Battle On: Home of the Working Schnauzer

I’ve really enjoyed step 1 of becoming more self sufficient.  Gardening is relaxing, a great way to unwind from work and harvesting is a blast.

But, Gregg and I are well on the way to four dozen tomatoes now. The first dozen we enjoyed eating. But between the two of us, if we eat a couple of tomatoes every few days, we’re doing pretty good.  So for the last two weeks, I’ve been putting them in the refrigerator.  I was up to twenty nine tomatoes today so I decided to “put some away.”

Now, if you’re not from the south, “to put XXX (insert your vegetable or fruit of choice) away basically means to can.  But since I’m not about to get near a pressure cooker, I decided to freeze them.

Google told me to put them in boiling water for 45 seconds, a bath in ice water, remove skin, seeds and tough parts.  Then squeeze out the juice and freeze in the quick freeze compartment.

Sounds quick and simple, right?  Well, all I can say is, it takes a lot more time than opening up a $1.97 jar of Classico Tomato and Black Olive.

I’ll let you know if home grown tomato sauce really does taste better.   It better…

Really interesting National Geographic episode on different biting “styles” among dog breeds.  The Dutchie is pretty neat to watch.

Gregg LOVES Dutch Shepherds.  He thinks they routinely produce the best police dogs.

Congratulations to Dan Machamer and Luther (Iceman v. Klingsgarten)
They received their VPG I with very nice scores of 92 90 97(pronounced) 279.

Videos can be found under Dan’s Youtube channel.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/191EDA28F711396D862575DF005870EC?OpenDocument

Too often, I read about professional handlers whose charges die of heat related issues. Most of the time, it involves a van that is parked during a show and the air conditioning system fails.

In this latest example, Mary Wild the handler, left the dogs in the van because she did not want to put them in the garage. The explanation doesn’t sit right for a number of reasons, but I don’t know the entire story.

What I do know is that dogs have no place being in a car or a garage for any length of time without supervision. Why did this handler not have proper kennel facilities? If she couldn’t afford them or wasn’t allowed due to zoning regulations, she should have crates stacked up in her house. I don’t care if she didn’t want to turn her house into a kennel. She shouldn’t have taken up show handling for a profession.

And where are the owners in this? Many times before a boarding client leaves their dogs with us, they ask to come see the kennel. They ask about out time, food and whether we have central heat and air. Didn’t these owners ask these questions? Did they not know their dogs were being kept in a garage?

Everyone has a share of the blame here. Except the dogs.  And they’re the ones who are dead.

A lot of dogs means more doggie health issues.  A lot of older dogs is a force multiplier.

Gregg and I have been fortunate and the dogs have generally been healthy. But age related issues are coming up more frequently as our canine population grows older.

The latest challenge is Iron’s melanoma and Jasso’s laryngeal paralysis.   Iron’s melanoma was identified as a relatively slow growth type.   The only symptom he had were periodic nose bleeds.  We had just completed the CAT scan that determined the extent of the growth when he tore his achilles .   So it’s off to the orthopedic specialist first and then the oncologist.

Jasso’s Laryngeal Paralysis is moderately severe. He will go back to Texas A&M for surgery as soon as Iron’s  achilles has been repaired.  Although I’m leery over the common tie-back surgery because of the potential for aspiration pneumonia, but we really don’t have a choice.  The hot, humid weather is horribly stressful on a dog with respiratory distress and the other two surgical options have greater drawbacks.

Here’s a quick background on laryngeal paralysis.  The vet and my research state there is a link between hypothyroidism and laryngeal paralysis.   So we tested Jasso and he did come up low marginal for T4 levels test.  But he is also twelve years old  and its my understanding that T4 levels naturally decrease as a dog ages.  So I wonder if we’re dealing with a “what came first, the chicken or the egg” situation.  I would be interested in your thoughts.

Texas A&M says there are three options - all surgical.  One is the traditional tie back where one side of the larynx is tied back.  The downside of this is the potential for aspiration pneumonia.    The second option is basically a debarking surgery where a portion of the vocal cords is removed or cut.  The last option is a tracheostomy.  This treatment offers the greatest guarantee of relief, but is not an option for Jasso who is an active, coated dog that lives in the country.  The opportunities for foreign objects getting lodged in the opening is just too great.  The second option (debarking) is most successful for very sedentary dogs - again not an option for Jasso.  So we’ll do the tie back surgery.

In order to minimize the possibility for aspiration pneumonia, we’ll feed him by hand.  Since we feed raw, we can make meatballs that are dipped in water for easy swallowing.

One occurance reminded me that vets are fallible humans and that its our responsibility to be our pet’s ultimate guardian.  The senior clinician at Texas A&M is a DVM who is enrolled at the school for specialization training.  During our consultation, I asked if elevated feeding was recommended.  She was firm in her opinion that elevated feeding would actually increase the chance of aspiration pneaumonia because it would allow the food to slide down rather being physically swallowed.  But in researching Laryngeal Paralysis, I found that most experts believe in elevated feeding.  So, I’ll press the surgeons at Texas A&M about this more when Jasso goes in for surgery.

Big congratulations to Bonnie and her Stone, aka Momentumm Voodoo Lounge. They recently completed the last leg of their UD title. During the journey, they picked up three all breed High in Trial (HIT) and too many first place ribbons to count. Stone was bred by Christine Lietzau of Momentumm Giant Schnauzers and is sired by our Ben (Ben v. Hatzbachtal.)

We’re very proud of this talented team.

Last week, I changed out the bee’s sugar water for the first time.  Gregg helped to make sure my helmet was on properly and showed me how to keep from agitating the bees.   A few minutes later, the bees had a new quart of sugar water and I left them to their sipping.

Today, I decided I’d try it on my own.  I put on my beekeeping outfit.  First the extra thick fleece warm-up pants, complete with elastic at the ankles.  God forbid a bee fly up my leg!   Then a heavy canvass jacket with long sleeves that fall far past my hips.  Next are the most important items - the hat, veil and gloves.  Not really stylish but oh so important.

As I was carefully carrying the quart jar of sugar water out to the hive, I was struck with how strangely ritualistic the entire event was.  The putting on of ceremonial clothes, the deliberate and careful movements and lastly the offering.  Strange.

The bees are happy and I didn’t get stung.  A good way to begin the day.

I admit it.  I’ve run out of schnauzer talk.  I’ve also run out of schutzhund talk.  So, for now at least, I’m going to change topics to our journey to self sufficiency.

See the post below for the first steps.

I’ll still talk schnauzers, especially when something particularly informative comes up.  But in spite of the blog’s name, “Working Schnauzer,”  the dog game is on hiatus for a while.

Although Gregg and I have enjoyed Matt Mullenix’s gardening tales over the last few years, we didn’t start a garden of our own until this year.  I suppose much of the hesitation rose from the fact that neither of us have any gardening experience.  So, I began reading books, books and more books.   Then we took a deep breath and began the back breaking task of double digging our rock hard clay soil.  After days of digging and forty bags of compost and garden soil from Home Depot, we found ourselves with 240 square feet of lumps of clay.  I reassured Gregg that in time, with plenty of compost, these lumps would somehow change into the rich, dark, crumbly, loam shown in all of my gardening books.   I don’t think I convinced either of us.

I planted squash, tomatoes, cucumber, melons and corn.   We fertilized with fish and seaweed, tried to figure out the difference between beneficial and bad bugs, mulched, watered and pulled weeds.   And in spite of our inexperience and my very real incompetence where region specific gardening was concerned, we are actually harvesting the fruits of our labors.  We’ve been eating yellow squash and tomatoes seasoned with basil, dill and rosemary, all grown by us.   In the process, I’ve learned that gardening here in the interior coastline of Texas is completely different from the Victory Gardens of Massachusetts.    I now know that raised beds filled with rich, loam would have been much better than forty bags of soil amendments and that the time honored technique of double digging is actually counter productive in our area.  Much of my knowledge on region specific gardening was learned from Urban Harvest in Houston, Texas.

So, determined to do better, Gregg and I built two more garden plots.  This time, we left the existing soil intact.  We filled the raised beds with a sandy loam vegetable mix.  And I planted sweet potatoes – yards and yards of sweet potatoes.  It’s one of the few vegetables that will grow here during the summer.  Butter beans (lima beans) went in the remaining bed, along with some small pumpkins and winter squash.

When the tomatoes, squash and corn are finished in the original beds, we’ll fill those beds with the same sandy, loam vegetable mix and plant our fall crop of tomatoes, squash, pole beans, and more corn (we like corn.)  I’ve already started my tomato plants indoors for my fall crop and this time I’m going to experiment with some heirloom tomatoes.

We’ve expanded this concept of self sufficiency that started with the lumpy garden by becoming bee keepers.  Hopefully this fall, we’ll be able to harvest our own honey; in the meantime, the bees earn their sugar water by pollinating the garden.  We plan to continue the journey towards self sufficiency with the addition of blackberry canes, Muscadine grapes, Satsuma oranges and fig trees this winter.  We’ll have to sacrifice some oak trees for the orchard but consider the exchange well worth the loss.   Sometime in the future, we hope to revitalize our small pond into a fishing pond - stocked with bass, bream and catfish.

There’s immense satisfaction in growing one’s own food.  Watching a bright, yellow blossom transform into a straight neck squash fills some primordial need in me.  And when Gregg and I bite into our cucumber and tomato salad, I secretly rejoice, “We grew that!”

This is big news and means that breeders can now test for this particular genetic mutation prior to breeding. I very much hope this means that a genetic test for cardiac diseases in other breeds is in the very near future.

Link to the Washington State University Article