she is walking slowly:

We took a spontaneous trip to the beach on Sunday - one of Roxy's favorite places in the world:

It made our hearts feel light and happy to see our girl smiling again:

Her sparkle is back and she's eating again, now...if we could just get her to use that leg:

...then everything would be perfect.