Stuck in Frump, Striving for Fab

Disclaimer: you may wish to skip this post if you are eating. It's not graphic, but, well...it's a birth story.

Over the summer we tried to go on vacation a couple of different times, but our attempts were thwarted at every turn.

We finally managed to go out-of-town on a little weekend getaway with our niece S.

The following are a series of photos I took in the water in response to a special request by Judah.

You see, before he was born, I had decorated our bathroom with pictures taken of Jericho and daddy in various pools while we were on vacations over the years. The pictures had long since come down, but when Judah spotted them in a box in my craft room, he said, “That’s not fair! You don’t have any pictures of ME and daddy in the water” and actually started to cry. (Actually I have a ton, but they're all digital and not yet in albums or picture books, and so he never sees the evidence.)

Knowing we had nearly 10 years of family life together before he came along is a hard pill for our Judah to swallow, and it seems he wants to make sure everything is even-steven.

At the end of a hot but very fun day, we were hanging out in a yogurt shop when we received a series of three text messages.

The first was that our nephew J, a grown man and father of 3, had been in a motorcycle accident that crushed his foot. The second was that another neice K had been in a Sea Doo accident with her dad, and she was en route to the hospital with what they suspected could be broken ribs. The final text was from her older brother to inform us that his third child was due to be born soon. His wife was in labor.

The mother-to-be, our nephew’s wife, had already had a couple of false alarms, so we were a bit hesitant about cutting things short until we knew for sure what we were dealing with. We were two hours away at the time.

Things were progressing rather slowly with her labor pains, so we opted to go ahead and stay another night and head home early the next morning. This turned out to be a good idea, because labor came to a screeching halt at some point in the night.

The prego mama’s father and stepmom live 18 hours away, and the daddys family were all vacationing 4 hours from home. They, too, were a bit hesitant about cutting their vacation short unless they were 100% sure it was not another false alarm, as my sister-in-law had already been to the hospital 3 times only to be sent home within a couple of hours.

In fact, with their daughter K having been in the Sea Doo accident on the lake they couldn't have left right then even if they'd wanted to, as she hadn't even been seen at the hospital yet.

Meanwhile, in two other hospitals hours away, yet another of my sister-in-law’s (and her husband!) were both in separate hospitals for two very serious conditions, he had been in long-term care but had just taken a turn for the worst, and she having just had surgery to remove a cancerous portion of her lung with recovery being rather dicey. We honestly thought we might lose them both that weekend, but by God’s grace did not.

There we were on vacation, supposed to be relaxing and 'getting away from it all'…but life doesn’t stop just because our family goes on vacation. Babies being born don’t wait for ‘convenient’ (to us) times. Life happens!

We went to bed rather heavy-hearted that evening, after praying for all these extended family members who were all in various hospitals all at the same time and then the baby on the way.

Early the next morning, we rose early and got ready and headed for home. On the road we got the call, “Things are moving along again and starting to pick up speed. We don’t have anyone to stay with the kids, and I’m going to end up being alone at the hospital…I'm scared.” and the mama-to-be was crying.

Less than a year earlier, she’d lost her own mother in a tragic car accident. It was a difficult time for this little gal, and my heart went out to her.

After informing her we were already halfway there, it was decided that her husband would meet Jeff and the boys at the hospital so that Jeff could take their kids back to our house until the baby was born and her husband (our nephew) would join his wife and I in the delivery room as soon as the car seats were all switched over.

Here were a couple of the photos Jeff messaged to us at the hospital. Jericho and Judah did a great job of entertaining their cousin’s kids. They had a blast, and didn’t seem to have a clue as to what was going on at the hospital.

Little B, holding the soccer ball, was a bit confused as to what having a baby sister was all about. When they would ask where the baby was, he would pull up HIS shirt, haha. He would soon fall immediately in love with his squalling baby sister.

I brought my camera into the hospital, ready to document the entire thing for them and to be there to talk the little mama through it.

I’d also brought along my crochet bag, not knowing how long things were going to take, but ended up just visiting, our nephew reminiscing about hilarious childhood memories to try and distract his wife from her labor pains.

I had to chuckle at the little mama, posting minute-by-minute updates to Facebook.

We tease her mercilessly about her phone habit, as she even carried her phone with her to the altar at their wedding (even though everyone they loved and cared about were there in the room with them) because she couldn’t wait to change her Facebook status to Mrs. S.

Kids of this generation, haha!

All I know is that the very last thing I would have thought about during my own child birth experiences would have been giving real-time, blow-by-blow accounts of the experience to anyone not in that room with me!

Meanwhile, the baby’s father was kicked back in his easy chair in the corner trying to keep warm while his wife did hard labor. “It’s a bit chilly in here” he complained once or twice.

None of the women in that room bothered to acknowledge his complaints knowing what all the mama was going through.

After the flurry of medical personnel had come through, indicating that things were getting much closer, I invoked my auntly privilege (having babysat that daddy for years when he was a kid) and told him it was time he got his carcass up out of that chair and ‘helped’ talk his wife through the remaining stages of delivery.

Upon viewing things up-close and personal, this was his reaction:

I actually got worried at one point that he might faint.

You hear about that happening sometimes.

Actually, he did pretty well.

Childbirth…it’s not a pretty business. But oh…the reward waiting on the other side!

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. ~John 16:21

Awww…so precious. Little Baby B!

So very miraculous and amazing.

Truly, every time a baby is born, I marvel anew at the absolute miracle that babies are!

How amazing it is that our Creator designed for them to live in a safe, cozy enclosed womb where they were nourished by the placenta through the umbilical cord one moment…to suddenly breathing with their lungs and being in the big, bright, noisy world for the first time. Incredible!

And did I mention precious?

Little B was born a tiny 5 lbs. 3 oz. She is a petite, dainty little thing, but when you’re born to a mom who weighs about 95 pounds soaking wet, that’s probably a good thing.

In the end, between Facebook updates and text messages, Nana and Tata did cut their vacation short. Their daughter had sprained her ribs in the Sea Doo accident, and though she was in pain as bad as if they’d been broken would otherwise be fine with some rest. They did their level best to get to the hospital in time.

They made it literally moments after little B was born, and here they got to see their first little granddaughter for the first time.

“Wow…that was hard work!” the dad was heard to say as he guzzled down a bottle of juice in his chair.

And once again, all the women in the room ignored his comments.

We well knew who had done all the real work in that place, haha.

:: :: :: ::

In the days that followed, there were lots of visits in which we all got to take turns holding our little Baby B.

Mama D and Baby B.

Awww…so sweet!

This is one of my faves. Big Brother B was holding his baby sister when she suddenly started crying. Brother B and our Judah were like, “What happened? What is it doing? What is going on?” They weren't quite sure what to make of the squalling little thing.

Then, a couple of days later at a family gathering we all took turns getting to hold little Baby B.

Here Nana T and Great-Aunt K are cooing over the baby.

Sweepy witto booboo.

GG finally got her turn. She’d been in and out of other hospitals a dozen times in the previous week, what with her daughter’s surgery and her son-in-law’s turn for the worse. To relax and hold her precious little great-granddaughter was like balm to the soul.

Awww, those cutesy little baby toes and fingers in Great-Grandma’s hands

Great Uncle Jeff got his turn

And finally, Great Aunt Becky got hers…

…taking Anne Geddes style photos in the same flower pot that we took pics of Baby B’s older brothers when they were newborns.

What a delightful bundle of joy and blessing little Baby B is!

So, one of the many projects finally completed this summer was decorating my entryway wall. It’s about time, especially considering that we moved into our current home in October of ‘08.

I was excited to finally do something with that box of mismatched frames that were taking up space in my craft room, and had just pulled out the camera to take a photo of the completed project for this here blog when I discovered that this would be next to impossible.

My guys think they’re hilarious photo-bombing my pictures.

This was the best shot I could get of the finished product.

When looking at it on my camera viewer, something about it struck me as oddly familiar. I got a strange sense of deja vu, like I’d seen something similar once before.

E.T. Phoning home? Nooo…something else.

Some cliffhanger movie I watched as a kid? Nooo…

Oh, yes…I think this might be it!

Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Recreated via photo-bombing in my very own living room.

:: :: :: ::

I went antiquing with my sister-in-law K this past summer, in search of some specific milk glass pieces to add to my collection.

Our niece K had told us about a large antique mall not far from where she lives. The owner had apparently bought out several smaller antique stores and combined everything very nicely into one location.

So, after a wonderful lunch with K and her kiddos at a little Italian Bistro, we went over to check this place out.

And we were not disappointed! They had some beautiful pieces there. Some were estate collections of specific styles of furniture that included several matching pieces, from hutches, to highboys to sofas, and everything was in beautiful shape. Never had I seen so many marble topped collections in my life. If I’d had a few extra hundred lying around, I totally would have redecorated my living room that day with a tufted sofa and chair collection.

However, I did not.

Which was probably a good thing, as the furniture was a bit overpriced in general.

Their dishes and other knick-knack type collectibles were another story…very reasonably priced.

The store was organized beautifully, keeping all like items grouped together in one area.

At one point while browsing, my sister in law was talking to me, and then noticed I wasn’t beside her anymore, having homed-in on this heavenly sight from clear across the room:

Milk glass heaven.

I may have squealed in glee. Perhaps even did a happy dance. I’m pretty sure I even heard strains of the Hallelujah Chorus playing over the sound system.

I tell you, looking through that collection was like hitting the motherlode!

I’m not gonna lie...I went a bit crazy. I totally blame it on the heat in that building…the A/C unit was down and it was easily 110 degrees in there. We were working up a sweat just lifting items off the shelf to the nearby table.

A few beautiful pieces were added to my collection that day. Specifically the plates stacked on the table.

Alas, though I have spent many weeks worth of days perusing numerous antique stores all over the great American Southwest, I have still not found the holy grail of my Milk Glass quest, the cake pedestal second from the top on the left:

I believe this photo is of Martha’s own personal collection which she probably keeps in her prop department for photo shoots and doesn’t actually use in any of her homes.

Which is a real shame if you ask me.

Here is a close-up of the puffy teardrop beauty, once featured in an ‘08 online auction. Which I learned about approximately 2.5 years too late.

But one day…one lovely day, I will finally find one of these.

And I will make an elegant and delicious cake to serve upon it in celebration.

And will take lovely photos for my blog.

In Mid-June, Jeff and I celebrated our 18th Wedding Anniversary in what has come to be our annual tradition, dinner out at King’s Fish House. Yummo.

We had just come back from our trip to June Lake, the day before, and were happy to get away without the kids for the first time in a long while.

Around 10 that evening, we had just returned home from a long, leisurely evening spent perusing our favorite bookstore (did I mention kid free?) when we got a frantic call from Jeff’s niece.

“Can you come over? Please? We’ve got a huge snake in our house!”

A snake?? At their house? Wait, did she say IN their house?? Oh, merciful heavens!

She and her mother live a few miles away from us in a more rural part of our desert (rattlesnake country), and folks out there are known to get snakes in their yards from time to time.

Knowing we were celebrating our anniversary, she had first tried animal control and the local police…but in that area, there isn’t anybody that could help. Their dogs were going ballistic and her mother (my sister-in-law) was still recovering from lung surgery. They were desperate.

On a side note, we got a good chuckle when our niece mentioned that her mother (my sister-in-law) and her dog were locked in her bedroom during all of this, as though in grave danger of the snake trying to break down the door to get at her.

Now Jeff has had plenty of snake-handling experience over the years (and just to be clear, I mean the the "Crickey, ain't she a beaut" type of snake-handler, not the type you hear about in Appalachian Mountain churches). As a teenager, he and his buddy Eric caught and sold dozens of gopher and king snakes at a local flea market, and taking this as a challenge, rushed over to assist them.

Earlier, while their back door had been open for a cross breeze, the snake had furtively slithered in under their security screen, and they were alerted to it’s presence when their dogs cornered it somewhere behind or under the sofa and hadn’t stopped sounding the alarm since.

An hour or so later, alive and blessedly snake-bite free, Jeff returned from their house victorious …with the snake(!) Lord, have mercy!

And the kids, whom he’d picked up on his way home so they could see said snake.

Judah was beyond thrilled. “It’s my new pet snake, mama!” he said excitedly as they walked in the door.

“Um, no…it’s not” I replied firmly. Horrified. Completely freaked out.

We have had one too many close calls with Judah and all manner of venomous creatures to know that I wouldn’t get a lick of sleep for as long as that thing was sharing the same square footage we were.

Jeff was not sure what kind of snake it was, as he’d never seen one like it before, but the ‘huge’ snake ended up being only 14 inches long, and no thicker than a thumb at most, and the width of Judah’s pinky at each end. It didn’t have rattles or diamonds, so Jeff said he doubted it was in the rattlesnake family.

Still, it had fangs and was potentially deadly. Always a concern for this mama.

Knowing I would not have a moments rest until I knew for sure whether or not it was venomous, I immediately Googled snakes native to our area, and we were reasonably sure that what we were dealing with was a Western Long Nosed Slider. These are not common commonly found in our area, but not entirely unheard of.

The best news was that it was not venomous. Well, according to the internet sources, anyway, and we all know how sketchy some of those sources can be at times.

Anyway, as I’m prone to do, I was still second-guessing our amateurish identification of it, even though the cream, pink and black markings and descriptions and photos online were all spot-on, distinctive to that type of slider and actually quite a rare coloring pattern for a snake. I guess I was hoping for a lengthy clip of close-up video footage perhaps posted online by some University snake expert or something before I'd feel 100% at ease about my precious babies getting anywhere near it.

Late that night, after making sure the snake was secured inside an enclosed habitat, nestled deep inside a box out in our garage, with a pile of heavy stuff in front of the door leading out to the garage (so that we would hear Judah if he tried to move it to get out there to see it after we were asleep), we all wearily trudged off to bed.

“We’ve got to find another home for this thing,” I stated emphatically, just before falling into one of those fitful sleeps where you’re awakened by the slightest sounds all night long.

The following morning, Jeff and Judah rose early and headed off to the pet store in search of feeder mice.

Yes, we would be finding a home for it, but Jeff didn’t want it to die of starvation in the meantime. There was no visible bump from it's last meal on it's midsection anywhere.

They returned with this...

...which as you can see Judah played with the entire way home.

**shudders**

The man at the pet store said that from Jeff's description it sounded like a Western Long nose, alright, as they were a very distinctively colored snake, known for their cream, pink and black markings and the long narrow head. If it was, he said, it was not venomous.

There it was again, that oh-so-uncertain sounding little word...'if'.

We also learned that it was unlikely that the snake would eat the mouse, as they were very picky eaters and mainly feed on small lizards in the wild. They are apparently a very reclusive snake and prefer that their food did not have human scent all over it.

Too late for that, I thought looking over at Judah.

“Isn’t it so cute, mama?” he asked in that same sing-song voice he uses when crooning to his puppy.

“Yes, it is cute" I replied, heartlessly adding, "but I want that thing fed to the snake right away, so that neither one of them ends up loose in this house!”

But alas, it appeared Mr. Long Nose was leery of the squeaky little rodent, and shortly thereafter crawled into the nearby fake coral to hide.

Later, the poor little mouse had to be dispatched because it was suffering from hunger having not been with it’s mama for hours. Thankfully Judah took our word for it that it had died and did not ask how.

I am happy to report, however, that we did find a home for the snake.

Another niece with a young snake-enthusiast son, said that they would be happy to take it off our hands for us, and it was arranged that her mom would pick it up while she was in town for a visit.

In the meantime, reasonably confident that it was not venomous, Jeff and the boys decided to show the snake off to everyone who dropped by.

**feeling faint at the sight, and a little weak in the knees**

“Okay, now go wash the salmonella germs off your hands,” I warned as soon as everyone had touched the vile thing, and made sure the habitat was taped shut and it was once again deep in it's box out in the garage.

The snake did make it to his new home just a couple of days later where he happily feasted on wild lizards which his new owner so carefully caught for him in a net so that human scent would not affect his food intake.

His owner, our nephew L, has also informed me since then that he was bitten a couple of times, but nothing happened.

**feeling a tad woozy at the thought**

Unfortunately, while the family was camping a couple of weeks later, their cat inadvertently freed Mr. Snake from his habitat and he has not been seen since.

Because the snake was with them for such a short time, the only picture they have of him is the one they got with L's Flat Stanley.

They’re pretty sure it found it’s way outdoors, and is currently feasting on lizards in the wild.

Pretty sure? **feeling suddenly faint**

Not sure how niece K does it, but she's a much braver woman than I! Especially considering that this is not the first reptilian escapee in her house.

All part and parcel of rearing that boy of hers, I guess.

Which is probably why in about 10 years, nephew L will probably have his own show on Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel...

...with some name adventuresome title like "Reptile Wrangler."

I can’t believe how the time slipped away from me since my last post…and me still not finished blogging about our summer!

For posterity, over the next couple of posts I must go back and record a few memorable things that happened the past couple of months.

:: :: :: ::

First, there was the high school graduation of my baby sister.

Here is little Boo Boo, peeking over my shoulder with her big baby blues, adorable as can be.

This photo was taken while I was home during Christmas break my Junior year of college.

I’ll never forget answering the phone in my dorm room the previous Spring and my mom saying, “Um, honey, you might want to sit down for this…” when she called to tell me that she and my stepdad were expecting.

My mom was keeping up tradition, after all.

You see, her grandmother, her mom and some of her aunts had done almost the exact same thing, having later in life babies or two separate sets of children within the same family separated by a big gap that had them fooled into thinking they were done with diaper changes and middle of the night feedings, and then "surprise!”.

But what a great surprise!

And just so you know, I will not be keeping up the “baby after 40” part of that tradition. The nearly 10 years apart was enough excitement for me, thankyouverymuch (although adoption is an appealing possibility…)

I remember ‘arguing’ that I should get priority on holding little Boo Boo while I was home on break because I lived so far away and didn’t get to spend the same kind of time with her that everyone else did.

None of us could seem to get enough of holding her.

I can still remember rushing off to the media center in college every time I’d get a package from home, because I was so excited to see the latest videos starring little Boo Boo.

The following summer was the frenzied summer that Jeff and I (and my sister J and her husband E) were married.

A couple of years after that, with a baby of our own, Jeff and I found ourselves living in my mom’s basement apartment and when mom was working, I got to watch little Boo Boo.

Rather, she got to help me watch Jericho. She was such a good little helper, and Jericho would coo and giggle and smile so big for his auntie.

I have a lot of wonderful memories of ny little sister during that time.

She was a huge fan of Toy Story, loved having me read Bible Stories to her, and helping me put Jericho down for his nappy-time before she went down for her own. She also loved ‘helping’ me bake, especially if it was cookies.

One of her favorite things back then was the old animated version of Peter Pan, particularly the character Smee.

She went through an all-things-piratey phase, and we often took her to play at a place we referred to as Pirate Ship Park. We kept a scarf and a fake earring and a toy sword in the car for her to play wtih whenever we took her there.

Here she is with her two oldest nephews, my sister’s oldest, T, and on the right, Jericho.

Little Auntie Boo Boo adored her little nephews, and they adored her!

Jericho would look at her so earnestly while she chattered at him. Here he seems to be replying, “Are you kidding me?”

And then…we moved far, far away.

It was like our lives had clicked into fast forward because all of a sudden, here she was graduating (as class Valedictorian, no less…little miss SMARTAY!).

And here she is now, my beautiful 'baby' sister, otherwise known around here as Auntie Alison. And she is every bit as beautiful inside as she is outside, and has a great sense of humor).

Sooooooo very proud of you, Ali! Looking forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for your future!

:: :: :: ::

Secondly, Parvo.

That dreaded doggie disease that usually affects puppies.

Oh, how we loathe it.

Years ago, when Jericho was in Kindergarten, we had a horrible experience with it…

(**cue wavy flashback effect**)

Mosely had wormed his wriggly self into our hearts from the moment we first brought him home, and we were all immediately and hopelessly attached to him.

How Jericho (and Jeff and I) adored that little pup.

Jericho wasted no time at all incorporating him into our family portraits.

Here, Cousin K is also pictured along with his pup Sarah, Mosely’s sister.

Mose was a fantastic and beloved part of our family. So much so that we planned to eventually breed him to carry on his legacy.

But it was not to be. Our beloved Mosely succumbed to Parvo at just over one year old (7 years in dog years).

Now I have cried over a few deceased pets during my lifetime, but never so much as our Mosely.

What made it particularly hard was that Jericho had just started Kindergarten a few days earlier, and while other children were happily chattering and excited those first few days of school, he was in mourning for his beloved puppy. To explain the whole thing to him was one of the hardest things we've ever had to do.

It didn’t help that during the previous school year when I would drive Jericho’s cousins to school in the mornings, Mosely would hop in the cab of the truck with us, so excited to ride along. After that, well, the drives to school just weren’t the same, and that reminder was with us for a good long while.

** end wavy flashback effects**

Fast forward nine years, and little brother Judah was weeks away from beginning Kindergarten.

One morning we noticed that our little Ticker began acting really mopey and sad. She wouldn’t touch her food.

At first, I thought it was just the ‘dog days of summer’, and that the desert heat was getting to her. I wondered if maybe she was just thirsty, because for some odd reason, our dogs’ water dishes kept getting overturned each day, and so for the umpteenth time went out and refilled the dishes with cool water.

But after keeping a close eye on her all day, she seemed to be getting worse.

A day or two before I’d noticed that our entire bed of flower bulbs (100+ bulbs) had been decimated. Dug up completely, bulbs scattered all over the back yard like so many green onions.

Then, I discovered she’d been sick, and it was evident she’d eaten some of those bulbs.

I was concerned that some of the bulbs might have been toxic to her and was kicking myself for not writing down somewhere what all I’d planted so that I could look it up.

I remembered my sister’s family having had a very sick dog years before who had eaten something toxic and was staggering around the yard in agony, miserably sick. After talking with her about it, she mentioned that the first thing their vet did was to pump that dogs stomach full of charcoal, and within 24 hours, that dog was back to her usual self.

It happens that we keep a supply of activated charcoal in our medicine cabinet in case of the flu or food poisoning and have even used it to knock out a bad sore throat that wasn’t responding to the usual gargles and echinacea. (It works by taking toxins out the other end, if you know what I mean). Good stuff, that activated charcoal.

Well, it couldn’t hurt to try, I thought. I sprinkled the capsules into a clean bowl of water, and after sniffing it, lo and behold she guzzled down a good amount and managed to keep it down.

However, she was still not her normal wriggly, excitable self, and rotated between sprawling herself out on the cool of the concrete or lying in her doghouse looking pitiful, her usually wet nose dry.

She looked pitiful…I’d only once before ever seen a dog look so sick, and that was--

…Mosely.

Dread filled my heart.

Not Parvo! Not just before Judah goes off to Kindergarten! Oh, Lord, please not, I prayed. We immediately gathered around as a family and prayed over our little puppy, and then decided that a trip to the vet was in order.

Our backyard neighbors to the right had a couple of pit bulls which had recently given birth to a large litter of 9 or 10 puppies. Puppies that had been whining and whimpering for the previous couple of weeks while we were trying to sleep at night and at the first light of dawn each morning.

At that time, the puppies were only 3 or 4 weeks old (too young to be weaned and given away), and I remember thinking how odd it was that they suddenly began to disappear one by one until there were just two remaining.

Of course, I didn’t think of any of this until we found ourselves in the Vet’s office…where we'd just learned Ticker had just tested positive for Parvo.

One of the longtime Vet assistants who had administered that test said that science has confirmed that it’s highly contagious (she likened it to touching wet paint, and then anything you touch after that gets paint on it) and can be tracked around on the soles of shoes, and the germs can remain in the soil for up to a year or longer in infected yards. Because of this, even indoor dogs can get it.

We would need to be especially vigilant to sterilize our patio area with bleach solution and also have designated backyard shoes and be sure to keep the dog messes picked up in the yard to try and keep it from spreading to friends and family (and possibly neighbor dogs) that came over. And so far, so good on that score, thank the Lord.

She also commented that it can be spread by nose to nose contact through fences, but that they always see a huge surge of cases as soon as the weather in our area turns hot and the flies come out. Because of this, she had her own suspicions that flies were carriers, landing on infected messes in one yard then flying over the fence and landing on a bowl of dog food in another. It’s just that contagious, dastardly virus that it is.

The Vet made us no promises, but said that it boded well for Ticker that she had not begun the lethargic drooling stage nor did she have any bleeding out the other end. We’d caught it early, which meant a greater chance of fighting it off.

He also explained that what usually deals the final blow to a puppy is not the Parvo itself, but a secondary infection to the blood marrow that can be aggravated and hastened by the dehydration brought on by the Parvo virus.

Long story short, they sent us home with an IV drip bag that contained a strong antibiotic to head off that secondary infection.

We had to administer it twice a day (by IV) into the skin at the scruff of her neck. Thank God Jeff was there to do that part morning and night while I held Ticker still, because injecting her with the IV needle made me a little woozy. This procedure gave her a temporary camel-back, as the fluids would leach into her system through the muscle tissues. We were thankful they gave us that option, because it saved us a bundle (hundreds of dollars) on overnight E.R. care.

The following morning, Jeff was up at the break of dawn getting the IV bag ready and thought, “I wonder how Ticker is doing?”

Just then, he looked out in the yard and saw Ticker loping around with a stick in her mouth, whipping it around in her usual playful, wriggly way. That fast, she was on the mend.

By God’s grace, even though she did get Parvo, it didn’t get her…nor did it affect our other dog Raisin. After seeing all those other neighbor puppies disappear one by one, we truly believe it was a miracle and a direct answer to our prayers.

And there was much rejoicing in our household!

On a side note, we also figured out why the dogs water dishes kept getting overturned.

A week or so after she was completely well, I saw her dip her entire head into one of her deep water dishes then rear back and shake off like she’d just come out of the water from a swim, tipping the big bowl over in the process.

Our desert-dwelling Lab/Retriever mix was trying to communicate to us in her own way that she needed a small pool to play in (those instincts for water play run pretty strong in these breeds!)

Of course we got her one, and now, not only has she quit tipping over her water bowls, but this is what we see off and on during the heat of the day:

Ahhh, yeah…that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! Niiiice and cool. Now if only there were some fish to chase around being that I've scared off all the local pigeons…

And so, there was a wonderfully happy ending to this particular tale.

Judah continues to churn out his own artistic renderings of our dogs.

Ticker is the happy-go-lucky dog pictured at the top of this drawing, and the one below is our grumpy old dog Raisin…but, that’s a story I’ll save for another day.