The Silver Surprise

When I adopted Silver, no one was sure whether she'd been spayed. The paperwork from her first rescue group's vet said this:

No spay scar seen or palpated, but mammary glands have no development and vulva is small and sl[ightly] recessed. All 5 vets here suspect pet is already spayed. None of us have ever seen an intact retired greyhound off the track--all are fixed very young. Pet is tattooed and suspect spayed.

SEGA's vet couldn't find a scar. Neither could my vet, and he laid down on the floor with his head under her to see if a scar was visible when she was standing normally (rather than when people were lifting her leg to take a look). No one wants to recommend opening up a dog, only to find that--Oops! Someone's been here already.

But if you were paying attention to the title of this post, you've already figured out where this tale is going.



Silver is the outraged possessor of two pairs of canine panties--in purple and hot pink. Not surprisingly, she resents having her long greyhound tail pulled through the hole in the pants. (But you can distract her with dinner.)

Ideally, bitches are spayed midway between heat cycles. Most rescue groups don't have the luxury of following that timing since they need to get the ladies spayed and on their way to new homes.

But Silver is already in her new home, with a boy who has better sense than to mess with the living embodiment of the expression Let sleeping dogs lie. (She can be irritable even when her hormones aren't on the rampage.) Besides, Sam was neutered more than nine years ago; even if he had the will, he wouldn't have the way, so to speak. This means we'll be able to wait until the ideal time (three months after the onset of her heat cycle) for the spay.

Poor baby. She's already unhappy about having to be muzzled pretty much all the time to keep her from licking and chewing at her front leg. (We're trying different meds for that leg.) Now, in addition to muzzling her front end, we're "muzzling" her back end, too.


The leg she's been chewing, licking and scratching since July. Steroids and antibiotics haven't made any impression.

Sam is sick

Sam is sick.

X-rays have shown cancer in his lungs. This is probably a secondary cancer that has metastasized from some other cancer we haven’t discovered. There’s nothing we can do about the cancer we know about, and there’s no point in putting him through extensive exams to find the primary problem.

So far, he seems to feel fine. He coughs a little, then goes on trying to impress Silver with zoomies in the living room. He eats well; and although we’ve had a few nights of restless, interrupted sleep, the new meds (diazepam and gabapentin) seem to be helping him relax better through the night. (And since I no longer need to worry about liver damage, I’ve stepped up the meloxicam for his arthritic back--which is why he jumps and spins like a two-year-old.)

The thought of losing him so soon after losing Jacey makes me want to cry--so I just don’t think of it more than I can help. My job at this point is to keep him comfortable and spoiled. (“Spoiled” does not include kitchen trash can privileges, Sam.) I’ve promised him and myself that I won’t let him suffer if I possibly can help it. There’s some risk that I might come home one day to find that the primary cancer has reared its ugly head, but I just have to hope I’ll be handy when he needs me. At least there’s no indication that he has osteo, which could cause painful broken bones when I’m not home.

Sam is eleven and a half. He’s slept at my side every single night for more than nine years, and I love this boy more than words can say.


Silver and Sam

Happy Gotcha Day, Sam!

SEGA once posted this picture of an adoptable dog.



I lost my heart.

And my mind.

Stat K Sam was a two-year old breed snob with a monster prey drive. (Sam's slogan: If it's not a grown greyhound, it's dinner.)

I owned Oreo at the time and was fostering. I couldn't just dump my foster and snatch up Sam, so Sam went to a foster home where they were looking for a dog to compete in agility with their other greyhound. They soon began to worry that omnivorous Sam, off-leash during an agility run, might go after another dog. And Sam really wasn't agility material: he ran into a tree in their front yard.

Meanwhile, another SEGA member fell in love with my foster. I let her take him home, and I "volunteered" to foster Sam so his then-foster-parents could hunt for another agility dog. We all swapped dogs, and I brought Sam home. That was 5 October 2002.

Oreo was horrified. She put up with the other foster dogs, but Sam was crazy and had no off switch. And he totally ignored warning growls from her. He'd look away from her--not confrontational at all--and continue to do whatever was annoying her...like using her as a pillow:



After Oreo died, Sam welcomed Jacey, who let him pretend to be the boss for about four days before she corrected his delusion. But even she was patient with him when he turned her into a pillow:



Jacey's gone, and now there's Silver--who doesn't tolerate Sam very well yet. (Just wait till cold weather. That's when Sam's pillow-maneuvers really get going.) We have had one almost-cuddly occasion--but Sam was on the bottom. And asleep:



Sam's prey drive has never slackened. I used to have a bird feeder outside my living room window. Sam would look out the window at the birds and squirrels, and he was fine with that. But one day there was a cat outside. Sam screamed, reared back, and put his foot through the glass. Fortunately, he didn't hurt himself (and he thoroughly scared the cat).



I got the window fixed, then bolted Plexiglas to the inside of the window frame. The cat came back. Sam threw himself at the Plexiglas, bounced off(!), threw himself at it again, bounced again, and I got to him before his third attempt. I got rid of the bird feeder.

These days, as a nice old man (he's 11--born 10 May 2000), Sam's prey drive is tempered by the knowledge that Mom isn't going to let him eat squirrels, birds, and other dogs. Sam mostly just drools at the sight of dinner-on-the-hoof, and walking Sam no longer is like walking a hooked marlin. (Mea culpa: I stole that descriptive phrase from another source.)


Sam still loves squeaky toys,


his vet,


cookies,


peanut butter,


and roaching.

He's a complete mama's boy, and I love him to pieces.

Green Apple Lace

I've finished the Summer Mystery Shawl KAL pattern from Wendy D. Johnson.

My changes: used US8 for the lace cast-on, used US6 for the shawl body, which has one extra 48-stitch repeat. The blocked size is 50" x 25" (127cm x 63.5 cm). The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll, in Granny Smith. It's a small shawl, or a nice-sized triangular scarf. It's being offered for auction to raise funds for GPA/Tallahassee, the greyhound rescue group that functions out of Jefferson County Kennel Club, where Jacey used to race.

(But Sam's the greyhound in the photo. Jacey's coat is too busy to be the backdrop to a lace shawl.)

I finished the knitting on 8 June 2011. The auction runs June 12-20. The auction site is here.

Tuesday Morning (late--I slept in)

My day off. I'll be knitting a lot, and watching Doctor Who on On-Demand.

Although the photos don't really show it, there's been lots of progress.



That's the shawl from the local LYS. This is through the first chart; two more lace charts to go, then a knitted-on border chart. This shawl gets longer with each row, so it won't be moving fast.



The tobacco-colored shawl, through chart 2. Chart 3 is next: 24 rows repeated four times. The cheering part is that each pair of rows is shorter than the rows before it.



The apple-green shawl, also through chart 2.

Some of the people who have done extra repeats on the pattern (to make the shawl longer/wider) have started running out of yarn. I've done extra repeats on my shawls, so I may run into trouble on the green one. (I'll be fine on the brown--plenty of yarn for that one.) But the apple green yarn was purchased more than a year ago, and the company no longer makes that color. If I run out, I may have to invent a new ending for that shawl (or scavenge around on Ravelry to find more--or frog the shawl and reknit with no extra repeats). I'm going to work on it now; if there's going to be a problem, I want to know asap since I'm trying to get a shawl finished for an auction if I can but I also need a shawl for my sister's birthday. (If I can finish the apple green shawl, it will go to the auction and the brown will go to Iris; if I can't finish the apple green shawl, the brown still will go to Iris, but I won't have a shawl for the auction, which is in mid-June.)