Medical Maintenance and Digging on the Dogs

A few minor problems over the course of the last week...

Mountain and Pearl got into a knock-down fight, probably over the Invisible Fence shocking Mountain. Pearl was standing close by, so she got nailed simply for standing there. Not good! Pearl suffered some punctures, one of which was close to an eye. Those healed up in a few days (there were no rips), but then Pearl came up lame in her back leg. The lameness was unrelated to the fight, but perhaps associated with three days of crating. The good news there is that her leg seems better now, and everything is back to chaotic normal again.

Trooper seems to be doing better in terms of cognition. He's still a few marbles short of a complete set, but he seems happy and healthy and his back legs are no weaker than they were. I am going to take him to the vet this week to get a small sebaceous hyperplasia/benign mammary tumor taken off. He may last longer than I thought. We'll see...

I have discovered a soft mass on my elbow where I think I may have chipped something. It feels like a fatty tumor, perhaps built around a bone chip. Not sure. which my research tells me is elbow bursitis. It hurts when pressed on, and it needs to come off get drained as soon as possible, so I will be going in to see my vet as well. Oh joy!

Doug P. came up from North Carolina for a little digging, and he brought Gracie, his 7-year old miniature schnauzer.

At the first hole where Mountain located, we ended up having two groundhogs in the sette at once, but both got away due, in part, to the fact that Mountain needs to lose weight and Pearl was not with us due to her convalescence. Mountain was trying to work both sides of the sette at once, with the result being that one groundhog got to dig in, while the other slipped off into an undiggable part of a tree trunk. You win some, and you lose some ...

On the upside, we found another occupied sette a little way up the creek, and Gracie got to see what a groundhog looks like up close.

Gracie's a bit big, and not too game, but I could see the wheels rolling around in her head, and by the end of the day she was checking holes out. Not bad for a first time out!

Doug and I spent another hour or so at another farm, and I misplaced an old fox sette at about the same time I lost Mountain. I thought the sette was in the corner of this one hedge, but it was actually about 80 feet up.

When we finally found Mountain, she was in that sette and had been underground for at least 15 minutes. Mountain stayed underground, but did not open up to a bay. I located her with the box and popped into a very shallow hole in a rocky pipe, just as she exited from a nearby bolt hole.

There's no way of knowing, but Doug and I both suspect she may have bolted a fox out of this five-eyed sette while we were up the hedge. A fox can slide out of a hole and disappear into the brush as quickly and quietly as cigarette smoke dissipating in a strong breeze.


Gracie and groundhog.
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