Holiday or Vacation – Welcomed Retreat from Vacation Country
Vacation Destinations – We live in one and now we visit another. Here’s our home that we have left for Manitoba. The Stanford Inn at Dusk We are in Matlock, Manitoba, Canada on vacation or as they say in Manitoba, “on holiday.” Manitobans have it right: a vacation is a holiday – or holy-days – and they are for us. These days are special. There are few interruptions. (When we first are on the road, there are lots of calls from the Inn. They taper as members of our staff get their footing – something we hope they remember when we return.) Murphy retrieving a stick on Lake Winnipeg At home, which is the Inn, we work seven days a week providing little time for reflection and meditation. When we are here, on the same short...
Gypsy – 1996 – 2010
February 6th, Saturday night, on my way to bed, I passed Murphy, our lab-cross, in the hallway. I climbed the first flight of stairs to our bedroom and in the near darkness, a dog flew passed me. Rounding the winding staircase, I looked up and watched as a white tail wagged in front of the bedroom door. I was totally confused. Murphy doesn’t have a white tail. I looked down the stairs and looked back-up – no tail, no dog. I called Murphy; heard her coming behind me. I stopped, stunned. The first dog up the stairs? Gypsy! He had died the night before. Months ago, when he was able-bodied, he would run ahead and wait at the door to go to bed. He hadn’t been up-stairs since early October. That first February week began auspiciously. For the first...
Gypsy at the Lake!
Gypsy and Joan, August 3, 2009, at Matlock, Manitoba. For those following Gypsy’s story, here he is at the Lake not shown is his extended Manitoba family. He’s a happy boy!
Cardy
We came home after watching a wonderful movie “Dot.com” one of the outstanding selections of this year’s Mendocino Film Festival. Before leaving for the movie I had prepared a bucket of chopped hay and molasses and alfalfa pellets to give to Cardy after dark. Ravens love her food and spread it around her paddock. When we returned, I went into her paddock to deliver dinner. Cardy was not in sight. I saw Storm, a pinto lying down near the fence and a dark form lying near him on Cardy’s side. Cardy was resting! The day had not been easy for her. She had spun around occasionally, struggling to keep her front and back legs coordinated. She suffers from ataxia. I retreated, not wanting to disturb her leaving her food at the Gate, where she...
Updates on Cardy and Gypsy
Cardy Update. Last night Cardy stood silently, eyes neither open nor closed. Her nose inches from Scooter’s tail. I walked by the horses who were either unaware of Murphy and me in the middle of the night or chose not to acknowledge us. Cardy is not walking in circles. When I let her out of her tiny paddock this morning I noted that she didn’t pick up her feet. She shuffled over to the other horses and then through the larger paddock sniffing the ground thoroughly to check out who had visited during the night. She’s not picking-up her feet. And I wonder if she is eating. She certainly likes to smell her hay but smelling hay provides little nourishment. Cardy is dropping weight. Gypsy Update Every night a family of raccoons comes to the deck. They...
Gypsy, arthritis and acupuncture
Gypsy barely got up. I helped him to the stairs. Before reaching the first step down to the living room, he collapsed, jammed in the stairway. We got him down the stairs. He was in pain and I immediately checked his mouth to see if his gum was pale or that when I pushed against the bone, if the blood returned. No obvious sign of hemorrhaging. He had been on low doses of aspirin since he hurt himself a month ago. Feeling better and better just before coming-up lame on Monday, he had been bouncing around the Inn and following Dana when she carried food upstairs to the offices. (Dana is the head of Big River Nurseries, the Stanford Inn by the Sea’s California Certified Organic Farm). Gypsy quickly “healed” by giving him a full aspirin tablet each...
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