Only In The South

Learn to beautify your rose bushes AND find the best weapons to blow away any varmints that try to tear 'em up!!! All the information you need to pamper your petunias and become a squirrel sniper in one magazine!
Personally, I wish there was a Basketweaving & Bombs. How about Antiques & Artillery? Knitting & Knives? I could do this all day...

JUST SAY NO

THIS IS YOUR DOG'S ANUS-

(actually it's my dog's anus)

THIS IS YOUR DOG'S ANUS ON BALLS-

ANY QUESTIONS?

Sponsored by the Council of Canine Testicle Haters and P.A.D.D (People Against Dogs "Doing It")

The Million Dollar Dane

Okay, so maybe not a million dollars-YET. But give it time, she still has several years left to finish sucking the life blood out of us. She's had two surgeries on her hip- it popped out of place when she jumped out of the back of the truck. Was I there when it happened? OF COURSE NOT. I wouldn't have had her back there with nothing to keep her in, apparently Aaron felt like she should have enough common sense to stay put. Ummm...mmmmkay. Indy the Rocket Scientist. Her food bill alone is enough to put us in the poor house! At least she's finally outgrown her taste for family footwear, I don't have to hit the store for new socks weekly anymore. And I don't miss scooping those turd-crusted torpedoes out of the yard either. Now it's all about Barbie body parts in Boomer's excrement. There definitely something unsettling about a tiny foot protruding from a pile of poo.
SO ANYHOOS, her latest ISSUE was an ear hematoma. This occurs when the ear flap suffers some sort of trauma. A pocket forms between the two sides of the ear flap, and it proceeds to fill with fluid. Dogs that have ear infections will often get them from shaking their head or scratching their ears. Indy has never had an ear infection, so hers was likely caused from a certain unruly mutt nipping at her head/ears while playing. It started out really small, so I thought "Maybe it will stay this size until it just shrivels up, her ear might be a little crinkly, but she's not exactly a show dog." I should've known better.....

The procedure involves anesthesia, slicing the ear open, squeezing out all of the fluid, then putting a bunch of stitches in it. The stitches tack one side of the ear to the other, so that it heals back together eliminating the dead space. I RELUCTANTLY put Indy on the surgery schedule. On the appointment notes I put "Ear hematoma. Let's just cut her whole head off." Everyone was like "Jennifer! You don't mean that!" OHH yeeesss I dooo...

So here she is after surgery. A bandage stays on for the first few days to apply pressure....

I know what you're all saying! "Aaawwww. Poor Indy!" Well, save your freaking sympathy! She doesn't deserve it, she has done everything in her mentally incompetent power to sabotage her recovery! Here's her once bright and pristine bandage on day two......

For some reason, I didn't have the foresight to bring extra materials home, and all I could find was packing tape. As you can, it's doing a fantastic job not holding her soiled head gear in place. My sisters said she looked like a wounded civil war soldier fresh off of the battlefield.

We went through several bandages, had to do MORE surgery to put MORE sutures in place, and here I am like 3 weeks later STILL smushing juice out of the tip of her ear twice a day. I'm just going to let the sutures dissolve on their own and this point, and hope it's done manufacturing ooze by the time that happens. Or it's back to the sewing board...

Tatum is talking to me after school the other day, and she says "I forgot to take my drawings to school today, and I was pissed." "Um, you're not allowed to use that word Tatum." "Okay, so I forgot my pictures today and I was really mad!" HA! It was funny because it was obvious she was testing the word out on me to see how it would go over.

And in holiday preparation news, we got our tree today. YAAYY! We get a real one from the farm, I like the bluish ones that are full and smell really good- I don't know what they're called. Anyway, he let us take it for $20 because Aaron cut it down and carried it himself. Not too shabby. It was all downhill from there though. Aaron had a really hard time getting it in the stand and making it straight. I was trying really hard not to laugh while he was wrestling with it and cussing at it. Seriously, he looked like some deranged lumberjack who thinks one of the trees he cut down is attacking him. I put my engineering skills to work and shoved a few books under one side of it. Perfect! We had all of the lights on it, when Aaron got some water to fill the stand. He poured it in- then it leaked right back out into a huge puddle on the floor. Apparently, he put a crack in the bottom of the stand when he was showing that overgrown twig who's boss. SO we had to take everything off of it and rig the stand to work by adding some saran wrap and tupperware. BONUS- there's a dent in the wall, also a result of Man Vs. Wild. Ahhh, the Christmas spirit....