Low tech

 

 

 

A dry toilet.

 

It comes with leak-proof double bags.  Don’t expect to need it, but we’ll have that bad boy along in case it’s too far between rest stops.

 

High tech

 

 

We carry an ice chest anyway.  May as well make it a 12-volt ice chest.

 

… and get to use the entire capacity for food, not half of it for ice and water.

 

It plugs into the 12-volt outlet in the car and will hold any temperature we set. We can keep it right at freezing if we want.  Or it can be powered by the 1,000-watt power source we also carry.  That will run it for days between charges.  No more wet food.  A high-tech ice chest!

 

Here is what I think

 

 

The color changed on Jesse’s face.  Her muzzle turned brown.  I posted pictures of that, and Jesse’s breeder responded immediately that she was getting too much iron, which indirectly caused the stains, and we shouldn’t feed her tap water anymore.  We should switch to bottled water.  Great idea, but the dogs already get the finest bottled water.  The tap water here comes from the Rio Grande and is not very good, so we have a reverse osmosis tap at the sink.  That’s where the water comes from to fill their water bowl.  It is every bit as good as Dasani.

 

Oh.  And the fountain on the deck.  All the dogs, residents and visitors alike, love to drink out of the mountain stream (the fountain on the deck).  Whatever is in the water there concentrates.  The fountain fills from the unfiltered tap.  Some of it the dogs drink.  Some of it evaporates.  It refills.  It cycles like that every day.  None of the dissolved solids or heavy metals escape.

 

If the fountain water had that effect on Jesse, might it have had an effect on Henry as well?  It didn’t make his face brown.  Well, maybe a little, but not a lot.  I googled “too much iron in drinking water for dogs”.  Google said it could be a problem.  The symptoms:  diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and fatigue.  Henry had diarrhea for four months.  He lost his appetite and couldn’t eat.  If he did eat anything he would go out onto the deck right after and throw it up.  He got so weak he could barely get up.  Google just described Henry.  Every vet visit we made and every test they ran couldn’t figure out why he was so sick, but maybe a google search just did.  When Henry got that weak (and couldn’t go out on the deck anymore), he quit getting worse and started to get better.  He started eating again and regained some strength.  When we saw this possible connection to drinking water, we immediately disabled and disposed of the fountain.  Don’t know if there is real cause and effect here, Jesse’s face is still brown, but if there is a connection the color may take time to fade.  No reason to take any more chances with the fountain water though.  Since then, about a month ago, Henry has been improving with no serious setbacks.  He is still a skinny little old man now, but he’s a loveable and happy presence.  His appetite is steady, and with no worries about him getting overweight, we’re letting him eat more than he has ever eaten before.  A month ago, we were talking to the vet, arranging his cremation, and working out how it would go if he didn’t make it through the weekend.  We were planning a summer trip without him.  Now, Henry is a part of our summer plans.

 

Here is his charming overgrown face.

 

It would be trimmed, but the last time the groomer was here a month ago there didn’t seem to be any point to it, so we pulled him out of the process.  Next Saturday, he and Jesse both have a date with the groomer.

 

We need the rain

 

 

That’s what the weatherman says.

 

But does that make any sense?  It’s going to rain or it’s not going to rain.  What we need or want doesn’t have anything to do with it.  It’s going to rain at any particular place when it’s normal for it to rain there.  That’s just the weather in that particular place.  And normally, some years will be rainier or drier than others.  Would we move to the desert, then say we need more rain?  We could move to a rain forest and claim we need less rain.  So when we’re in one place and say we need more rain, aren’t we just saying we would rather that one place be more like some other place?

 

 

One more quote from the Practitioner Symposium

 

 

“Every organization is perfectly designed to produce the results it produces.”

 

 

Kids

 

 

What do they know?

 

They stumble around making babbling baby noises, running into furniture, and falling down.  Next thing, they’re speaking a language.  They don’t know subjects and predicates or present tense and past tense.  They don’t study.  They don’t know how to spell or even how to write.  They just listen and repeat and start talking until it sounds right.  They don’t have any idea how hard it is, or how long it takes, to learn a new language.  Live in a multi-lingual house?  No problem, they just learn two languages at once!

 

Kids.

 

The three faithful persistent bushes in the backyard

 

 

Orange Esperanza.  I’ve been trimming and shaping, so not much to see for flowers.

 

Texas Lantana.  Nothing I do slows this one down.

 

And Texas Firebush.  This is the one that looked stone dead all the way down to the ground.

 

Pretty soon they’re going to have to carry on for the rest of the summer without us because we’ll be gone.  They’ll be just fine though because they’re all natives, accustomed to this climate.