damien + water
so last weekend and just about any weekend i do some gardening and use the hose, damien goes crazy with it. it cracks josh and i up and damien will play with the hose for hours. so we finally took some video clips of it:
i apologize for the poor quality. youtube has some terrible compression:
The tiny dogs you hear barking in the background are the neighbors miniature dachshunds (sp?). They hate when our dogs have fun they watch and bark.
now playing: the pixies - where is my mind?
BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND!
Josh is lucky, he got a beautiful sunny warm (80 degree) weekend for his birthday 
Played with the doggies in the yard. Mandy loves it outside. Dupe wanted in. Here’s a pic of Damien and Mandy:
warm weather = productivity
It was super warm this weekend. I went down to Universal City to pick up a rental car since my mini is STILL at the dealer. Their diagnostic machine is up and down all the time and it’s down again.. so my car is waiting for help again. I got a ford focus (yea not even a mini rental after a week of NO CAR!) and headed to the beverly center. I found an awesome BCBG dress that I picked up for the Oscars.
Sunday it was 80! Josh and I washed all 3 dogs and Damien was quite amusing. You know how cats chase a laser pointer spot? Well imagine that scenario.. but Damien (full size rottweiler) as the cat.. and water stream from hose = laser pointer spot. It was quite amusing watching him chase it, pounce it and bite at it over and over. He never tired of it and we never tired of laughing at it.
I also went through my garden and threw away most of the dead plants that the “Buffalo weather” killed. I left the Queen Palm in hopes that it will come back to life sometime soon. Of course the weeds are thriving…
Also just finished an awesome book, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides (wrote “The Virgin Suicides”). Amritz’s g/f, Sarah let me borrow it. It’s fantastic. 2003 Pulitzer prize winner. Took me a while to finish it beause I don’t have time to read lately, but I finally got through it and it was well worth the time spent. Lots of Greek history and immigration history that was interesting and then Detroit that reminded me of Buffalo in some respects and then there’s Cal the intersexual narrator and main character. I can’t give the story justice explaining it, so I’d suggest reading it It seemed very nonfiction to me, like this is a novel, but it’s real life for many people out there. A bit of an eye opener.
2 more days!
On Wednesday night, Tracey and Lori Beth will be here! I can’t wait to see them both. Then on Saturday evening we’re celebrating Christmas and I’m having as many dinner guests as I can fit at our dinner table for a yummy Polish dinner and of course hundreds of homemade desserts!
On another note, Damien has been living crate-less now for almost 2 weeks and he’s been doing really well. He only tore stuffing out of Mandy’s pillow one day while she was at the vet. Nice, huh? She comes home to her pillow stuffing tore out. She’s doing amazing since her surgery. She puts more weight on her back right leg again but she still has a lot of muscle to build up in it and it may never be the same as it used to be. We just have to keep moderately walking her.
Damien…
Took Damien to the vet yesterday while Josh was at work.. and since Josh’s truck is 5 feet off the ground, I can’t lift Damien into it and had to put Damien in my mini. I tried to protect the seat with a huge comforter but Damien is a clutz in my car and was laying half on the floor with his paws on the seat.. then I ran into the vet first to make sure there were no other dogs and tell them I’ll wait outside cuz he’s dog aggressive and they said fine. By the time I got back to the car Damien was in my back seat! looking at me from the back window. Great. He acted very strange at the vet usually he’s all over people but he was super shy and climbing all over my lap. I brought his tennis ball with him to distract him from other dogs but even that he was not that interested in. They couldn’t find anything wrong with his breathing besides a whiz noise when he inhales which could be normal. His temperature was normal, so no pneumonia or fever. She gave me expensive antibiotics for him for the next 10 days and if there’s no improvement on Tuesday he goes in for X-Rays.
On the ride home he was just as clutzy.. I had the windows down so he wouldn’t drool on them (it was warm out too) and he somehow found a way to drool all over my side mirror with his head out the window. It took me a good hour and a half to vacuum out and clean all the drool and hair off of everything.
But Mandy is doing fantastic! She walks around all the time and begs at the table now.. not such a good habit. She comes to greet us when we come home too.. She’s in good spirits.
Lots to catch up on…
Went to Philly to visit Tracey for our birthday. I hope to have photos posted by end of day today in the photo gallery link on the right side there… it was really fun even though it was FREEZING! 36 degrees at night!! so i was all bundled up in sweaters, hoodies, scarfs, pea coat all on top of each other Her kitten, Voltaire is super cute and wild. Next time i visit i’m going to try to make it in a warmer time of year. We went to 2 H&M stores there within a block of each other and there was no 2 hour line to get in, like the Pasadena and LA stores!
Thanksgiving was yummy. Charlie came by and we made just enough food. It seems a 14 lb turkey takes longer than 3 hours like all the recipes say, but we only ended up eating the breasts which reached 165 degrees. The cooking at start of day didn’t go so well with burnt cranberry sauce (forgot about it on the stove) and failed pie crusts. So after frequent trips to Albertson’s (I was on a first name basis with the cashiers by this point) for crisco, then more cranberries, then potatoes, we were all good. I’ll post pics later tonight as well.
Damien developed some sort of cough last night. Sounds like a heavy wheezing choke but he makes no progress.. it comes and goes as coughing fits. He did it again this morning and woke me up scared that he was choking to death. I’m gonna try to take him to the vet tomorrow when maybe Josh can help me. That’s another thing, when he gets excited it sets him off into a coughing fit.. or when he tries to bark 
which is often.
now playing: Say Anything - Chia-Like, I Shall Grow
Accupuncture for Animals
Mandy had her accupuncture today. It was pretty cool to watch. The needles are so super fine that the doctor twicked one of them with her finger and it bent just like a piece of hair or a bristle from a paint brush. I never realized they were that flimsy.
The vet put the needles in her leg in a few spots and down her spine and one right above her eyes in her forehead (probably 9 total). They’re left in for about 10 minutes and then pulled out. She did seem to relax after 3 or 4 were in, I’m not sure if it was the accupuncture or her getting used to the doctor though. Standing up she still limps a lot, she needs 2 more visits for them to determine if it is helping her or not. The next step is surgery.
Just like medication, massage, and other remedies, some work on some people/animals, some don’t.
