Jenny Basset

Once upon a time, we loved a little brown dog that we named Jenny Rose.    My daughter and I bought her from a breeder on the side of the road in NW Austin.    These days, that's illegal.  However, we got to meet Jenny's mom and siblings as well the breeders.   Normally, I would not do that, but.... there was something about that little brown puppy with the white spot above her tail that called our names.    So we brought her home in July of 2000.

Jenny was a mess (in a good way) from the get go.   Congo loved her - amazing since he was a curmudgeon on his best days.    He taught her how to hunt birds like a cat would, so we frequently saw them tag-teaming a dove.    They would snuggle up together on the bedding outside our back door.   They were inseparable.

Jenny was a bed hog.    We slept with her, and she would crowd us out by stretching and groaning with delight at lounging on a king sized bed.  She liked to be covered up.   She liked to put her head on the pillow.   She loved it when you would curl up with your arms around her.   She was a four-legged kid.  Spoiled?   Yeah, she was, but then else why do you have a pet?  (p.s.  That's Remmy-basset in the foreground.)

She also loved little children.    Jenny wasn't always the biggest fan of being walked, but if she spotted a little one, her ears and gait picked up.   She'd trot, with the white tip on her tail waving, towards the child.   Once they started to pet her, she'd roll over to expose her belly to them.   She loved having them fawn and crawl all over her.    We'd often have to start dragging her, still tethered by her leash and laying on the ground, away so we could finish our walk.   What a goob!   I wish our grandson could've met her because she would have been absolutely bonkers about him.

She was, most of all, a glutton.   This frequently got her into trouble.   She loved to eat the pecans that fall in our back yard.   One October, she swallowed one whole.   It lodged in her duodenum and had to be surgically removed.   I still have the pecan in a sealed specimen cup, a $1200 testament to her piggy ways.   Not a week after she had her plastic collar and stitches removed from that episode, we found the half cracked remains of several pecans in her bedding.   Bad Dog!!   ;-)    She got to spend multiple nights at the emergency animal clinic because of gastric issues until the vet told us that if we suspected she'd ingested something putrid, feed her a Pepcid.    It worked!    Ka-Ching!

I could go on and on because that's what loving a pet is all about.  

Remembering.

It's been a year now that we took her to the vet for the final time.    Her end was close but it was so hard to acknowledge it, even with the vet's help.   In her usual Jenny way, she put her head on my lap and looked at me with those big brown and soulful basset eyes.  It's OK to say goodbye.   She selected New Years Day 2012. 

5-3-2000 to 1-1-2012.    Nice symmetry.  

Love.  The best "Little Brown Dog" ever.

Congo and Christmas

To say that this has been an interesting year is an understatement.   We started it off by having to put our beloved Jenny-basset down on New Years Day after a lengthy battle with a mammary sarcoma (another post on another day).  My mother-in-law was diagnosed with and had surgery for breast cancer about three weeks later.   Fortunately, she recovered nicely, and is in good health now.   And, of course there have been our daughter's health travails (well documented here).  Blessings include, among others things, the birth of our first grandchild.

Then there was Congo.   

This will be the first Christmas in 18 years that we have not had Congo kitty helping us celebrate the holidays.   He was a holiday fanatic.    As a kitten, he would climb high into the tree and lay in the branches.  Made no difference to him if the tree was real or fake.   It was put in the corner for him to roost in.   He loved to wander amongst the gifts, laying on and in them, hiding behind them, and eating the bows and ribbons.   Low hanging ornaments were to be batted at, removed from the tree, and swatted across the floor.   The tree skirt was for laying on in a shaft of sunlight.  I'm not a fan of all the hoopla and disruption, but he looked forward to it every year.   I think he enjoyed me admonishing him like one of the children to "be nice to the tree".

 
Strangest of all was Congo's obsession with a homemade Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.   My mom was a second grade teacher, and one year as part of a school fund raiser, the High School Shop boys made Rudolphs to sell.  She bought me one, and I began setting it out every year when the kids were little.   My oldest is almost 31 years old now, so suffice to say, Rudy has some miles on him.   He's a rustic piece of my family's "holiday heritage".   Assembled from a landscaping timber, wooden dowel legs,  plastic eyes, and do-it-yourself antlers made of twigs culled from the yard, he is also wired to accept a single, red light for his nose.   

Congo LOVED his nose.   He would sit there staring at it.  He lovingly head butted it, occassionally leaving a strand or three of his lush gray fur hung on Rudy's face.  He and Rudy had some mystical kinship.   Oddest of all, Congo would gnaw on that blinking red nose.   Did not matter if Rudy was plugged in or not -- teeth marks and flaking red paint everywhere.   When we caught him doing it, we'd scold him.  But the evidence of his crime was always there in the form of Rudy's red nose minus chips of paint.   We've replaced many a bulb nose over the years and every single one of them had his teeth marks on them.

Congo died of old age this March just a few days shy of his 17th birthday.    Part of his passing was due to his antiquity, but I also think another was grief at Jenny's passing two and a half month's earlier.   When she began to fail, so did he.   He was a strange cat who loved a basset hound and the holidays.

As I began to dig out and assemble the holidays decorations this season, I knew that I'd have to also un-box Rudy in all his not-so-red-nosed glory.   I told my husband I didn't want to set him up, but he encouraged me to anyway.    So, I went out in the yard to find him a new set of antlers.   Then I set him up and plugged him in.   The bulb still works, and if it goes out this year, I will save its mangled remains as a memento.

So, here's to you, Congo.   I'd give just about anything to be scolding you not to gnaw all the paint off Rudy's "red" nose.   He misses you - and so do we.

Fuck the NRA

...and, NO, I don't believe those assholes get a political pass on "Massacre Day"...

Because ...

...every 10 month old needs a dorky holiday cap crocheted by his loving Granny ...   ;-)

Oink, Oink

I always get amused at Republicans mouthpieces grousing about the Dems being moochers.   Case in point, John H. Sununu, King of the Racist Old Farts, who claims that Obama won the election by promising his base more "free stuff".    Let's see here:  former Governor Sununu was the White House Chief of Staff under Shrub the Elder for two years, but resigned in disgrace over financial improprieties.  He was also Governor of New Hampshire for six years, and spend two years in the New Hampshire State House.   According to my reckoning, that means he was on the public teat for 10 years.  I'm going to assume that he gets a government pension of some sort as a retired public sector worker (oh, the irony!!).   In other words, he's one of those 47% takers he loves to loudly and openly sneer about to anyone wanting to celebrate the holidays with an earache.     

What a pig!

Latest on the ITP Front....

Well, we were hoping that the N-plate injections would help our daughter.   And, maybe they will but on top of everything else, she's been battling a sinus infection.   For most folks, that would be a day or two of feeling under the weather with a steady but dependable recovery.   Last time she had a bad one, she was at the ER, then in the hospital for 4 days.   Her ulcerative colitis was also flaring at the time so it was a perfect shit-storm (pun intended) for her.   

On the ITP front, her platelet count dropped from 74K to 58K (no injection).   The following week it was 29K so she received the N-plate.    We were hoping that would help her for at least another week or so, but she was at 22K last week so she got the N-plate for a second straight week.   Of course, her sinus infection popped up during that interval so perhaps her body was fighting the "crud" and her platelets are low due to that.   Or not....who knows.   

Her arthritis has also been acting up so not sure if she is on the cusp of another ulcerative colitis flare.   Hope not.   In the meanwhile, the grandkid has had an ear infection - both ears.   We don't do nuthin' halfway in this fam-UH-lee, let me tell ya!!!   ;-)

CCFA

Wow, can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted.    This is Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week.   For more information, please see their site at: http://www.ccfa.org/