Dog Days of Summer….August 15, 2004

Summer………
I love the freedom of summer days, but every year, right about this time, I long for school to start. Having the 2 older kids home from college, with all the comings and goings of their friends and then the younger two, with swimming lessons, rec programs, camps and just the noise level in general………..ahhhhh….. I am soooo looking forward to the peace and quiet that September brings. In other words…..the kids are drving me NUTS!!! LOL!!!

This has been a crazy week here. My primary work computer crashed yet once again, and in the middle of a big catalog project for an upcoming dog show. I am usually the show secretary for Cavaliers of the Northeast and produce 3-4 catalogs a year. Although, after 4 years of doing this, I am stepping down and letting someone take the torch as my real job in Registration for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club, is taking up so much of my time now, that I felt in all fairness, that I needed to devote my energies to Registration. Figures that my last catalog was such a challenge….ggrrrr!!! I am sorry that I was not able to email those of you who wrote such nice comments on my blog last week. My computer was so unstable, that I just was not able to email. Computers……we can’t live with them and we can’t live without them…aagghhh!!! My computer guy comes home from vacation on the 18th, so fingers are crossed that he can heal my ailing computer.

I have also been dealing with a sick dog. Dancer is the girl that has my heart. I love all of my dogs, but this little lady has a special spot in my heart and it has been very difficult to see her not doing well. We are not quite sure what is wrong with her yet. She is having a difficult time breathing and we are not sure why. She almost sounds like she has asthma, but this came on too suddenly for it to be that. We have done x-rays and run blood tests and nothing is really jumping out at the vet, other than her Mitral Valve Disease, has progressed to a grade 3/4. MVD is the biggest killer of Cavaliers and almost all of them will have it at some point, but it doesn’t appear at least on the surface, that the MVD is the problem in this situation. Dancer had an abcessed tooth, which we have treated with antibiotics, but the breathing problem has not improved, even though the infection is gone, so the next step most likely is going to be surgery, to get the bad tooth out and to see if there is some sort of growth in her throat. :(. Sometimes I just wish, during times like this, that these sweet dogs could just tell us what is wrong, so that we could help them better.

Puppies
The puppies are growing in leaps and bounds now. Their eyes and ears are opened and they are struggling to get up on their feet. Their fat, round bellies make it hard for their chunky little legs to keep them up…haha. Mom is feeding them well. They are still pretty boring, sleeping most of the time, but at least now, they are starting to look more like puppies than guinea pigs. This upcoming week will see their teeth coming in and they will start trying to play with each other. I will also be making a trip to the petstore for puppy toys………I just LOVE puppies!

Bunnies
It has been fun tracking the baby bunnies and the puppies together. This is the first time that I have had a litter of each so close in age. I have to say that the rate of development is pretty close. The bunnies are quicker at eating food and learning to drink water, but other than that, they are very similar. The bunnies are getting to that beyond cute stage. A good rabbit friend, Chris Morgan of Woolybuns in Ct., came for a visit today and she showed me a new way to shear the rabbits. The Wildgrey boy, who was looking for a name in the previous post, was on the receiving end of a haircut and here is the finished product. Wild grey fiber is my most favorite to spin. It is a lovely heathery grey. It is one of the few that I never use for my rovings as it is just too pretty to dilute, mixing it with wool. You can’t see from the picture, but the tips of wild grey are gold, which is sooo pretty in the finished product…..YUM!!! By the way, he now has a name. Nordic Bunny The Kid 🙂 Thanks for all of your suggestions! I am saving them all for the little ones still to be named.

The Knitting…….finally
One of the reasons that I am so looking forward to school happening, is that I will have more time to knit and spin. 🙂 Less time running kids around in the car to their various events, means more time for me. 🙂 I have been diligent this time with the Six Sock Knit around sock,….Waves, and actually finished the first one. I really like the way this pattern works up. After the first few rows, the pattern was easy to remember and is good mindless knitting for the Olympics. I have also been knitting away on the lingering cloverleaf sock and next time I blog, I will have a picture of the pair……whew!! I have never been so happy to see project come to an end. I do not like the yarn I chose for that sock at all. Live and learn…LOL. Now that the cloverleave project is almost at a close, I bought the yarn for the flower basket shawl knit along. I was going to use some alpaca that I have spun, but sometimes handspun can be tricky at getting the right gauge, so I treated myself to the yarn that the sample in Interweave Knits was done up in, Misti Baby Alpaca. I bought it from Pollywogs. Very low shipping prices and fast, fast, fast delivery…….I will buy from her again 🙂

For my parting note……go take a look at Sereknitty’s website. She has the most yummy recipes on her blog. I made her sourcream banana bread this week and it was a big hit with all of the kids, and even the DH here :-). She has a great sense of humor and great recipes. One of my favorite blogs to date.

Enjoy the week!!!!