“I swear to Dog, Mom, I didn’t do this to Loki.”

It hurts just looking at this picture. Loki is having another round of Limp Tail Syndrome. The vet and I have no idea why. I never saw him injure it. He’s much too sensitive to Juno’s softer play style to really rough handle her to the point of injuring himself. He’s on an anti-inflammatory and as before, if it doesn’t go away, we’ll knock him out and take a photo of his hiney.

“Hey Big Boy! Can woo do this?” (swish-swish)
“Don’t mock me Princess!”

I don’t know what’s worse, the pain he’s in or the fear he has from it. In the middle of the night, he’ll come to the side of our bed with his eyes questioning. He’s uncomfortable and afraid.  I really hate not being able to communicate that it’s all right and he’s going to be fine. But I secretly worry that a second occurance of this may mean something more.  So for one night we invite him on the bed so he can lean on us. Only every few minutes he moves around and can’t get comfortable. Last night I broke down, narc’d him with Benadryl and made him sleep in his own bed. I have my own insomnia issues.

“He’s such an easy mark.”
“Woah is me.”

He’s so different from Juno. She took a nail through her paw, never winced and and walked around gaily like nothing was wrong.  Her hip dysplasia on film looks bad enough to disable any dog, but it doesn’t phase her. She never shows any sign of pain even when she should. But just crinkling the wrapper from their monthly tick control medicine is enough to make Loki bolt from the room.

“Big boy, you’re just a rough, tough, cream puff.”
“Did woo say ‘cream puff’? How come I don’t taste any cream puff?”

Our current well wasn’t producing as much as we’d like and since we have some property, we decided to drill another well closer to our tanks. The current well is actually a quarter mile away from our home and tanks, closer to NitWit Bridge.

The drillers set up the rig the day before drilling. This rig and the process was so impressive, I filmed it.  The pipes on the side of the truck are about 100+ feet. The hydraulic systems in place are really cool to watch. The water coming out in the video is water found in the hole being drilled and the air from the pipe is pushing the water out through the holes in the drill bit. As the water comes out, the drillers collect it and test it for solids.

We had planned to drill 340 feet. At about 200 feet, the drillers found a bit of oil in the water. That’s not the kind of happy news you want to hear. It’s one thing to have a lot of solids (salt, iron, minerals), it’s another to have oil. Later that day we looked around at other spots to drill, and  you’d think with the amount of property we have that it’d be easy to find another place to drill. But it’s not so easy when you’re trying to find a place far enough from the septic, far enough from the first hole where there was water and easy enough to get a truck in that size. We later discovered the oil was so minute it was likely produced from hitting shale, which is oil found in rock and not a huge source. So we cased the well at 195 feet and cased it again at 100 feet in case the solids or oil become a problem, the shallower well will likely be fine while we’re gone. When we come home, we may need to think about another water source for landscaping.  

During the drilling (and if you watch the video) you can see water gushing out into a holding area created by the drillers. We’re not allowed to drain the water into our drainage system because it empties into a massive creek bed and it’s against code to do that. So we now have a mini pool of sludge (that will dry out eventually) that I thought the dogs would be smart enough to avoid, until I heard “Ker-Plunk!” Loki had thoughtfully chased Juno into the mud pool.

“You know, you wouldn’t have that huge mess if you just hired a team of Huskies to do your digging for you Mom.”

Something tells me we wouldn’t have a neatly dug hole or a clean Siberian either Juno. But thanks for the offer.

When I got home, I decided it was time for yard chores since the rain didn’t let up for several days. Time to clean the dog yard, take down the trash cans and other boring stuff. I let the dogs zoomie around the 1-acre of fenced-in yard while I did chores.

This is the “usual” start to me releasing them to the dog yard. Loki starts the chase and Juno likes to hand out a can of whop-ass when she catches him.

When I’m ready to go in, I call Loki first, because Juno is so packed onto him and he is packed onto me, that’s usually a great way to get her to bend to my will. Booowhahhah. So Loki runs in toward me first.

Juno knows we’re headed inside, so she likes to take her own path and goes down the back hillside, full throttle, where she barrels into the porch and dunks her snout into her water bowl. It’s her favorite “calming” activity when things are “too excitable” for her.

 Note that we don’t have landscaping “yet” after 2 years of living here because we’re still working on other projects, like the rest of the gingerbread you can see going up on the left side of the photo (the unpainted arch in the porch). Some day, when we get back from Europe, we’ll have landscaping. It’s one reason why I want to leave so badly, just so I can see some green grass and not work on any more house projects for a few years.

When Loki and I got there, I gave him his treat and was about to give her one when I saw her limping. It looked like her paw had a stick stuck in it. So I tugged at it. It didn’t budge. I ask her to sit and she does. Juno hands me her paw instantly without me asking for it. So I tug at the “stick” harder this time. She YELPS. I’ve never heard her scream in pain ever. So I looked under her paw and saw this:

Yup. it was a nail. I couldn’t see the nail head from the top of the paw because her fur and other pad hid it, and the sharp end really looked like a stick to me. It didn’t even feel like a nail when i touched it. It was dark and rusty.

Naturally, I panic. I’m still in sweat pants from our walk. I haven’t brushed my teeth or my hair and I’m full of mud. And I’m panicking like a crazy lady. Juno on the other hand is walking around, tail high with a big smile on her face. Damn sibe. She’s either stoic or stupid. I’m voting for stoic. I call Dogtor Hillary and they tell me to bring her in. Mind you, I’m actually 2 minutes away from a vet near my house. But we LOVE Dogtor Hilary and don’t mind the 25 minute drive it takes to see her ever.

When we drove up, the staff was outside waiting to assist in helping Juno to the door, if they had to pick her up. But Juno jumped out of the car and pranced in like nothing was wrong with her nail in her foot. Juno was just at The Whole Pet Vet spa the day before getting her accupuncture after her usual PT. And here she was again. She told Dogtor Hillary, “I really love my accupuncture and wanted to try my own home version of it!”

Dr. Hilary shakes her head and tells Juno this needle is not suitable or standard for accupuncture. However, if she is really good, she can now get a pedicure instead, since she’s here. It sounded like a good idea to Juno, so she willingly walked to the back with the whole staff, feeling like she was about to get star spa treatment. You know the kind of spa treatment where there are 5 people “working” on you at once. She was unsuspecting of what was to really to come. You know she’s a Sibe. It’s in the Siberian Owners manual that lying to them in certain situations is  mandatory because they are too smart to handle the truth.

The nail was dug into the deep hard part of her pad so local anesthesia wouldn’t do. They had to pull out the heavy duty drugs.

“Dude, I think I like pedicures. I’m floating and seeing hunky malamutes adoring me with meaty bones.”

Notice the wire cutters. Dr. Wheeler is a thinker and cut the rusty nail short so she didn’t have to pull it all the way through her pad. She flushes the open wound.

Oh that was fun! Lets do that again! Lets see how far we can shoot saline through this hole in her pad!

And what kind of cool doctor do you have to be when I shove my camera at her staff and say “take pictures?” We love the entire staff at The Whole Pet Vet! They rock!

Post Op: “Um, I’m not so certain this was a standard pedicure. After all, only one of my paws was attended. Gheesh.”

Mallory, one of the vet techs at the at The Whole Pet Vet is very creative and used an old IV bag and guaze tie to protect to protect her bandage from getting wet and infected. She’s sent home with a bottle of antibiotics (the new treatment for rusty nails rather than tetnas shots). Juno walks just fine with her contraption on her foot. Geez, I just stopped giving her a long round of antibiotics in December for her mysterious illness in November.

I was so proud of my stoic little angel. She never cried once. Until we go in the car. On the way home, she didn’t stop whining. And at night she paced and whined and did this a lot:

“Mom, look at this paw! It’s appalling! They called it a pedicure! But they turned it into a pink monster! All the other Sibes will make fun of me!”

So I broke down and gave her one of these:

They’re called “Wolverines.” I can’t imagine why. Don’t they look, um, delicious?  I just bought them on Thursday from Loki’s new private trainer (who I’m using to train other specific behaviors). She sells raw foods and some neat treats. I’ve never seen these before so naturally, I had to have them. I was saving them for a special occasion. I guess this was as good as any.

“I’m so upset about Princepessa’s paw. I cannot eat.” (Don’t worry, he got over it quickly.)

“I guess this will do. For now. Nom. Nom. Nom. If you don’t want yours Retardo, I’ll eat it for you.”

Any readers out there keeping a tally on how much this dog is driving us into the poor house? Let me re-cap:

1. Day we adopted her: paw limping from over-running her on a pulling team. Vet visit.
2. Spay stiches slightly infected. Vet visit.
3. Who can forget the foxtails?
4. The Unexplained Fever that went on for two weeks, with 5 days in the hospital. To this day we don’t know if it was a bacterial infection or an autoimmune response to a virus. I’m sticking with autoimmune and refuse to give her drugs that may compromise her immune system, including anti-flea topical drugs.
5. Hip Dysplasia following her hospital stay.
6. Physical Torture to help with the hip dysplasia
7. Accupuncture to help with hip dysplasia and sore muscles from working out during Physical Torture.
8. More Physical Torture

Damn Sibe.

And I don’t think I have to list the digging, the mini-cooper eating, the dozens of shoes chewed up, mail fraud, more digging, furniture destruction, house molding chewing, yoga-mat nibbling, blue-tape gnawing, sleeping-formosan-dog-disturbing and her hundreds of other costly habits that send us into the poor house.

Damn Sibe.

Lets just say there are a few things that redeem this pup:

1. The Juno Mind Trick
2. She has a real job
3. She wiggles when I come home
4. She puts Retardo in his place
5. She makes everyone happy

Damn Sibe.

“Don’t woo know by now that charm and naughty are two sides of the same coin?”