Spoon!

According to Drs. Foster and Smith, notable purveyors of quality merchandise for pets and probably veterinarians, the proper technique for tick removal is as follows:  Take a fine pair of tweezers, and gently but firmly grasp the tick just where the mouth parts enter the skin.  Pull slowly and gently away from the skin.  It may take some time, but the tick will eventually release.  Dunk the tick into alcohol (preferably rubbing, although I'd guess that vodka would work equally well), unless you need to send the tick away for identification or analysis.  I'm not sure what you do in that case, probably just seal it in a jar or something, because we didn't really care.  Especially after the third or fourth tick we pulled off of the dog.  Blecch.

Pizza Dog

Many of those who read this blog have already heard in other places, but we had a bit of a scare Christmas night.  Our dog managed to sneak into the kitchen while we were video chatting with my wife's folks (it's the future!) and gulp down an entire pizza's worth of raw dough that was completing its final rise, such as it was (I'd been having trouble with the yeast--more on that later).

Our first reaction was, "Oh, that darned dog," and a certain degree of frustration on my part because it was Xmas night and we didn't have a lot more food on hand and nothing was open, but fortunately my wife thought to check the Internet to see if we should be concerned.  Subsequent consultation with the emergency on-call vet and vet hospitals confirmed that we should indeed.

You see, raw bread doughs in general (not just pizza) have yeast in them, which, since they've yet to go into the oven, are still doing their yeasty thing.  To wit; fermentation.  This has several effects in a dog's stomach.

First, it produces carbon dioxide.  This can cause distention and bloat in a dog, bloat meaning not simply the sort of belchy sort of condition that humans get but a severe overstretching and possibly twisting of the stomach, which Wikipedia says is fatal roughly a third of the time without surgery, depending on circumstances.

Second, the yeast also produces alcohol.  This can make the dog very drunk, since it's right there in the stomach lining.  This is much less likely to be fatal, but dogs are smaller than we are, and alcohol poisoning is still possible.

Finally, the fermentation process can also produce some toxic by-products.  Most of them evaporate or are otherwise negligible in a finished baked good, but in a dog's stomach, they're just kind of sitting there being toxic, and that's not good either.

So we had to schlep him down to the emergency 24-hour vet hospital (Which we now know the location of! Bonus learning!), and they induced vomiting.  Fortunately, it was a small batch of dough, and not a lot of active yeast (see earlier comment), so we were all fairly confident that he'd be fine.  A couple of hours of observation later, we were cleared to take him home, and at this point he's probably forgotten all about it.

Dog Paws

This morning I learned that if a dog breaks a bone in their paw, even one of the minor ones, they will typically refuse to put any weight on it.  Contrariwise, if a dog is limping but using the foot, then it's almost certainly not a break, just a sprain or similar.

This is useful diagnostic medical information, and the source of at least a little relief, if not great joy.

Weekend Roundup

This long weekend past afforded several opportunities to learn and try new things.  Here are two of them.  Tra la.

First, we broke and had to clean up our third (3rd) compact fluorescent light bulb, commonly abbreviated to "that goddam thing."  Three mercury spills is at least two too many, and we've had enough-- we're jumping ship.  One of the two table lamps received one of our precious stock of incandescents (cunningly stored in plain sight, a la The Purloined Letter, in a different lamp that doesn't get used much), and the other?  Ah, the other.  The other received a shiny new LED light bulb, rated at something like 800 lumens.  It cost 12 bucks, and I'm a little nervous, as reviews of other such bulbs suggest that their reliability... well, isn't.  But even if we end up having to replace it in 6 months (rather than the 20 years some have claimed), I think the piece of mind of not having to clean up mercury is probably worth it.

Secondly, on Sunday we took the dog and joined a (semi)local dog walking group for a roughly 4-5 mile hike.  Ok, not so much "hike" as "meander", but it was still nice-- especially for a couple of learning experiences.  We were on an isolated farm trail, away from roads and traffic, so we (somewhat nervously) let our slightly less than a year-old puppy Jet off of his leash for the first time in public.  Whereupon we learned the first thing-- he may not, in fact, have been named Jet because of his ebon hue.  He was likely named Jet because that's how goddam fast he was.  Holy CRAP fast.  30 mph?  Possibly more at full tilt?  (Greyhounds can go over 40, but I'm not sure he was quite that fast).  I'm pretty sure it'd take an Olympic sprinter to have a hope of keeping up with him in the full stretch.  This, amid our astonishment, also gave us a touch of concern, obviously, whereupon we learned the second thing-- when we called, he came right back.  Immediately.  This was astonishingly reassuring, and he spent most of the next hour or so off leash, running back and forth around the group, making friends and getting valuable experience interacting with other dogs.  Much love to Martha, the 9 year old lab who was willing to smack him around verbally and physically until he behaved.  (Side note-- we're beginning to suspect, based on some of his reactions, that his dam was a lab, and his father the shepherd).  He learned a lot about good behavior, and we learned that we could trust him off leash, at least in some circumstances.