Our lovely Remi who recently passed away had a rolled leather collar and leather leash. Despite them being “cheap,” they were still in great condition after 10 years. So about four months ago, I decided to get a similar set for Ruffie. I found many on Amazon that would have set me back about a third of what I ended up paying. I decided to get something “high quality” and picked a shop on Etsy with all 5 star reviews. I have now learned why Etsy reviews are so high, and it’s not because of product quality. It’s because Etsy doesn’t allow reviews after a reasonable amount of time has passed.
Update: Thankfully in this case I was able to make contact with the merchant and get the issue resolved, so I am happy for that. It doesn’t change any of the points here, and I urge Etsy to allow for writing reviews longer after the item was received to instill confidence the items are durable enough to consider purchasing.
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We basically stopped our training sessions over the past two months. We were already less regimented after the Wisconsin road trip in July, and then August quickly became all about poor Remi. After he passed away, I couldn’t bring myself to resume training Ruffie right away. He’s well …
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I just returned from a lovely and bittersweet trip to Warsaw. This has been a long time coming.
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For the first time in a decade, I went backpacking. It was a short trip back up to the Mendocino National Forest, but it was fun. I hope it spurs me to do more soon. I just wish Remi could have been there!
I had been wanting to go camping more for years, but hadn’t quite made the time. This past weekend was a three day one, and I decided the week before to just go somewhere. I thought it’d be just me and Ruffie, as Alan had a music thing and might not want to go anyway. But he ended up going, too, if we could do a single night Sunday to Monday. I hope he’ll want to come on the next one!
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I wish I could erase the past two weeks. Alan’s beautiful Remi was healthy and active, especially for a dog of 12 years. He came into my life four years ago. We were together nearly every hour since, through the pandemic and several moves. Those years were challenging for me personally, and he helped me cope when I was struggling, which was often. I loved going on adventures with him. I loved taking care of him. I love him.
But the day after our last 6 mile hike, I gave him Frontline Plus per the directions. Two days later, Remi stopped voluntarily eating, and his muscles stiffened to the point he could barely walk. The next week was desperate attempts to diagnose, to feed, to comfort. The final hours, of trying to raise his body temperature and then rush to the hospital as my beloved Alan administered rescue breathing and CPR in the back of the Jeep, are hours I hope to never endure again. They are hours I nonetheless cannot stop reliving in my mind.
As I reflect on Remi’s life and my culpability in its end, I am only comforted that he was always a happy dog, and as far as I could tell was not in any pain through his last moments, when I am sure he heard Alan and me both telling him we love him.
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Planning trips with my large family is difficult, and I understand why it stresses my mom and everyone out. We’ve been trying to get dates nailed down for a trip to Door County, a few hours north of my mom’s house, for many months. Right up till the week before, we still didn’t know who all was going. But I at least knew I was, both for the mini trip up north and to hopefully also spend some time with my dad, who was turning 77.
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We did a road trip to Wisconsin for about 2 weeks of the past 3. That provided some great new experiences for Ruffie, but it also broke some of my training consistency. I’ve been shifting focus as I’ve been doing more research on dog behavior as well.
Running …
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Time has been flying lately.
Running
I haven’t been running much, but I did do a few runs with Ruffie so far. The longest was 6 miles on the trails 2 weeks ago, and the most recent 4.5 on the roads here just today.
Training
We’re progressing …
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Our new dog Ruffie has been adapting pretty well to life at our house. He’s still getting used to the cats and we’re barely started with training, but overall it’s much less stressful now than it was the first couple of days. Thanks to a prong collar …
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As a bridge between my bare bones Pelican install and whenever I figure out my full photography workflow, here’s my current hacky approach to getting images on my blog quickly:
- Tag photos in Digikam with
@blog tag, add captions to the “Caption” field in the Captions editor.
- Go to …
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Two Saturdays ago, May 27, Alan and I welcomed Ruffie the husky into our home. He is a 2.5 year old pup who had been at the Oakland Animal Services shelter since early February. While his first days here were a little chaotic even under constant supervision, he is generally pretty well behaved and is even starting to get along with one of our cats, Kiko.
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I finally cleared off the counter so I could take a picture of all the loofahs we harvested a few months ago after having planting a few dozen seeds. Sadly, we only managed to get two specimens off a single vine, and they are small! I was excited to see them finally growing in the summer, but they clearly were missing something to reach their potential. Alan blames the poor soil in front of our house.
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Friday was a strange day. I went to bed late the night before, working till almost 01:00 to wrap something up. Then I woke to a text from fellow Fitbitter Tom D. asking if I am doing OK. I then glanced at the headlines and saw Google laid off …
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