It's Amazing What a Good Night's Sleep Does!

We drugged the dog last night.  And will again tonight.  And probably for a while.  I gave him the dose the vet recommended, 2 adult dose pills although the vet did say that I could go to three pills if I thought he needed it.  I gave him the benadryl about 9:00, and he was groggy about 20 minutes later.  I went to bed at that point, and slept all night long.  Without any barking or dog noises!  (Of course, it took me a while to fall asleep but that was due to Bill apparently running a marathon or something in his sleep).  I woke up around 4:00, because I hadn't woken up any time in the night and nature was screeching!  I heard the dog bark once about 4:15, but that's about the normal time that somebody (usually Bill) wakes up and lets the dogs out.  Tonight, I think I'm going to wait until about 9:30 or so and then medicate Frasier.  9:00 was probably a little early, but it was a struggle for me to even stay awake that long.

I answered Froggy's comment on my last post with another comment, but basically Frasier's quality of life is the issue.  Right now, he's pretty good and generally happy.  As long as he is doing well, he's just going to be spoiled as normal.  If he loses his vision, that is not necessarily going to be the determining factor of when it's time to let him go.  But it will depend on the whole picture, and I've decided to look on this as having the gift of knowing that our time with him might not be too much longer so we're going to enjoy what time we do have.  He's old, but we've never really known how old he is.  The rescue group we got him from said 2 - 3 years old, but we (and the vet) have always thought that he was older than that.  The vet's official records say 10, but we're really thinking it's more like 12ish.  Dogs age and they get grey, which he's got and it seems like he's aging more rapidly the last few months.  Right now, he's pretty good and we're hoping that it stays that way for a long time but we are realistic.

We're not ignoring Maggie Moo, it's just that Fraiser has been the main issue lately.  The Magginator is fine, still silly and still lazy.  And still round!  Last night, I was scratching Frasier's ears and he was parked on the floor.  He put his head down on the floor and sighed happily - and then Maggie came over and sat on his head!  He was not amused, by the way.

A couple of years ago, we bought 3 tree saplings.  One was a redbud, it's in the back yard and is doing great.  One was an oak tree and it didn't survive the hot/dry summer, but that might have been partially because we bought & planted them in the spring instead of the fall.  The third tree was a lacebark elm and it's done amazingly well.  It's in the front tree, it was to replace one of the two maple trees that were victims of the 2007 ice storm.  It's grown very well and it's getting fairly tall.  This spring, a seed must have dropped in just the right place because a sapling suddenly sprouted.  Bill's been babying it along, and he transplanted it tonight.  It's on the opposite side of the driveway from the parent tree, and is about halfway between the mimosa he transplanted there last year (also a sprout from a seed off of the tree that used to be on the edge of Lovely Neighbor's fence line with ours in the back), and the stree.  He thinks he dug deep enough to get the main bulk of the roots.  We'll see how it does.  I'm hoping that it makes it, the fact that it's between our driveway and Lovely Neighbor's is really just coincidental - but I wouldn't mind a bit if there was another big tree between her and us!  I think that there used to be a tree there, it was gone before we bought this house from G & S but I don't remember much about it.

Otter's decided against planting any tulip bulbs this year.  She wants to give the tulip bed a year to rest.  However, there might still be tulips that come up next spring because some of the ones she planted last fall (that came us this year) might have been two-year bulbs.

I brought all my cactus plants in yesterday.  They are in the dining room and it's a little crowded, but they all fit in front of the window.  We repotted her bamboo plant this week, it was extremely root-bound but it seems to like it because it's gotten a little greener since the transplant.  It's in our bedroom, at least for now.  Also, we tossed the venus fly-trap plant.  It was several years old and lasted a lot longer than we expected it to.  When they are planted in pots and not in their natural environment, they sometimes only live a couple of years.  This one probably made it to about 5 or 6 years.  I'll most likely replace it, but maybe not until next Spring.  Until then, Maggie Moo the bug hunter is on the job!

And so's the wolf spider that Bill discovered this morning - it was running around on the ceiling of our bedroom.  It's more than welcome, by the way.  It was a good sized one, and we hope that it stays around for a while.