For Better or Worse

Goopy eye and the raging poops is not a new rock band. I need to impress on my readers (both of them) that these are serious technical medical terms. We are getting control of both of these lovely conditions, however I do have a complaint to take up with the medical community and the pharmacology community.

I was issued this ridiculous bottle of eye drops to be applied three times a day to three eyes.

Please notice that the shiny object is a quarter. This gives you the idea of the size of this bottle. Now, if my dogs would sit quietly with their eyes wide open while I administered these drops, this bottle might be useful. However, when I approach my dogs with this bottle in hand, first they try to hide. When that doesn't work they squeeze their eyes shut so tightly that I have trouble actually finding their eyes. Only my extensive knowledge of anatomy helps me locate the eye.

Once I have located the eye, I force the lids apart and prepare to place one drop in the offending eye. At that moment the dog moves it's head causing the drop to land either on it's ear or my wrist. We then begin the process over again. Needless to say the number of drops provided in this bottle is inadequate for the purpose intended. Folks, I need the giant family size bottle of eye drops, about a quart.

When I stuck a new card in my camera, I discovered some pictures from January 2007 that I had forgotten about. Here are some pictures of the pups when they were about ten weeks old. I believe they were taken during our big ice storm when the pups had to live in the kitchen.


Baby Noah


Baby Gib


Baby Tess


Norma Jean and Sky


Norma Jean and Noah

We have a woman in the PWD community who refers to herself as a "Poopologist", one who studies poop. We have had a number of e-mails about her project to perfect poop flags. These would be small capsules that the dog would consume with his meal. When the meal is recycled the capsule would dissolve and a little flag would pop up showing where the poop is located. This would make pick up easier, especially in tall grass. The flags would be color coded so that someone with several dogs could tell which poop belonged to which dog. This would be handy for medical purposes as a change in poop often is the first sign of illness.

So far, although the dog world waits patiently, the poop flag concept has not been perfected.

I did make an accidental discovery along the same lines recently. Sky has several glow balls, there are several pictures on previous postings of him with his favorite toys. These are plastic balls that absorb sunlight, then glow in the dark. They are great for playing fetch after dark. About a month ago I found that one of the pups had brought a glow ball into the house with them and chewed it up. We were all very disappointed that one of our favorite toys was destroyed.

Later in the evening I discovered that the culprit was Bailey, because her poop glowed in the dark. I must report this to our poopologist.


Today we found this new toy for Monty. It's grumpy,just like him. He's carried it around all day.