Little fog feet

Morning. damp, gray, warm.
No view, low blanket
Clouds hide sun and mountain tops.

Sunday morning

Things I love about this morning:
Sun skipping in and out of the gathering clouds.
Temperatures warm enough to sit in porch rocker with my coffee.
Cool enough to need a sweater to do it.
Creek sounds from all the recent rains.
Bird sounds surrounding me from the woods.
Puppy playing in the recently mowed grass, that smells so good.
Garden weeded, awaiting the last of the first seed planting.
The beautiful views from our home in the mountains.
The leaves on the trees blocking the sketchy views of our only two neighbors' houses a quarter of a mile away.
This is indeed an idyllic place and I feel loved and blessed that my love made it happen for us.

Faint of heart

     Building a house is not for the faint of heart.  Buying a neglected farm and building a house when you are retired is a short step from being declared mentally unstable, however, we took on this challenge almost 7 years ago.  For decades, each time my dear hubby asked what I wanted for a holiday, I always gave the same answer, "a cabin in the woods."
     Seven years ago, several things came together to allow it to happen. Well, it is a cabin and we do have a few acres  of woods around the edges, but the house sits in an open field.  We found the property on a whim  midway through our youngest son's senior year of high school.  I had retired as  school counselor and was working part time for a non profit organization to cover the family health insurance.  Hubby was reaching retirement age and trying to figure a way to retire from his law practice.  We decided to research log homes and begin the planning stages of putting a house on the land.
     In order to facilitate this, we decided to sell the home we had raised our children in, and again, on a whim, put out a FSBO sign on a day some neighbors were having a yard sale.   We were painting inside as we really weren't quite ready to sell yet, and much to our surprise, we got calls.  Quickly, we designed a brochure, decided on a price and signed a contract with a FSBO organization that gets the listing on the web and in a weekly booklet and by the next weekend, had sold the house, just before the real estate market went south.  This meant we had to move with no where to go and a 90 lb old dog to move with us.  Apartments weren't large enough for a 4 bedroom house of furniture and the dog.  We lucked into a 3 bedroom rental house with a small yard, stored some stuff and moved in for a year.  Once settled, we purchased a log home "kit," hired a contractor, who turned out to be a loser, to do the log erection and rough carpentry, convinced our eldest son to move with his partner and their newborn son to the area where we were building to oversee the contractor, help make decisions and ultimately take on all of the finish carpentry and stone mason work.  With monthly visits to select the house site, have the perk test done, hire a well driller and see the progress, we plodded through that year.  As the year was ending, my part time job was going to have to become full time and I applied for a job in the county near our property, returning to a school counseling position to pay into the retirement system instead of drawing from it.  This meant that I would be living near the house and could help with carpentry work or more often, babysitting so the kids could work.  It also meant that hubby and I would be living 6 hours apart in separate apartments, me alone in the mountains, he with youngest son and dog on the coast. The new job was an all year position, not just during the school year, so moves were made, goodbyes said and we started what turned into a nearly 3 year long distance relationship until hubby put all the steps in place to leave his practice for retirement in the mountains with me.  At this point, we had been moved into the new house for almost two years on a temporary certificate of occupancy.
     After I moved in, along with son and his family, they continued to work on the house, building the interior doors, the upper kitchen cabinets, doing hand grading and stone mason work when the weather permitted.  When hubby moved up, son and his family moved to an adjacent town for him to earn his Master's degree at the local university, working on the house during holidays and summer time to finish the foundation stone work and last summer, getting the cistern system that the contractor put in improperly to actually work,  continuing the fieldstone fireplace down into the basement in preparation for the contruction of the 4th bedroom and rec room that was in the planning stages.  He and I also, finally finished the breezeway/utility room that joins the house to the garage.
     While this work had been done with some labor on my part, the restoration of the fields to a condition that will allow for hay production and grazing of animals, has fallen to my hubby and me.  The fields had become very overgrown with weeds, brambles, invasive shrubs and cedar trees.  We purchased a tractor and a brush hog and commenced  regular mowing of every inch the of 30 acres that we could take the tractor.  Last summer, after our poorly constructed gravel driveway had reached a nearly impassable state, we hired a neighbor excavator contractor to take on regrading the property so that it would drain properly and reconstructing the driveway, this making several more acres mowable.  While he was working in front of the house, son, partner, hubby and I were digging a trench hundreds of feet down the south slope, laying a water line from the cistern, installing a yard hydrant and recovering the trench without damaging the water line.  This involved much hand shoveling, picking up and moving many tractor buckets of rock that we had uncovered.
     Early in the mountain project, son and partner, put in a huge garden, but in later years of the project, the garden was not as totally utilized and 3 summers ago, I undertook to restore as much of it as I felt I could manage on my own.  Son and family have since moved on several hours away to further continue education.  Hubby loves the produce from the garden, but gardening  is not one of his interests.  I have boxed beds, dug weeds, tried to foil the deer with a temporary monofilament fence  as of yesterday, with the aid of a neighbor friend, finally put an electric fence around the vegetable garden portion of the gardens.  We also smoothed areas for safe working and mowability.  Over the years, we have planted fruit trees, berry bushes, and grapevines.  Last fall we finally landscaped the front.  This winter, the basement project was completed.  We are nearly to a maintenance phase, but with 30 acres and plans for raising some animals other than dogs, it will continue to be muscle taxing, bone weary work,...but there is a good night's rest at the end of those days.

Fickle spring in the mountains

     We experienced an early and warm spring with some record breaking temperatures, rain, thunderstorms, all the weather we expect in mid to late May and June.  About a week ago, there was a series of near freezing nights, that we would expect at this time a year, but the daytime temperatures were still in the upper 60's, 70's, even 80.
     Midweek after a beautiful and warm morning, we had a series of strong thunderstorms rush through the area and now on Monday morning after a dreary rainy weekend, we have howling winds and mountain snow showers like mid winter. It is currently snowing hard enough to not see the ridge south of us, though nothing is sticking on surfaces. The oddities of spring in the mountains, greening fields, leaves nearly all out, dogwoods in bloom and snow falling.

Our beautiful pup is gone

Today her pains meds just couldn't keep up with Meeko's pain which had radiated throughout her spine and all four limbs. We returned to the vet who was unable to do anymore for her and the terribly difficult decision was made.

She died in our arms, with our tears soaking her coat. At least she is no longer suffering and we still have puppy Ranger to love and provide care.

Some research last night revealed that the breeder's father and brother were convicted of maltreatment and were forced to shut down a puppy mill. We had no idea when we bought her, but have learned a very tough lesson.

No Miracles

Today marks a week since the last day that our energetic young German Shepherd was a puppy and marked the day she turned into an 18 week old lady, ataxic, in pain.

We hoped for a miracle, hoped that the medications would at least improve her quality of life enough for her to enjoy it.  Instead, she has become a cowering, fearful little dog that can hardly get up, spends her days prone, usually on her side, panting and periodically yelping in pain.  Where she used to anxiously jump and leap to get outside and run, now she reluctantly barely clears the threshhold to relieve herself and cowers back into the cool tile of the utility room.  The meds were supposed to at least make her more comfortable, but she won't be tricked into eating them, hiding in a pill pocket, a dough ball, or a bit of cheese.  This requires the old fashioned holding her snout up and forcing them down her throat and raising her head causes more pain and they upsetting her stomach.

Ranger senses something is wrong, sleeping near her, resting a paw on her paws, which even sometimes causes her pain, nosing her gently as he passes her, but no longer trying to engage her in play.

She yelps and I cry.   As the days pass, she becomes weaker, more wobbly and cries out more in pain, especially when trying to change position of the floor.

No miracles here, but lots of gentle love as we try to wait out the two week medication schedule, still hoping for that miracle.  If it doesn't come, I guess she will be in my arms as we are forced to put her out of her pain and suffering on next Tuesday, our scheduled vet visit and I will cry some more.

Sad Day

On Wednesday, Meeko, our 17 week old German Shepherd, that we purchased 3 weeks ago as a companion puppy to our 15 week old English Mastiff puppy,  suddenly developed a serious medical issue.  Yesterday, she was lethargic, would not eat or drink, yelped if we touched her collar or sometimes other parts of her body and layed around all day in the utility room.  Last night she would not even come upstairs and kennelled downstairs for the night.
This morning when I went down to let her out, she had fouled her cage and was laying in it, unable to rise.  I helped her up to go outside and she staggered and fell several times going only a couple dozen feet.  She fell again outside and couldn't get up. She yelped when I tried to pick her up and help her back inside.  As we already had an appointment for Ranger to get his rabies shot, we called the vet to see if she could be seen as well. 

After exam and xrays, we were referred to the Virginia Tech teaching hospital for a neurological exam.  We spent nearly 4 hours there and left with no diagnosis except that she was having neurological problems.  We could drive to Vienna, VA for an MRI that would not diagnose the problem, but would rule out a congenital vertebral issue at a cost of more than $2000.  That test would require we have her anthesized and as she has a heart murmur and we would have to have an echo cardiogram before they would do that.  None of these tests would be conclusive.  They also discussed drawing spinal fluid also under anesthesia to see if maybe it was an infection or inflammation, but the bottom line is that there is no treatment that would cure her, only possible put her into a remissive state with strong chance of repeat episodes.  She will likely always be ataxic, may have respiratory failure or other organ failure and probably in pain.

We left with a round of antibiotics, prednisone, and pain meds to try to relieve her symptoms.
Ranger is confused, not understanding why she is having to be kennelled, can't play and is not responsive to him.  My hubby is sad and confused also.

I didn't want to get attached to another dog after we had to put down our Old English Sheepdog a few years back, and tried not to get emotionally attached to the two puppies, however, I cried and will likely have to cry some more when we are probably faced with the decision in a week or two of having to do the same with her.  It hurts to have such a sick puppy whose outlook is deterioration not improvement.    She is a beautiful, sweet little dog, but so very ill.

Spring

Spring's Emerald grass
Squirrel ear sized leaves
Freeze warnings this night and next.

Progress

     Today we joined the contemporary technology age.  A couple of years ago we purchased a flat screen HD TV, but the DVD and DVD/VCR players were 6 years old and older, so watching videos was iffy.  In December as we had the basement project well under way, we replaced the TV with a larger flat screen Plasma TV for the main part of the house planning on moving the slightly smaller HD TV to the basement.  This move ended all use of movie watching unless the movie was on cable TV as we could get picture but no sound.  Yesterday, we hung the TV in the basement and today we purchased 2 DVD/blue ray players that connect via HDMI cables instead on the old school triple cable system connections and a 6 bin bookcase to go under the basement  TV to hold one of the players, movies and board games for the kids.
     After assembling the ping pong table yesterday, the bookcase today, and setting up the players, we can watch TV and movies upstairs, and movies in the rec room.  Tomorrow, a double recliner to join the couch  will be delivered to finish the basic seating for the rec room.  We are still seeking a couple of bar stools made by a craftsman in Floyd, VA, but so far, we haven't found his information at home and won't see him at a craft show until July if we can't turn up his contact information.
     Someday, we plan to buy a pool table to join the ping pong table.  We still need to install the roman shades, purchase the quilt for the bed, remat a painting and hang it and then we will be ready to enjoy this project that has been  in the works since early November.
     As far as puppy progress, we have had two good walks on a populated trail with our reluctant shepherd pup this week, including a meet and greet with an adult Golden that went well.  Hopefully we have turned the corner on her fear and stubbornness.  Now we need to teach both of them to come when called with consistency, not just when they are ready.

What a day!

     This was the last day of basement finishing, half day actually.  They also planed down a bathroom door that was difficult to close, refinished the edge and rehung the door.  While they were finishing up, we tripped down to the local garbage drop off, the post office and the local hardware store and bought 50 lbs of contractor mix and 25 lbs of white clover to seed the area that our friendly contractor neighbor plowed and harrowed to make it mowable eventually.

     After delivering the seed and a dozen 6 foot T posts back to the house, we picked up the pups and the solar electric fence charger that we bought yesterday for a return as it was too wussy to keep deer out of the garden.  The charger ended up being returned as they didn't have the one we needed and off we went up the road to Southern States where we were able to get the correct charger, a ground rod and clamp.

     The pups then got about a 30 minute playtime at a park before Meeko had her individual training session.  This was a 70 minute waste of time.  She walked around the store a few times, then went into balk mode, flopped down on her side and refused to move.  This is the behavior that caused my meltdown yesterday.  The trainer's assessment was that she was fearful, we already knew that, that she is still trying to assert dominance over us, we knew that also, but gave us no real suggestions about what to do. 

     After getting home, preparing and eating dinner, we went out to  sow the grass seed and clover, pick up rocks again,  and the puppies played, chasing each other, tossing grass clods, rooting their noses through the freshly plowed earth. By dark, there are still many many rocks, the seeding is done, the puppy is no closer to being trained and we are exhausted.  Now it is time for a milk stout, some TV and maybe some chocolate.