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May 20, 2006

Our New Darlings

Aren't they adorable? We can't wait until their actual arrival on Monday. We're thrilled and really couldn't be happier. We've waited for this blessed moment for a very long time, and hope to have many happy years with them ahead of us.

Until then, you might want to stay upwind!

Posted by terrie at 07:43 PM

May 13, 2006

Congratuations, Aunt Lori!

Congratulations to Aunt Lori, pictured here at mile 17 of a 26-mile marathon in Vancouver! We here she's considering the Phoenix marathon in January, but we remember driving through there and seeing exit signs for places like "20,484th Street" and that just makes us tired!

All jokes aside, we're very proud of Aunt Lori. We've been on a couple of 12 mile hikes with lots of breaks that nearly killed us, we have have a difficult time imaging something like 26 miles!

Posted by terrie at 10:02 PM

Baby hawks, for real!

We've been doing "BARNS" -- the Bay Area Raptor Nest Survey -- as volunteers for Golden Gate Raptor Observatory this spring as a sort of supplement to our usual fall Hawk Watch volunteer gig.

For several weeks we've been monitoring nests, sometimes seeing Red-tailed Hawks or Red-shouldered Hawks in or near the nest. But last week and this week we've gotten our first real treat -- baby raptors!

We have two Red-tailed nests for sure that have successfully hatched at least two young each. The first nest we found young in was pretty special -- we'd been watching the nest for weeks, with very little activity -- just an adult bird in the same tree once or twice during our rounds. While we were looking last week at an empty nest, Steve says, "Is that another nest lower in the tree?!" Sure enough it was, with an adult Red-tailed sitting proudly with two very cute downy young.

We're still trying to figure out the best way to take photos through our scope (and Aunt T managed to break her camera completely, which doesn't help!) But we have one photo of mom hawk with fuzzballs here and you can see the rest in Uncle Steve's April Archive.

Our other special nest is that of an almost albino male Red-tailed hawk, and we've found two nestlings in that one also. We're eager to see what they grow up to look like!

Posted by terrie at 09:31 PM

Mighty, not Mite-y, Dog

Romping in the grass, a favorite pasttime (all photos here by Uncle Steve, with more here!

Today was Laika's one-month checkup to see how she's fairing against the Demodex mite. Demodex is a hair follicle mite that appears on most dogs, but usually they fend it off. Laika's immune system was compromised and she was unable to fight the mite, so she began losing patches of hair.

We were warned early on that it would probably be a long hard battle. What started out a month ago as two nearly invisible spots in her pretty coat rapidly progressed to lots of little bald patches on her neck and forequarters. Our vet was so serious-sounding about this that I've really been prepared for the worst.

Our vet chose a treatment that's fairly new; instead of the mildly toxic dips that used to be the prevalent treatment, Laika gets a dose of large-animal wormer every other day and a special bath every week. We also do what we can to be generally good dog owners and keep her stress level down so her immune system can bounce back. The medicine makes her susceptible to sun burn, so we have to protect her from that and sometimes she has to wear a child's t-shirt for extra coverage.

First trip to the beach at Point Reyes

When the vet came back from checking her skin scraping today, she looked very serious. "So tell me now specifically, have you seen new patches of hair loss this week?" I pointed out a spot that I knew was very recent, and she took another skin scraping from that. When she returned, she confirmed what she had started to think the first time. I was surprised and delighted.

Laika is completely free of Demodex mites. They couldn't find any, dead or alive, in her skin scrapings. It's possible that we've already beaten a problem that they expected to take months to overcome. If that's true, she'll probably stop losing hair now and start growing it back.

We have another appointment in two weeks to check. And we'll keep a guarded optimism until then.

Heading home, tired and plagued by a tiny mite, but happy (we like to think!)

Kudos to our vets for being up-to-date on state-of-the-art treatments!

Today was also the first day of obedience training. I'm pretty convinced that it's us that getting the training, because Laika catches on really fast if we do the right thing. Our instructor, Mike Ossenbeck, seems really great with the dogs and he's pretty good with us, too. Laika is doing really well with "sit" and "come". "Let's go", our version of "heel", is a little more difficult for us, but we're committed to plenty of practice. When we look at that wrinkled-forehead smile, we know we have to do the right thing by her!

Posted by terrie at 09:19 PM