Dog days of summer

Literally. Summer and Jack have come to stay for the weekend. They are easy-care dogs (Jack slurps up his four pills along with his dry food). I can't walk three dogs at one time, and Molly has been surprisingly patient about being left clipped on the porch. No barking, no whining.



It's a lousy weekend to have dogs. Hot, humid, rainy. Luckily there have been enough pauses between the showers to walk them, although we had to wait quite awhile yesterday evening. They are good dogs, and it's almost no bother at all to have them here.

Bear doesn't think too much of my impromptu porch gate, made out of a screen door laid on its side. Molly did a classic header right into the screen (bonk!) when I let her run around in the side lawn unclipped and then called her back over. Even though she'd been on the other side of it all day, I guess it didn't occur to her that it was also there when she came back up the steps at full tilt.

That's gotta hurt. But it's hard not to laugh. Don't worry Molly, even humans do it.



Speaking of Bear, he went in for his post-fight-with-Skinny Bear FeLV/FIV test, and (happy days!) was negative. So he got his first FELV vaccination and I'll take him back each month for a retest. I'm sure my vet thinks it's overkill, but I can't imagine what it would be like to wait six months, discover he's positive then, and wonder at what point he started shedding the virus in my house among my other cats. Nope--I'd rather pay $40 a month now with one cat, then drag five of them in later on.

I'm not going to even try to plan what I would do if he tested positive down the line. I guess he'd live in the Great Room or the downstairs of the barn. But at this point it's just not worth wasting brain cells on a future that may not happen.



I watched The Bucket List last night. I should watch more movies. They jerk my brain out of my day-to-day rut. Fiction quite often has good messages. I tend to get down on "media" because TV is so incredibly bad, in general. I don't mind fiction when it is clearly fiction. I do mind contrived "reality" that encourages people to compromise reality in search of a "better story." So when I pop in a movie and get to watch something like The Bucket List that is entirely contrived (you aren't being asked to believe it happened) but has good messages (friendship, discovering yourself and the world, having to go away to learn your greatest gifts are often home), it's sort of a relief. A little mini vacation right in the living room.

I have books to read (thank you Kathy, if you ever do get a chance to read this) but I haven't cracked the open yet. I really should.

On that note, it's Sunday morning and I have lots to do. The birds are impatient for their feeders, and Owlie is yowling his head off in the barn (so glad I have no neighbors!) asking to be released from his quite-spacious run into the nonetheless-much-larger cage room.

He'll have to wait until the kittens romp, first, and I go to Ithaca for cat litter. Oh, poor Owlie!