Springtime for Olive

This year I spent Easter Sunday at my aunt’s house in Norwalk, about an hour away from my home. Since my cousin Nancy would be there with her dog Harvey, I opted not to take Olive along. For one it would be too hectic with two dogs there. For another, Harvey came up to my place last year for Easter and it seemed as if the two did not get along very well. There was no real trouble between them, but it was clear that Olive did not relish having another dog in her space. Nancy and I agreed that we handled the whole situation wrong: we should have had Harvey and Olive meet first outside in neutral space, walked them around a bit, let them get to know each other, then bring them into the house. At some time in the future, perhaps next Easter, we will try that.

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On the Wednesday after Easter I took Olive along to visit my elderly cousin Dora. Olive had been along to visit Dora once before, and Dora seemed delighted with Olive. This time Dora’s daughter Patricia stopped by and met Olive. Olive seemed to take to Patricia right away. Patricia immediately remarked on what a beautiful dog Olive is. Olive was in doggie heaven with two new people to fawn over her and make a fuss over her.

Olive with Dora and Patricia

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On Tuesday after Easter I noticed a yellowish discharge from Olive’s left eye. I called the vet’s office on Wednesday and made an appointment for Friday. By Friday it seemed that both eyes were affected. The vet detected an infection, though did not find any damage to Olive’s eyes. I was given eye drops and told to put one drop in her eyes every eight hours for ten days.

Olive seems to be very afraid of thunder. At the slightest rumbling, she will hide under my computer desk, in a corner of the living room, or sometimes in the bathtub (that last one I don’t understand). As it happened, a thunderstorm started just as we pulled into the parking area at the vet’s office. Olive huddled under the dashboard; I had a heck of a time getting her to come out of the car and into the vet’s office. The vet gave me a brochure for a product called Sileo, a mild sedative that is designed and FDA approved as a canine noise aversion treatment. I am holding off for now as it is rarely a problem. If she gets worse during thunderstorms, however, I may have to reconsider.

Wouldn’t you know that at 10:00 p.m., the time I had set to give her eye drops, a thunderstorm started again. Right on cue. Olive hid again under my computer desk. Unfortunately, there was not enough room for me to hold her and draw her eyelash up to place the drops. Finally, I had to drag her out into the open and by a miracle got the eye drops in. The poor dog seemed terrified and immediately scooted back under the desk. I petted her and tried to sooth her, then had to leave her there so I could get some sleep. The next morning, she was in one of her normal sleeping places and perfectly fine. She was much more cooperative (though not fully) when I gave her the 6:00 a.m. drops.

I am happy to say that there seems to have been improvement after only one day of the eye drops. There was no yellow discharge this morning, and Olive seemed livelier than the past few days. Well, there is normal dog lively as she was the past few days and there is Olive lively.

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A few examples of border collie humor that I collected over the past few weeks.

Well, how else are the sheep going to know what to do?

As I have said before, if dogs don't go to heaven, I want to go where my dog is going.

Border collies are smart enough to keep up with the latest technology.

Socks with Stripes?

Last Friday I was out for a walk with Olive when I noticed her limping. A closer look revealed that she had broken a dew claw again and was bleeding. I got her home by the most direct route and called the vet. It was late in the day, but the vet staff agreed to look at her leg. Fortunately, all she needed was to have the nail trimmed and bandaged. I was not charged nearly as much as I feared. The wound healed well over the weekend, but I thought it interesting that her bandage made her look as if she was wearing red and white striped socks.

Don't you just love socks with stripes?

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We seem to be making some progress with Olive’s training. When we play Frisbee in the back without a leash she has always tended to stay in the area behind my house, though occasionally she will see one of the neighbors (or their kids) and run over looking for someone different to play with. The last few times that has happened I yelled for her to “get back here:”, and she obeyed. Well, that’s some progress.

Little by little she seems to be learning the names of her toys. Her “squeaky” is a small rubber dog that squeaks. Her “dragon” is a green plush dragon toy, also with a squeak. Both were given to Olive in December by neighbors. Her “ball”, “big ball”, and “Kong” have long been among her favorite toys. She also was given a squeaky plush monkey by some neighbors, but I only let her play with that when I am around, as it was made to be a kid’s toy rather than a dog toy. Seeing my cousin’s dog tear apart a similar toy, and a warning that small children should not play with it unsupervised, made me leery of letting Olive playing with it unsupervised.

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With all the talk in the news about building a border wall, I finally found a proposed border wall I could support.

Now this is a border (collie) wall I can support!

2018 Christmas Border Collie

Happy holidays to all. Some have told me that they have not been receiving this blog upon publishing. I think that the new system asked recipients to confirm that they want to get the postings within five days. I am guessing that not everyone realized that they had to respond, so their email addresses were deleted from the list.

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I discovered a video taken by my dad of Olive and I playing “saucer” with the foam rubber Frisbee. I had to cut the length a bit before I could post it on this blog. Anyway, she is a natural at catching Frisbees or Frisbee like objects.

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This year Olive seems to have done better in presents than I did. In fact, as I took a break from writing this installment to walk Olive, a car came by, honked its horn, and out came one of my neighbors with a wrapped present for Olive! Nothing for me, of course. When we arrived home, I unwrapped it for Olive and we found a pink monkey plush toy. This one seems to be meant for human children rather than dogs, so I will keep it aside for when I can watch her play with it. She got a number of other squeaky toys from other friends and neighbors, so I don’t think she will feel deprived.

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This year I put up the tree in the living room in front of a large window in the back of my house. I think it is visible to the cars on the Route 2 expressway at the edge of the property. In the front of the house is a smaller tree in my dining room window. Both trees are lit with white LEDs. My other front windows have LED candles, and of course there is a wreath on my front door.

Darn, couldn't get Olive to pose in front of it.

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For this year’s holiday gift to this blog’s readers, I discovered a holiday video cartoon starring the newspaper comic character Ziggy. The cartoon is a bit sad and somewhat bizarre, but I liked it. With that, Olive and I wish all a happy new year.

Dogs in our lives

Regarding the question as to whether dogs (and cats) go to heaven: someone sent me this cartoon. I can only say “amen”.

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I have been asked who some of the dogs were that I mentioned in my “heaven” pack. Becka was a border collie that belonged to my friend Pat, formerly of Buffalo, now living in Texas. She impressed me by knowing the names of her toys. Pat could tell her to get a particular toy, and Becka would go and pick it out from the pile. I  have worked on and off with getting Olive to do that with her toys. Little by little she is getting the idea of “ball”, “big ball”, “kong”, and others. Although Becka has gone over the rainbow bridge, Pat recently sent me a photo.

Major was my grandfather’s dog, perhaps the first dog I ever had contact with. I recently found a photo among my dad’s miscellaneous paraphernalia that shows that I was certainly not afraid of Major. He seemed to be standing watch over me.

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Just this morning another cartoon was sent to me by another dog lover. I love it.

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Olive seems to have recovered quite nicely from her mishap last month. The fur is growing back over the scar, which is now barely noticeable.

Olive Loses a Sister

We got the bad news last week that Olive’s sister, Poco, was hit by a car and killed.

Poco was a very sweet dog, as is Olive. A few years back, before Olive came to stay with me, Poco spent a few days at my place. I remember thinking that I would love to have a dog like her.

The story was that she was hit as she crossed the road by Nanne’s wool farm. I think of that road as a quiet road with little traffic, so I was wondering how such a thing could have happened. It did not surprise me to hear that she was hit by a drunk driver who was speeding.

A photo taken by a friend of Nanne’s is below. She was Olive’s full sister, though she is missing the white stripe down her forehead that most border collies have. Nonetheless she was a beautiful, bright, and affectionate dog. She will be badly missed.

Poco--good doggy.

I found a wonderful sympathy card to send to Nanne (the front of the card is below). On the inside it reads “Heaven is brighter. Sorry for your loss”.

Heaven is a little brighter tonight.

I believe that any dog lover has a pack in heaven that includes all of the dogs that touched their lives. Mine will include at its core Olive, Smokey (the dog I had as a kid), Cleo (my mom's basset hound after Smokey went over the rainbow bridge) and Major (my grandfather's dog that I remember from very early childhood). Poco, Becka, Molly, and others will be members of the larger circle, welcome to run with the pack any time.

This whole incident makes me want to be more protective of Olive.

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Olive’s (now seemingly trivial) mishap was described her last blog entry. The staple looked like a piercing that is fashionable with many young people today. I am pleased to report that her staple was removed this morning. Note the light spot behind her left eye, where the staple was. 

No longer a hipster with a piercing.

We are not sure whether her fur will grow over the scar from her injury, but she is as lively as ever and can go back to playing with other dogs at Candlewick. I have instructed her not to jump at falling leaves.

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If anyone wants to argue that dogs don't go to heaven, I say "pooey to you!" If dogs don't go to heaven, then I want to go where all the dogs are going.

A bit of a mishap

On Thursday I went up to the Big E (Eastern States Exposition; the equivalent of a state fair for all six New England states) and left Olive at Candlewick for the day.

Around 3:00 there was a text message from the kennel to my phone. Somehow my phone did not ring, so I did not see that message until around 5:00 when, by then, there were two messages on my phone.

It turned out that Olive had a bit of a mishap. In the outdoor play area there were some falling leaves. Both Olive and another dog spotted a leave and both made a leap to catch it. It was a freak accident to be sure, but Olive ended up with a puncture wound on her face, about an inch from her eye. The people at the kennel cleaned it out, but decided it was deep enough to get her to a vet. Olive got one metal staple that has to be removed in two weeks. She also has to take antibiotics for the next ten days. While I am relieved that it could have been much worse, but gave her a lecture to be careful in the future. I also told her not to scratch at the staple lest I have to put a cone on her, something I know she would NOT like at all. She seems to have paid attention; I haven’t seen any sign of her scratching at it yet.

I left the fair shortly after getting the messages and calling the kennel back. My sister had picked her up and brought her home. When I got home she seemed fine, eating all of her supper and being as energetic on her walks as always.

I need to go grocery shopping today and among the items I will have to buy will be some roast beef from the deli. The best way to get her to take pills seems to be to wrap the pill in a slice of roast beef. This morning I tried to hide the pill in a small piece of my breakfast omelet. She separated the pill and spit it out on the floor. I then tried cheese. Same results. Then I remembered a small piece of leftover pork tenderloin in my refrigerator. I poked a small pocket into the meat with a knife and hid the pill there. That worked. Someone suggested using peanut butter, which I may try.

Staple behind her left eye

 Olive’s eye area looks worse than it actually is in that the vet had to shave some fur to put in the staple. I think that she will recover quite well. I am happy to say that she ate all of her breakfast and supper on Friday and was as lively as ever for her walks.

I spoke with the vet on Friday, who told me that Olive was just a sweetheart during the whole ordeal. She cautioned that while it would be OK to leave Olive at daycare during the next two weeks she should not do any rough playing with other dogs. As such, she will not be allowed to play with the other dogs when I bring her in Saturday. She won’t like that. I can and will pay a bit extra for some individual play time with a human and an individual walk. The staple comes out October 4.

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While at the craft area of the fair I spotted a display of Holiday ornaments that included a border collie tree ornament. Last year I bought a small porcelain border collie that was just the right size for my nativity creche. This year I will be adding a border collie to my Holiday tree.

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I thought this cartoon was cute, and would appeal to both wine lovers and border collie (or is it bordeaux collie?)  people.

One Sappy Dog?

Not sure how it happened. Last Sunday, just before Labor day, I noticed that Olive's underside was full of gunk. A closer look revealed that the gunk was sap, probably from a pine tree. She must have laid down in a puddle of the stuff, though I cannot imagine when or where this could have happened. I tried to cut out the worst chunks of the stuff, though she did not seem to want to cooperate. An internet search brought me to a website that suggested olive oil would dissolve the sap. It sounded messy and involved, so I decided to try getting a groomer the next day.

Well, the next day was Labor Day. I called the local Petco store, which offers grooming services. Being labor day, I am guessing that the people who might have known what to do were out. The person I talked to was trying to be helpful, but didn't seem to know much. Candlewick Kennels, where I usually have her formal grooming done, was closed for the day. I decided to wait another day.

On Tuesday I called Candlewick. The groomer I spoke with has worked with Olive in the past and was helpful, but the grooming department was booked solid for the day. I made an appointment for Wednesday. She suggested that if I wanted to try the olive oil treatment I bring a bottle of olive oil. I ran to the grocery store and picked up a small bottle of store brand olive oil. Cheaper than the top of the line pure Italian oil I usually get for myself (I tend to be fussy about my olive oil), but not what I would call inexpensive.

Finally this morning I got Olive to the groomer. Olive's fur is a bit shaggy, particularly on her underside, so I was resolved that the groomer would probably have to shear her to get the gunk out. I figured that the olive oil treatment might work on a short haired dog, probably not on a border collie.

I picked her up a few hours and $45 later. The groomer was able to get the gunk out without even using the olive oil. Only on the bottom of her paws did the groomer need to shave her. As usual, the groomer left a note that Olive is a sweetheart. Well, I already know that.

Below is a photo of Olive after getting home from the groomer. Notice the purple bandanna. She always seems to get one after a bath. I have a collection of them that I will someday figure out what to do with. Perhaps have them made into a quilt?

"What was that all about?"

Anyway, the ordeal is finally over. I think she noticed the gummy stuff and that it was making her uncomfortable, pulling at her skin. I did catch her licking at it at various times. Then again, maybe she was wondering what all the fuss was about.

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I have always thought of myself as a dog person, even though I like cats too. I trace my affinity for dogs back to early childhood when my paternal grandparents had a dog named "Major". On the other hand, my maternal grandparents had a large cat, while there were a number of cats roaming around our urban neighborhood often through our back yard.

Having fond memories of both cats and dogs, I can identify with the person in this short cartoon.