Canine TTA Surgery

It started a while back, we noticed that our herding dog, Chip, was favouring his left hind leg. We chalked it up to arthritis. My husband often grumbled at me when I'd leave him outside and he'd choose to lie down for a rest on the cement patio, saying I was helping to make it worse. Then a couple weeks ago instead of just favouring the leg he stopped using it entirely and became 3 legged. "Maybe we should take him to the vet?" we'd say, and let it go a bit longer. But a week ago we did, and of course, as expected (don't we always prepare ourselves to expect the worst?) Chip needed an operation - a $2800 operation!!! Just about have to sell the farm to make the farm dog well! But Chip is a valuable asset on the farm; we cannot do the livestock work without him; and he's loved. So we said okay.

      The success of this operation is largely dependant upon his care for many weeks after it. The operation is called TTA and you can find a good explanation of it on the net at: Tibial Tuberosity Advancement (TTA) Surgery for Dogs ... www.topdoghealth.com.  It's a little like a human getting a knee replacement. The dog, and master, must follow a regimented programme of rehabilitation consisting of gradually longer sessions of slow controlled on-short leash walks, cold pacs, hot pacs, massage, and physiotherapy - 3 times per day. In between these sessions he must remain inactive. He must not walk on slippery surfaces. At the end of 12 weeks of this rather time consuming and careful treatment programme he should be 100% well.

So our maniacally active, jumping, enthusiastic, running, playing Border Collie has to be kept still, walk very slowly on a short leash, cannot jump up, cannot run, cannot do much of anything he is accustomed to doing! Between his therapy sessions he has to stay in a dog crate. Otherwise he'd be jumping. You can ask any of our friends how Chip likes to play! We've completed week one and he's doing pretty well, getting used to the regime that's been imposed upon him even though he really doesn't understand why. He's on painkillers and antibiotics. When those run out, and as he feels better and better, it'll be harder and harder to keep him at a slow walk - but that's what's needed to gently and slowly strengthen the leg and keep him from ripping all that beautiful surgical work to shreds.

We start lambing in April. Hopefully Chip will be able to work by then.  In the meantime our guardian dog, Josie, will be having pups. We'll be preparing the barn and med kit for lambing and feeding the ewes grain. Spring will begin to seem possible once again. The geese will return to honk and scrap for territory while sitting on the still iced-over lake; I'll be planning the garden to be planted on the May long weekend; little lambs will be playing king on the mountain; the summer birds will return... and we will have a healthy 4 legged dog. Ahh, I can hardly wait.

Doc, a Good Old Boy

Doc, the Guardian Dog

Doc is a livestock guardian dog, now 11 years old, who lost his partner Tia awhile back. When, through lamb losses, we determined Doc could not guard our flock alone, Tia was replaced by Josie, a young female. Though they got along fairly well as a team, with Tia gone it seemed like Doc sorta lost his enthusiasm for guarding sheep. This left Josie on her own much of the time. She tried, she did, but we still lost 6 lambs last summer. This led to the decision to get Thor, one of Josie's young offsprings. Thor knew his place on the farm was with the sheep which encouraged Josie to be more alert and dedicated to her guardian role. We stopped losing lambs upon his arrival. Josie and Thor, since they are mother and son, have a close bond. Once Thor was here it seemed like Doc became a bit isolated, spent a lot more time parked on the kitchen stoop, and he more or less retired himself. This may all be due to doggy dynamics, establishment of the alpha dog, determining the pecking order, that sort of thing.

One evening my husband stepped out to fetch some firewood and found Doc lying on the ground, badly hurt by the other two dogs. He carried him inside. We called our vet who was about to go on holiday, but she was able to drop by with some badly needed eyedrops. Next day we decided Doc needed antibiotics and painkillers but the vet in town wouldn't give me any without seeing the dog. Taking Doc to town would probably have done him in. Fortunately I managed to get our vet on the phone and she faxed in a prescription.

For 5 days Doc lay on the kitchen floor and moaned, slowly returning to life more each day until he finally was able to limp out the door to do his business. But now we had a problem. We could no longer trust the relationship of our three guardians. As Doc's condition improved we came to the realization that to keep him safe we needed to be outside when he was, to keep an eye on things. If not he needed to be in the shop or in the house, safe. Winter set in.

Doc, the House Dog

A few days of walking back and forth from the shop every time Doc needed in or out cured us of the idea of making him a shop dog. Now this 100 pound fellow lives in the kitchen. He's no longer accustomed to the cold weather so he's in most of the time except for warm spells, walks, and tours around the home yard. He never really popped back to full health after his confrontation with Josie and Thor but at least they have a tenuous truce (broken once for another row). His coat is shaggy; he has bare skin in lots of places where he licks and licks. He has a couple of  balloon like protrusions, one on his knee, one on his tit. He's very arthritic. He's tired and old.

It's been kinda fun watching Doc deal with his new environment. Being a guardian he's not comfortable with people other than his own people. The minute someone drives in the yard he begins to bark and continues on and on till he finally settles down somewhere as far away as is possible in an 12 X 18 room. He keeps a wary eye on guests, keeps his distance and, if anyone speaks to him he sets off barking again. I tell folks to ignore him, not to talk to him or try to pet him, but nearly everyone it seems is quite convinced that their sweet tone and obvious love of dogs is going to break the ice with Doc. It doesn't. There's only a few people, after many many meetings, who are no longer greeted by incessant barking. It is getting better. Now I'm able to direct him to a safe corner, tell him to be quiet, and it works most of the time. One amazing thing did happen though. When my son and family came for Christmas he didn't make a peep. Our little grandgirls hugged and petted him, their two tiny dogs bounded in. All was fine with him.

We have a slate floor. The kitchen's wood stove keeps it comfortably warm but it's plenty hard on arthritic limbs (including mine). So I bought a couple of soft mats which I placed in front of the sink and the stove. It took Doc very little time to recognize the advantage of lying on one or the other of these mats, always, it seems, the one I want to be standing on! He quickly learned a new command, "Gotta move Doc!" and he grudgingly rises to his feet, lumbers over to the other mat only to be requested in minutes to move again. Occasionally he sleeps under the table; sometimes he hides in the bathroom to get away from guests. The cleverest move he's made for his own comfort though is to paw the dog bed out from under the stairs. This has always been a comfy hidey hole for our Border Collies and my little mutt pooch, but there's no way Doc can fit under the stairs! So at night he pulls the too small dog bed out and settles in, on, or over it. My husband suggested we get a bed to fit him. "And place it where? Maybe the doorway!" Needless to say that suggestion did not go over well.

I mentioned the poor condition of Doc's coat. The fan on the stove and the little swirling winds created by walking combined with his continual shedding has created a hairy household. I pick up chunks. I try to sweep up the illusive scattering, gathering, hiding bits before they slide under every possible surface or attach to throw rugs and chair legs. But it's an impossible task. Anyone with allergies would be wise to avoid our household. Fortunately I am a casual housekeeper. I do my best but don't obsess.

Why, you wonder, why would we put up with this useless old dog under our feet ? Many a farmer would find him a bullet, or just hope he survives outside with his adversaries and failing health. Why don't we feel that way? Well, I guess we have a respect for this old dog. He worked his heart out for us, protecting our sheep, our property, and our home most of his life. We accepted and expected his unconditional love and loyalty. The least we can do is make him comfortable now.

Winter Freezer

Ice Maker

Years ago, well before we "modernized" and built the second half of our house (installed solar electricity, dug a well, added running water, an indoor bathroom, a septic tank) we depended on our root cellar for cooling and the great outdoors was our winter freezer. Warmer winters have altered the reliability of our outdoor freezer, but even back then we almost always had to contend with a January thaw. Then we'd pack snow around our frozen meat and make sure it was in an insulated box (old fridge, freezer or cooler) on the north side of a building, or we'd borrow freezer space from a friend till the thermometer dropped once again.

Nowadays we have a 5 cubic foot super insulated freezer from Denmark which uses only 540 watts per 24 hours, a 7 cubic foot propane fridge with a tiny freezer, and a dumbwaiter into our root cellar under the house...plus...the great outdoors. Back in the day we drank room temperature beer like the Brits, now we're spoiled and want cold beer or drinks with ICE CUBES!

By the beginning of winter (by temperature, not by calendar) my wee freezer is full to the brim with garden produce and lamb. I'm lucky to find an extra inch for ice cream. So I make ice cubes outdoors and put a cooler on my balcony for stuff I can't squeeze in. By the time the January thaw arrives the freezer has usually been emptied enough to rescue anything I've frozen outside. The dumbwaiter keeps our beer (and our wine, spuds, carrots, canned goods) and anything else that won't fit in the fridge at a few degrees above freezing in winter and at about 50F in summer.

This may all seem a bit complicating to those who live on the grid. Most of the country folks we know have 2 large freezers and a big fridge or two and think nothing of the power they use, unless, of course, the power goes off for an extended period of time. But years of energy conservation have made all this jiggling of foodstuffs from one place to another seem perfectly normal. It all fits into our "Small Country Solar Home Manual of Combinations", the one in our heads we should write down but never have - a manual of maintenance combinations that keeps us on top of all the systems we have in place so our farm will clip along at a reasonably smooth pace. Guess we should write that manual down pretty soon. They tell me old people can get quite forgetful.....something about memory banks getting clogged with years and years of information.

Three Demons Hiding

Our government representatives flew off recently to luxurious hotels under tight security to figure out what to do about global warming, setting targets for lowering emissions. Quite often we as ordinary citizens get hit in the pocket to "encourage" us to curb our use of fossil fuels - applying carbon taxes which increase the cost of nearly everything and help to fill diminishing government revenue coffers. But there's a few hidden demons contributing to global warming we seem reluctant to address. Perhaps these subjects are politically incorrect. But, taboo or not, all three are huge contributors to global warming. These three things are fed by greed and privilege, ignorance, and sometimes by religion. Unless it is possible to alter basic human nature, we may be on a hopeless quest.

OVERPOPULATION

Polution in Taiwan (Wikipedia)

"Overpopulation occurs when a population of  a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche" (Wikipedia). When any group of living beings overpopulates to the extent that the resources they require, or think they require, to sustain life are seriously depleted, they tend to fall first into chaos, then into extinction. Population control is a sensitive issue, some consider it their right or need to have many children - too many. This planet has finite resources and only so much livable land. With desertification and rising ocean water more land is becoming inhabitable. Even though we are very clever, even ingenious, there is a limit to the population Earth can support. There are some population controls already in place -  disease, starvation, war - but it seems to me that family planning would be preferable to these other methods!

GLOBALIZATION

The global economy requires transport - by plane or ship. The further away our goods are manufactured or grown, the larger the cost to the environment. To increase the bottom line, companies manufacture goods all over the world, shipping them to their final destinations in marketplaces where they finally reach the hands of the consumers. Foods are shipped from far away places to grace our dinner tables. Is all of this necessary? It seems to me that we in the first world nations have moved way beyond necessary, often at the expense of third world countries who cannot afford to say no to lousy environmental practices. As long as we are insatiable consumers of products produced all over the world we will continue to feed the global warming process, not only with by-products of the production process, but also with our means of transporting these goods to market.

Container ships passing one another (Wikipedia)

"Today, about 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is transported by container...Container ships now rival crude oil tankers and bulk carriers as the largest commercial vessels on the ocean" (Wikipedia)

Then there's world travel. We fly or sail off to exotic destinations for holidays. No one thinks a thing about hopping a plane to go see relatives across the country, across the ocean. Our government representatives fly all over the world to confer with other governments. But excessive individual use of plane and ship transport pales in comparison to that of the military.

WAR

War machines use more fossil fuels, pollute more than people living their ordinary daily lives ever thought of. I wrote a blog about the use of fossil fuels by machines of war - Bummed Out Over the 4R's - that was published April 25, 2014. Check out some of the frightening statistics in that blog. Why was I bummed out? Because no matter how much we do on an individual basis it's likely it will make little difference.

"A B-52 bomber gulps down 86 barrels of fuel per hour. F-4 Phantom fighter/bombers devour 40 barrels per hour. At peak thrust, F-15 fighters burn 25 gallons per minute. An F-16 jet on a training mission ignites more fuel in a single hour than the average car owner consumes in two years. The biggest gas-hogs in the Pentagon’s arsenal are the Navy’s non-nuclear aircraft carriers that burn 134 barrels per hour and battleships which consume 68 barrels per hour. At its top speed of 25 knots, the USS Independence (a 1070-foot-long aircraft carrier with 4.1 acres of flight deck and a crew of 2300) consumes 150,000 gallons of fuel a day ... Simply 'standing by' in the Gulf, the carrier must still consume oil at a voracious pace in order to purify 380,000 gallons of fresh water daily and produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of a city of 40,000 people. Under standard conditions the Army’s M-1 Abrams tank gets eight gallons per mile. In the heat of battle, however, the M-1 Abrams tank can eat up seven barrels — 252 gallons (based on 36 British Imperial gallons per barrel) — per hour."

As long as we continue to have wars, how can we hope to make even a dent in the process of cleaning up our environment, of slowing global warming rather than accelerating it?"

Do I have answers to these problems? Well, don't have any more than 2 children. Buy goods produced locally, especially food, or at least within your own country. Put an end to war. It has and never will solve anything.

Are my answers reasonable? I think so. Possible? Not unless the vast majority of human beings change the way they think. Remember greed, privilege, ignorance, religion? Once AGAIN I'm feeling bummed out. Perhaps we are not intelligent or ingenious, maybe we have a built-in terminator gene. But, so far, we can still live a pretty good life here in Canada, and we can only do what we can do. Buy Canadian! Advocate for peace. Do what we can to lessen our own environmental footprint. Like Bhutan, make our GNP happiness! Happiness is achievable with less, much much less, material wealth.