Sheila's LiveJournal

The weather has been nice here in the mornings, with a healthy layer of marine fog that keep the temperature down, at least until noon. The greys and I have taken advantage of this for long walks along the bluffs, admiring the ocean views and the passing joggers and people walking dogs. Needless to say, the greys love this part! But while Jack is friendly to all, two-leggeds and four, Annie is afraid of little dogs.

I’m not sure why this is. I’ve seen her go snarly mouth to snarly mouth with a mean-looking Rottweiler, and pitbulls don’t faze her. I had to take her home from the dog-park once because she thought she could answer a pit’s challenge. But little dogs make her hide behind me until the menace has gone away.

Meanwhile, Jack has started to bark when somebody he doesn’t know comes to my door. To understand the magnitude of this, you have to know that greys don’t make great watch-dogs, and they usually don’t bother barking. Too much energy, maybe? They’re both nine now, Jack edging towards nine-and-a-half, so they’re officially seniors – although greys can live to be twelve to fourteen with good care, and I know of at least two that made it to within days of their sixteenth birthdays. They’re basically “little dogs on long legs” according to one vet!

So I’m giving them a break from playing therapy dog at the hospice because I’ve noticed Jack is showing signs of stress lately, for some reason. If I take Annie without him, she’ll sulk and he’ll be heart-broken. He wasn’t too thrilled with the last Meet n’ Greet we did for Greyhound Rescue, either. (Since his devastating illness a couple of years ago, I’ve kept a close watch on where he carries his tail.) I think his energy level is just a lot lower than normal.

Now, if only Nicky the Resident Feline God will quit bossing them about....

The three of us spent a couple of hours at the hospice today, the dogs performing their roles as therapy dogs. I really could hardly spare the time as I'm working hard on a story with an August 1st deadline, but the dogs hadn't visited the patients since before July 4th when I was away. And last week I had a nasty bout of sciatica that made me not want to walk dogs anywhere. The residents were beginning to complain that we were abandoning them. (Very often, the first words I'm greeted with when I go in alone the rest of the week are, "Where are Jack and Annie?")

For Jack and Annie it was as if there'd been no break. They waltzed right in like the pros they are and began lavishing affection on people who wanted it -- or in some cases, didn't know they wanted it, but the dogs saw they *needed* it and persuaded them. They have an instinct for that.

The house's two cats came out of hiding and glowered at the greyhounds, but my dogs have been put in their place by our own resident cat, and as a result they wouldn't dream of offending any cats anywhere, any time.

Now we're home, they've had dinner and are snoozing, and as soon as I sign off here I'm going right back to that story.

I'm packing for Westercon in Tempe, over the July 4th weekend. I already took the greyhounds to stay with my daughter. The cat and I will spend a romantic night alone together here before my plane leaves tomorrow morning. I'm sure he's thrilled!

I'm especially looking forward to a panel Sunday morning with Stan Schmidt and Juliette Wade on creating alien languages.

I'm home, and ready for a nap. I spent Thursday and Sunday nights with family, and the two in between at the Nebula Hotel in Brentwood (anybody remember OJ?) on Sunset. Samantha Henderson and I had the air conditioner (not) from hell in our room; the hotel "maintenance" (I use the term advisedly) couldn't fix it, and the only way not to roast to death in our sleep was to turn it off altogether. But then we had no fresh air, being on the first floor, with a walkway passing our sliding door -- and no way to lock it into a safe open position.

Other than that, and a few other "interesting" problems with the hotel, the affair was very enjoyable. It's always great to see old friends and talk business. I had the additional pleasure of meeting up with some former students of mine that I hadn't seen in years. And the Festival of Books was comfortably warm, but breezy, nowhere near the oven conditions that prevailed last year. Sold books, talked to more friends, and generally had a good time.

And when I came home, with the dogs, Nickie ignored me -- as I'd expected he would. However, when I went into the study to turn on the desktop and get email, I found he'd expressed his disapproval of being left at home. There, on one of the dog's beds, was a little pile of cat poop.

I had been home from ConDor for about thirty minutes, the dogs --who'd been vacationing with other greys for the weekend -- were with me. I petted Nicky, and opened the balcony door so he could go out and prowl around since he'd been shut in the condo all weekend.

As I said, thirty minutes. Max.

I turned around to go into the bathroom (I was unloading the suitcase) and there on the floor was a dead sparrow surrounded by feathers that wasn't there two minutes ago.

"Hah. Welcome home, mom. This is what I think of your absence. Now try to figure out how I caught a sparrow on the balcony so quickly!"

I'm gathering stuff together in preparation for a trip to ConDor in San Diego this weekend. The greyhounds will go with me and stay two nights with a friend from greyhound rescue -- so they get to party with five other greys for the weekend.

Then a rather pissed-off kitty appeared (with what looks like his protest post-it stuck to his fur), reminding me that just because he's brave enough to stay home by himself for two nights, I shouldn't overlook him. The subtext is, if I should be dumb enough to neglect his feelings, I will pay for it in shredded toilet paper -- his latest game in the bathroom. Or worse, of course.

Eight o’clock this morning – cloudy and raining. But the greys have to go out. One of the biggest inconveniences of living in a condo (and maybe the only true one) is that you can’t just open the door and shoo the dogs outside. So I dragged on clothes and shoes and we went out.

It wasn’t so bad really. The air was fresh and cool and the dogs enjoyed all the new scents we encountered by taking a different route. And actually, it wasn’t raining so much as misting. But, being only human, I grumbled about rain on my glasses (I like to wear transition lenses when I’m out in the bright light) and the time it was taking as the dogs stopped again and again to read the doggie news.

At one point, we passed a red-robed monk from the Tibetan Buddhist temple not far from where I live. I did my best imitation of an all-purpose reverent bow (learned from my Tai Chi master), hands on top of each other, brief head nod, difficult with two leashes in my hands, and on we went. We probably did a mile and a half today, far from our record, and had turned the last corner on the homeward stretch. And there was our monk again, almost back to his temple.

This time I dredged up the Tibetan greeting I’d learned in Lhasa. “Tashi Deleg!” I said as we passed each other. “Oh! Tashi deleg!” he said, looking surprised. And his face opened in a big smile.

Coming into our warm condo, I agreed with the dogs. That walk was a nice way to start the day.

What is the allure of islands?

I was pricked by this question this morning as the greyhounds and I stood on the Long Beach bluffs and looked seaward. The skies were clear except for a few puffy clouds, the view sharp as crystal to the southern horizon* which seemed to mark the place where everything stops, the absolute edge of the planet. No wonder that in earlier times they believed ships that crossed that line were falling off the world. And there, rising up on the edge, was the distinctive shape of Santa Catalina Island.

“Twenty-six miles across the sea...” the Four Preps sang in 1958, celebrating the allure of Catalina as it's usually called. Not a very wide channel; ferries and sailboats cross it all the time. It's even been swum – more than once – giving the swimmers the chance of eye to eye contact with pods of migrating grey whales, or the resident friendly dolphins. The island itself is still mostly unspoiled; the threat of over-development is kept in hand by the absence of fresh water sources.

But to experience the real tug-at-the-heart of Catalina, you need to stand on the mainland beach at sunset – particularly in the winter when the sky flames red and purple in the west – and look across the darkening water at that silhouette on the edge of the world. All the magical stories of islands – Odysseus in the Greek islands, pirates in the Caribbean, Gauguin sailing to Tahiti, Darwin on Galapagos – will flood your heart. You'll find yourself overwhelmed by yearning to go there.

I don't know that I can answer the question I began with; I can only affirm its power for me. But maybe that's because I was born on a small island which itself attracted wave after wave of people from the continent, drawn by its allure on the western horizon.


[*I should explain that Long Beach, on the west coast, has a south-facing beach.]

We took our part in the annual greyhound Meet n' Greet at the Orange County Home Show, doing an afternoon shift last Friday. Annie and Jack enjoy meeting people, but the show was dead this year on Friday. I hope it picked up later in the weekend because I feel sorry for the vendors who have so much money invested in the show. And greyhound rescue suffers too, because the smaller the visiting crowd, the fewer prospects we pick up for adoptions, and the smaller the donations to the cause.

But the trip home was the pits. We left the fairgrounds at 6pm to encounter rush hour on the I-405. Stop and go traffic for miles and a sea of red brake lights. Then at one point, the car in front of me slowed, and I slowed too, but the car behind me didn't. A young lady in an SUV, obviously not paying attention, plowed into my rear. Luckily, I was going slow enough and already braking, that the force of the hit didn't drive me into the car in front of me. But it made a huge mess of the back end of my Subaru, tearing off the wrap-around back bumper and denting the hatchback so it won't lock now. The dogs were terrified, naturally. The people in the car in front of me stopped and gave their deposition to the Highway Patrol (they agreed both of us were slowing to no more than 20 mph and braking).

I talked to my insurance company when I got home, and of course I'm covered even if (unlikely) the car that hit me doesn't assume liability. But it was a very unsettling experience for me and for the greys. I have some sore muscles and joints to show for it, but nothing major, thank goodness. Yet I spent all day yesterday just lying around reading, with no energy to do anything, aftershock maybe. Now I have to go through the inconvenience of putting the Subaru in the body shop and getting a loaner. The dogs seem to be okay today, but I really can't test whether or not they're afraid to go in the car until I get the hatch back lock fixed.

The greys and I went down to a DoubleTree Hotel in San Diego this weekend, so they could play “anatomy subjects” for veterinarians who're learning how to do acupuncture on animals. Every year, the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society runs four five-day sessions, each a month apart for up to a hundred vets in various locations around the country, and this year was San Diego's turn again. The vets have course work all day, with practice sessions for three hours each afternoon. That's where the greys come in. The call goes out to the local greyhound rescue organizations for dogs the vets can practice on. At regular intervals, the teachers select a dog and demonstrate actual acupuncture to the assembled students.

Jack and Annie and I have done this before (and before them, my previous grey, Rosie, did her turn). The vets need a large number of dogs able to stand on an examining table for twenty minutes at a time while five or six vets feel and prod them to discover pressure points. There are usually eight to ten “stations” working at a time, each with a teacher guiding the students. Greys are very good for this because they're so patient and they're skinny enough that the students find it easy to identify parts of the anatomy. After a couple of sessions, at most, the dogs change out and get to rest in an X-pen enclosure with other greys, drink water, eat snacks, and get told what good dogs they are.

Annie ended up doing four twenty minute sessions (with breaks between each two, then a longer pause before starting again), but Jack only managed one before exhibiting signs of stress. He's been rather fragile since his illness last year, and I watch him closely to make sure he doesn't overdo it. In fact, I wasn't sure until the moment that he'd be ready to help at all. But he loves people so much, he'd probably have hopped right back up on the table if I'd asked him. In return for all this, the organization makes a hefty donation to greyhound rescue.

It's nice to think that Jack and Annie helped some vets learn how to help other animals in pain. It's wonderful that grey anatomy makes it easy for beginners to learn on. But as I asked one young vet, “How on earth are you going to translate this to a big Saint Bernard or an overweight Lab?” “Darned if I know!” she said.

Saturday afternoons, I take the greys down to the hospice where I volunteer. The patients seem to like having the dogs visit, and Annie and Jack like to be petted and cooed over too. So it's a good situation all around.

Some folk are ambulatory and will be out and about in the living room, watching a movie on the big screen TV (this afternoon it was “Pearl Harbor” but it's just as likely to be “Harry Potter”). Some are in their rooms, not up to getting around much. The dogs used to be a little nervous going into the rooms, and at first I put it down to the low whine of the oxygen machines when they were in use (which is often). Now I've finally figured out that the greys don't like small, confined spaces – and the rooms are often cluttered with furniture and medical equipment leaving only a narrow space to walk in. I realized they don't like going out onto my balcony either, even if I'm out there already, and much as I can see they'd like to follow me into the bathroom, they stop on the threshold looking pathetic until I come out. I think it must come from being confined to crates for long periods of time at the race track where they started their lives.

So I've been coaxing them but not forcing them. But now they are suddenly Mr and Miss BraveDog, waltzing in ahead of me and sniffing out the personal things stacked on chairs and bookshelves or whatever! I think they've learned to do it at the hospice because they've recognized how much they're needed. They're just the right height that a patient doesn't have to sit up in bed to cuddle them. And they do get a lot of cuddling.

Out in the living room, it's the same thing. Some patients want to hold their leashes, and others just want to run their hands over them or let themselves be licked by a long tongue. Sometimes people will suddenly tell me stories about dogs they used to own. One man never says anything to me. Today he reached out for the dogs and stroked and petted for several minutes with a soft smile on his face. And he still never said a word.

The nursing staff and visiting family members often make a fuss over the dogs too, and the house cats will check them out warily from under the furniture. Somebody will always remind me to get water for the dogs, which I fetch in a paper cup from the dining room – a great treat as far as Annie and Jack are concerned! People like to ask how Jack is doing; he still has scars from his horrendous bouts with tick-borne disease. I think they find they have something in common with this dog who almost died.

I stay about an hour and a half when I have the dogs with me; I figure that's enough loving for them, although they never get restless or whiny. When I brought them home today they both immediately went to their beds and sacked out. I realized how much energy it costs them just to give love and accept it in return. They do it so willingly.

If only more people could wear themselves out loving like the dogs do, the world would be a better place, wouldn't it?

The Greyhound Rescue list sent another of a long line of e-notes about greyhounds needing to be rescued in a hurry from one track or another. This time it's a track in Florida closing for the season. That means about two hundred dogs desperately need to find homes – on top of all the others who come off tracks around the country. And that amounts to about twenty to thirty thousand “retiring” greyhounds a year, I've been told. Of course, there's almost no way any rescue group could keep up with such a flood of canine need, nor would there be homes enough to go around when you consider all the other dogs of every breed who need a family and a home.

But as it happens, not all twenty-thirty thousand greyhounds will be up for adoption. Some owners refuse to deal with the adopting agencies, preferring to dispose of their “livestock” as they see fit. And if you have no idea what that might mean, you can google up an Animal Planet special from a couple of years ago about the ear-less greys found in the desert. (Greys are tattooed at birth; one ear for date of birth, the other for registration number that can be tracked.) On the whole, the greyhound racing industry doesn't present a pretty picture.

Annie and Jack are two of the lucky ones who made it home. But for Jack, the way led through a one-year stint as a canine blood donor first, and though they were kind people who handled him at the blood donor facility, it wasn't the same as having his own soft doggie bed and lots of squeaky toys and long walks with a doting mom.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, ever since the little filly had to be put down after coming in second at the Derby. Do you remember Barbero and the struggle to save him last year? I once complained about the way dogs were treated in the racing industry and my oldest granddaughter, a horse lover since she could walk, asked me why I thought the horse racing industry was any better. I guess she was right. Humans have a lot to answer for about the way we treat animals. Any time gambling enters into the mix, the results are sad.

Luckily for me, the dogs on the most recent list are too far away for me to consider adopting, and some kind souls will come forward to at least foster them until they find permanent homes. So I gave my two an extra cuddle tonight and an extra treat , and I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the rest of the greys whose racing days aren't over yet.


*”Track trash” is what an official of the American Kennel Club called racing greys, deciding that any pup bred from one of them and an AKC greyhound wouldn't qualify for registration. (Never mind the fact that racing greys have yards-long pedigrees of their own!)

I was paranoid last night that I'd oversleep this morning so I set an alarm clock to wake me and made sure the automatic coffee maker would be on the job an hour earlier. Normally, I wake between 6.30 and 7 am, when I hear the sounds of two greyhounds politely stretching and yawning because it's time to get up. They never bark or intrude on my sleep, but once a mother always a mother, I'm programmed by nature to hear the tiniest sound of my “child” in distress – sometimes before it actually occurs. They are usually tolerant enough to allow me to fetch the paper and read it as I drink my coffee before I get up and take them out. But on Sundays, I can't sleep in or read the paper. I need to pick up a lady from the hospice by 9.30 to go to church. (People at the end of their lives, I've found, don't sleep late. They don't want to waste time – a lesson to lazy me.)

So I got up before the dogs this time, which both puzzled and pleased them. I like to see what the weather's going to be like before I'm ready to shower and dress, so I often carry my coffee out of the bedroom into the living room where I stare out the big sliding doors leading to the balcony. My fourth floor condo unit faces due east, and often in winter I'm in time to see the sun rise over the shoulder of Saddleback Mountain down in Orange County. This morning I faced a thick wall of grey fog that had slithered inland overnight. There's something quite mystical about fog that hides the mundane world from our eyes and suggests other realities might be possible. Fog (smog, in London when I was growing up, but still magical) is probably one of the factors that sorts children out from those who are going to grow up to be bricklayers to those who want to design the palace of Ozymandias. I wouldn't want to live somewhere if fog, or at least mist, wasn't available occasionally to rescue my imagination from the ordeals of daily living.

I finished my coffee, leashed the dogs and set out. At ground level, I could see several blocks ahead, the fog bank being several feet off the ground. The cool air energizes us, and we walk for about two miles before returning home. I love this time of day, before the residents of the houses we pass are awake. But their dogs are, barking warning to my dogs not to trespass on their lawns, even if I'm ready to scoop up the evidence in my trusty plastic bag. How do they know a dog is passing by when they're inside? Since dogs don't seem to bark at humans, only other dogs, I've come to the conclusion that good advice to burglars – if I'm ever desperate enough to write a burglary manual – would be:  Leave your pooch at home when you set out with nefarious purposes. Greyhounds, of course, never bother to reply to this vocal harassment.

There's a hierarchy among dog owners and their dogs that we meet on these walks. The greys are condescending to other dogs their size, putting up with the inevitable routines of sniffing – unless they're pitbulls, at which time I avoid the issue and cross the road. They don't like little dogs, chihuahuas and mini whatsits, usually turning to me with expressions that seem to say, “The rabbits we used to chase at the track never yapped at us!” But if we chance to meet another of the neighborhood greyhounds – Oh joy! Annie is desperately in love with a grey named Armstrong; she won't pass his house until she's absolutely certain he's not there and won't come out to greet her. Sometimes this'll take a couple of minutes to persuade her to move on. They know their own breed and prefer their company; whether this comes from the days at the track or not, I couldn't say.

By the time we got back home this morning, the fog was lifting and the sun came poking through. The greys decided to skip breakfast – not unusual behavior for them – and go take a nap. Oh – and I was in time to pick up the lady and get to church before the service started.

On Saturday mornings, I take my two greyhounds down to the hospice where I volunteer to play therapy dogs. They're very good at it, in spite of not having gone through all the training that  “official" therapy dog are supposed to go through. (I looked into it, but it was an expensive proposition to follow the guidelines, and my boss, the administrator at the hospice invited me to just bring mine down one day – so I did. All he required was that I file proof of license and all applicable shots.)

The patients love them! Greyhounds are a good breed for this kind of work because they're calm, they don't jump on people, they *love* to be petted, and they don't bark. Plus they don't shed. They will go straight up to someone – who usually turns out to be very needy at the moment – and get in close to be hugged. The only people I've seen them actually kiss – i.e a quick lick on the neck – have been people who really wanted it; somehow the dogs knew.

One day, we were in the long hallway and at the other end was a Mexican gentleman who I knew loves dogs, so we were heading in his direction. He saw them and spoke to them in Spanish, calling them things like “Mi preciosa!” Their ears suddenly stood at attention and they pulled me down the hall to him. He continued to speak in Spanish for several minutes and their attention never wavered. The only explanation I can give is that they were born, raised and raced on a track in Tucson, Arizona, and I have a suspicion the kennel workers were Mexicans. They hadn't heard Spanish in several years! (They're used to it now, so when he speaks to them they aren't as moved as they were the first time.)

Another day, we had just arrived when a nurse wheeled a gentleman out. He was failing fast and not talking much any more. Again, they knew and pulled me over to him so he could hug them. The poor man burst into tears and told the nurse to go to his room to fetch something. It turned out to be a wooden box with a photo of a dog on the lid, his own precious dog's ashes, the only possession he'd brought to the hospice when he was admitted. Several people (including me) were in tears at that! The end of the story is that he never spoke or got out of bed again and died peacefully a couple of days later.

I never know what's going to happen once we walk through that door. It's amazing what animals can sense, isn't it? They really are great therapists.

Life with a sick dog seems to have gotten away from me lately. Jack has been sick since the end of May and we still haven't identified the cause. It's most likely a tick-borne disease, but not any of the most obvious ones: lyme, rocky mountain spotted, and so on. We have a daily regimen of pills that take time to crush, add to food, persuade reluctant dog to ingest, discourage eager other dog from sampling, and this we do twice a day. On top of that, he is supposed to be eating two cans per day of super-duper high protein food bought at great expense from the vet – in addition to his regular food. He is so skinny! Greyhounds are naturally the poster children for anorexia , but Jack went down to a walking anatomy lesson where you could count every rib and see the sharp angles of his pelvis and shoulder blades.
                                                                                               
For a while, I had to feed him through a feeding tube because he had no appetite and the lymph glands in his neck were swollen so badly it hurt him to swallow. At least it was easy to get the meds in that way.  He was taking prednisone as well as heavy duty antibiotics to keep the inflammation down. Any effort to decrease the dose of pred made his temperature shoot up and the lymphs swell again. But he progressed beyond that to eating by himself and the specialist actually discussed taking the tube out. He decided to wait a little longer till Jack had put some of the lost weight back on. Jack had other ideas. One evening he cut the tube in half with his teeth, necessitating a quick trip to the emergency hospital. “You'd better take the rest of it out,” I told the specialist, “before he does.” But the vet hesitated – just in case we might need it later. Well, last week, Jack decided “later” had come as far as he was concerned. He not only pulled the whole thing out, he proceeded to chew it up to make sure the vet didn't put it back. Another night trip to the emergency hospital. (Can you hear the cash register ringing in the background here?)
                                                                                               
This time he had an over night stay, x-rays, barium feeds, and another biopsy of the lymphs. The latest samples go to North Carolina State University veterinary school where one of the foremost experts in tick-borne diseases works. (Previous samples went to places in Colorado and Arizona.) This time, the experts have apparently conferred by phone (guess who will be picking up the long-distance tabs?) and think there's a chance it's a rare disease, hardly ever seen on the west coast. In veterinary matters, “rare” translates into “expensive, new-fangled antibiotics which may or may not work.” Jack's primary vet did some research and called me to say that coyotes might be the vector for transmission of this disease. We certainly do visit coyote country fairly regularly, and I've even seen coyotes right here in Long Beach, in the flood channels along the interstates. So it's entirely possible that's what's making him so sick.
                                                                                             
I've given up tracking how much this is costing me. Any time you take an animal to the vet, you know it's going to cost at least as much as one of your own visits to the doctor. And any time your pet visits a facility where “specialists” are listed, you might as well just close your eyes and hand over your credit card. Yes, I have pet insurance (VPI, for those of you who know), but I doubt it will pay back anywhere near what I've spent so far. And to think that an official of the AKC once called ex-racing greyhounds “track trash” and warned that any breeding between them and the kind the AKC sanctions would disqualify the offspring from registration. Jack is one gold-plated piece of trash, is all I can say!

I haven't managed to get very much of anything done lately, let alone writing, because one of my greyhounds, Jack, fell ill. It started with an "accident" sometime in the wee hours of Monday night, followed by a minor bout of diarrhea the next day, nothing spectacular. Then he stopped eating. The next day, the lymph glands in his neck were enlarged, so off we went to see the vet. Initial blood tests and fluid aspirated from the swollen lymphs were inconclusive. The vet put him on an all-purpose antibiotic, and I tried feeding him chicken broth from a squeeze bottle. Saturday he stopped drinking the broth and plain water and ran a temperature of 105 F. So this time it was off to the Critical Care Veterinary Hospital.

Dozens of tests, and literally thousands of dollars, later, we're still not sure what it is. Prime suspect is a tick-borne disease, although we haven't been in tick-infested country in months and I use Frontline on both dogs. We're still waiting for the results of a tissue biopsy which was sent off to a lab in Colorado. If you have an emergency that happens over a three-day weekend, you're just out of luck. After four days, they got him stabilized and allowed him to come home, but he has a feeding tube in his stomach because he's still not eating enough by himself to keep a very small mouse alive, and he has a big cocktail of drugs to take every day. Greyhounds are skinny dogs to start with, so by now Jack looks like a survivor from a Nazi internment camp. I've spent a lot of time on the phone talking to my vet and to the specialists, and also online reading up on tick diseases and their treatment. Which, of course, it may not turn out to be.

So we're playing Animal Hospital here, and I'm apparently preparing for my second career in pet nursing. (Well, I retired from my first career and I certainly can't be allowed to sit around on my hands all day!)

And to add to the general mess, the other grey, Annie, is now acting jealous of the attention Jack's getting. When he was in the hospital, she moped around the house. They let me bring her with me for visits, and she was happy to sniff him and know he was all right. But now that he's home it's another story. She steals the morsels of food I put out to tempt him, and sneaks into his bed the minute he leaves it and has to be chased off.

My greys are rescues, both from a track in Tucson, Arizona, and Jack also put in a year as a canine blood-donor before I adopted him. They work as therapy dogs, visiting patients in a local hospice once a week (they're very good at it as, like all greyhounds, they're very calm and love to be petted). When I took Annie in all by herself last week, people who themselves are terminal with horrible diseases like cancer and AIDS still took the time to express their sadness over Jack.

I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned in all of this, or even if there needs to be one at all, but I know that when we take a pet into our homes we become responsible for their well-being in ways we could never have imagined. A dog is not a human child, obviously, but cherishing the one doesn't mean we can ignore the needs of the other. But it would be nice if my blood pressure would go down and my anxieties lessen to the point that I could finish a story I'm writing! After all, I'm going to need the money to pay the vet bills.

Murphy has been very active around my place lately. I've run into one problem after another trying to get the first two-thirds of BIRDS up and running on my website. Sigh. Still trying!

Meanwhile, this is Gay Pride weekend in Long Beach, with the parade tomorrow. Members of my Episcopal church will march in the parade and so will I. I've been volunteering at a local hospice which has mostly AIDS patients, so I feel strongly about showing some support. Actually, the church whose parish I live in (just around the corner from my home) left the Episcopal Church over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop, so I've gone back to the one downtown where I used to go when the kids were little. (In fact, my youngest daughter was christened there. And ironically, my oldest granddaughter was christened in the one that left.) 

I considered taking my two greyhounds along because they'd enjoy it; they love people and regularly visit the hospice. But the prospect of having to clean up after their "accidents" -- and hoping marchers don't step in it before I'm done -- seemed like too much to handle, so they're staying home this time.  Just gotta hope my feet don't give out before the parade ends!