Pithy Proverbs for Modern Living

A friend sent the following modern-day proverbs to me via email, and I thought they were worth sharing. This seems like the perfect place for the above sign that I photographed outside the Silent Brigade Distillery in downtown Paducah, KY, during my trip recent road trip to Chicago. (More on that later.) Perhaps you have a few more words of wisdom you can add. If so, please feel free to share them with me in the comments section.

1.  Accept the fact that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue!

2.  Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

3.  Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

4.  Drive carefully; It's not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.

5. If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

6. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

7.  It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

8. Never buy a car you can't push.

9. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

10. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

11. Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

12. The second mouse gets the cheese.

13. When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

14. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

15. Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

16. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

17.  A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY...

...18. Save the Earth..... It's the only planet with chocolate!

12 Signs That You're Getting Old

1. Your new pastor is the same age as your oldest child.

2. Your physician is younger than your oldest child.

3. You discover that you went to high school with your veterinarian’s parents.

4. It takes you all night to do what you used to do all night.

5. "Having a hard time getting it up” describes the difficulty of raising your body off the floor from a criss-cross double-cross position (or any other position, for that matter).

6. Your childhood heroes that aren’t already six feet under have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

7. You can’t remember whether you had a bath or not yesterday.

8. You take so many pills, you can’t remember what maladies they’re for.

9. You call a friend, sibling or cousin and talk for an hour about each other’s ailments and doctors’ visits.

10. You still refer to song compilations as “records” or “LPs.”

11. You’re sure there’s a conspiracy among manufacturers to make it  impossible to open CD  wrappers, the foil covering a wine cork and any package that says, “Tear here.”

12.  I know I said 12 signs, but can’t for the life of me remember what No. 12 was!

Grief: The Price of Caring

I had to put Jazzy down yesterday. She rests in peace next to the other two horses I’ve buried over the past six or eight years. 

Euthanizing her was a difficult decision. Other than her front feet, she seemed so healthy. I could see the strain beginning to show in her eyes, but she hobbled along valiantly until the end.

Jazzy's last meal

She appeared to be doing better the last week of August, so much so that I was letting her graze a few minutes each morning while I cleaned the stalls and enclosure. But she took a turn for the worse while I was out of town the first week of September. She developed an abscess at the hairline of her right foot. It may have been a result of putting so much pressure on that hoof while favoring her left one. My vet  gave her a shot of antibiotics, and instructed me to soak the abscessed hoof in a mixture of Epsom salt and iodine twice a day, and to continue the twice-daily doses of bute. He showed me the outline of the coffin bone, which was pressing on the bottom of the right hoof. He said if there was no improvement in the next few days, we would have some hard decisions to make. 

Four days later, she seemed a wee bit better, so I gave her the second shot of antibiotics. I guess I was just seeing what I wanted to see, because the abscess refused to heal. On Monday (September 26), my farrier showed me the thin bit of tissue remaining between the coffin bones and the bottom of each front hoof. I knew the end was near. I wept bitter tears that tasted of sadness, physical and emotional pain and self-blame. But I knew what had to be done.

I had three appointments on Wednesday, and would be tied up Thursday and Friday, too. So I lined up Dr. Coe and a track hoe for Monday morning, October 3. When one of my Wednesday afternoon appointments was cancelled, I decided that was the day. I knew I’d be a basket case if I waited until Monday. She would have been a mess, too, as it turned out.

With the sound of the track hoe digging in my woods, I fed Jazzy some carrots and hay and gave her two grams of bute to lessen the pain of walking on the hard ground between my barn and what has become my equine cemetery. I let her graze a few minutes on the brown stubble of grass in my pasture. It felt like a Death Row inmate’s last meal.

“I don’t have to ask how you’re doing,” Dr. Jason Coe remarked when he arrived. He took one look at Jazzy’s abscess, which was weeping almost as much as I was, and shook his head. When he picked up her right hoof, he saw blood. “The coffin bone has pushed through,” he said. Ditto on the other foot. It was the sign I had prayed for, the one that told me I was doing the right thing.

We led her to the grave, and Coe gave her the lethal injection. In less than two minutes, she went down. It was that quick. I stroked her, clipped some of her mane and tail, and went back to the house. I had wanted to be with her until the end, but couldn’t watch the burial.

Angie Osborne, one of my horsey friends, came over to my house that night with a bottle of wine. We drank a glass, ate leftovers, and talked about death and grief over a new cocktail I invented. As I told her, death came so swiftly it was eerie, a harsh reminder of how fragile life is. One minute you’re grazing happily, the next minute you’re 10-feet under (the depth for horses). 

This is my second animal loss in two months. I’m so tired of grieving, but it’s the price we pay for caring so much.

Sympathy Pains?

The good news is, Jazzy's feet are  improving.

The bad news is, my right foot is killing me.

I'm convinced there is a connection.

About two weeks ago, as I was praying myself to sleep, I asked God to take some of the pain from Jazzy's feet and put it in mine. It was a sincere prayer. I was deeply concerned about her condition. (See recent blog for details.) I was anxious. "Please God, " I begged. "Let me have some of her pain. I can take it. I can pop an Advll or Tylenol. I can prop my feet up. She doesn't understand what's happening to her or why she's in such pain."

The next evening, when I took off my boots after feeding and watering both horses, the bottoms of my feet hurt. It wasn't much, just the feeling that I'd walked on rocks with thin-soled boots. And that's exactly what I had done. Next morning, that pain was gone. 

Two days after my heart-felt prayer, I rolled out of bed and put my feet on the floor. Ouch! A pain shot through the top of my right foot. With every step I took, it hurt.

That morning, when I went out to feed, water and clean the stalls, Jazzy seemed slightly better. Remember, the vet said progress would come in small increments. This was a small one, but a positive step in the right direction. I called him that evening with the news..

My foot keeps getting worse, and Jazzy continues to improve. She's able to graze for half an hour or more in the mornings. I went to the doctor to get mine x-rayed. Normally, I'd just ride this out, but I have a trip to Wichita coming up and didn't want to be hobbling around unnecessarily. The x-rays showed no stress fracture, so the doctor took some blood and is testing me for gout. Really?

I'm reading a book about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Most of them suffered from gout, and some died from it. Gout is caused by a build-up of uric acid in your system, and it goes to your joints, like arthritis. It often settles in your feet. It's associated with eating too much rich food: red meat, organ meats, beer and and high-fat dairy products, according to one web site. I don't eat much red meat, no organ meats, don't drink beer, but I do eat lots of cheese. Gout is treated with medication to eliminate the excess urine.

I probably won't hear back about the lab results until I'm in Wichita. I'm not sure how I would get a prescription filled there, unless my doctor can call one in to a chain pharmacy across state lines. Someone told me cherry juice helps, so I could always buy a bottle of that. But that web site I consulted said certain fruits and vegetables can contribute to gout, including cherries!

Many readers will call my sore foot sympathy pains. But I know better. 

Be careful what you pray for.

Three Strikes Should Be Enough!

If misfortunes come in threes, I’m done for this year.

First, my Walking Horse got caught on my fence, and suffered some scratches that required oral antibiotics, pain shots and daily water therapy for a week. Then my dog died. The third misfortune is the foundering of my paint pony, Jazzy.

Foundering is a very serious problem for horses. It results from a chemical and/or metabolic imbalance in the horse’s body that restricts blood flow to the feet. This can cause the lamina (the white line that attaches the outer hoof wall to the inner hoof capsule) to detach itself from the hoof wall. In severe cases, the coffin bone rotates and starts pushing through the foot.

My vet, Dr. Jason Coe of the Animal Clinic in Oneonta, told me last summer I needed to get some weight off her. How do you put a horse on a diet? I wasn’t feeding much grain, but my horses stay outside day and night, with access to their stalls in case of inclement weather. On his annual farm call in July, he was more specific. He told me to stall her at night, because that’s when the grass has the highest sugar content.

I tried that for a couple of days, then noticed she was walking stiff-legged. Dr. Coe said she was about to founder due to her weight, and instructed me to keep her stalled 24/7 for a week, give her a gram of bute (Phenylbutazone, for pain and inflammation) twice a day, and feed her a small amount of hay. My two horse stalls have no doors, and open into a 22x20-foot covered area that’s enclosed on two sides and has a gate at one end. So it wasn’t as if she were cooped up in a stall.

After a week, I opened the gate to her enclosure and she bolted out. Next morning,  she was in her rubber-matted stall waiting for me. That’s not unusual at feeding time. She was there that night when I went to put her up, though, and I noticed she seemed stiff again. This really worried me. “I can’t lose another animal,” I wailed to my other barn and pasture critters, who looked at me blankly. Coe said to put her up for two more weeks and continue the bute.

She lost about 75 pounds, but she got so bored, she started cribbing (chewing on any wood within reach). Within a couple of days, she had almost chewed her way out of her compound. The farrier took off her shoes and trimmed her hooves. With Coe’s permission, I turned her out in my arena that day to relieve her boredom. It has only a small amount of grass. When I walked her back to her enclosure four hours later, she could barely walk.

That’s normal after a hoof trimming, Coe said. He assured me it would get better. That night, I got a bad scare. I texted Coe at 7:09: “She’s down. Can you come or send someone NOW????”  My phone rang before I could pocket it. “I’ll come if you want me to,” he said, “but there isn’t much I can do.” He told me to double the bute dose that night and the next day, make some Styrofoam “shoes” to cushion her feet, and keep him posted. He also recommended putting coarse masonry sand five inches deep in the covered area outside her stall. 

Dr. Coe called the next morning to check on her. I called him about a week later to come out and x-ray her front feet.  Her coffin bones have rotated about 16 degrees. That’s bad. She has a 50-50 chance of pulling through this. If she doesn’t, she’ll have to be euthanized.

I added the sand, and she seems more comfortable. She stands up a little more. Dr. Coe said that’s good news. Any improvements will come in small increments. It’s going to be a long haul, and even if she recovers, she’ll never be a trail horse again. 

I can live with that. But it’s killing me to see her in pain.

Missing Moses

Moses two days after I got him, 7-8 weeks old.

The first time I brought Moses home was in a small, soft-sided doggie carrier that fit under an airplane seat. In a few days, I’ll be bringing him home for the last time, in a small hardwood box with his nameplate on the side.

He was 22 months old in this photo.

I fell in love with the American Mastiff when I researched large dog breeds on the internet. It was November, 2004, and my 15-year-old Yorkie had just died. Fredericka Wagner of Flying W Farms in Ohio developed the breed by crossing English Mastiffs with Anatolian Shepherds. I loved his black facial mask and the fact that, unlike other Mastiffs, he didn’t  drool. Wagner had a waiting list longer than my leg, so she directed me to a woman in Houston, Texas, who had purchased a male and female from her.

I don’t know how I came up with the name Moses, but it proved appropriate. Crowds parted when he entered a room. Yet the most he ever weighed was 115 pounds, nowhere near the 180- 220 pounds the breed can reach. Perhaps his weight contributed to his longevity.

My research showed that a Mastiff’s life span is 10-12 years, but my vet said it was closer to 10. I praise God for that extra year and a half. He was showing signs of aging, though. His black mask had turned gray, he got winded after short runs, and had some arthritis in his hips. I had to help him up onto my bed, and he’d growl when I lifted his back legs. He started sleeping under my bed. He chased rabbits in his dreams, or perhaps he was simply scratching, but his thumping would wake me. I really missing that thumping.

He was more than just a dog. He was my buddy and my protector. I felt safe with him around. For the first time since I moved here, I feel alone and vulnerable. 

Morning coffee and afternoon wine on the front porch aren’t the same without him lying nearby, his head propped on the bottom rail as if it were a pillow. I used to love coming home to the peace and quiet of my log cabin in the woods. My house seems so empty without him, despite having two other dogs. The silence is deafening.

I miss his exuberant greetings. He reacted the same whether I had been gone a week,  overnight or for a quick trip to the grocery store. He would bare his teeth in a smile that, if you didn’t know him, you would take as a threat. But his tail would be beating the air like grandmother used to beat her quilts on the clothesline. 

January, 2016: You can see how gray his muzzle was.

I miss his smell. Each of my dogs has a different smell, and I loved his best. I used to lie down beside him on the floor and stroke his face and soak in his unique odor. His sleeping blanket retained a faint hint of him for a couple of weeks. At the vet’s, I kept sniffing his paws, trying to get that smell to embed in my sensory memory. The pads of his paws were still soft, even though his body was rigid.

I haven’t had an animal’s death to affect me like this since I was a child. For the first two weeks, waves of intense grief kept rolling over me, and I would sob until my nose stopped up. I fell into a deep depression, and though I’m gradually pulling out, I still see the world in shades of gray.

I look at his feeder and cry. I hear the doggy door flapping and I look for him. I catch a glimpse of Major, my yellow Lab mix, out of the corner of my eye, and for a nano-second I think it’s Moses.

I no longer have to lock him in my office when my grands are here. He had been aggressive with Gabe, and I couldn’t take any chances. I can get new sofa cushions now. He had torn up my old ones, and my office carpet (down to the subfloor), with his “nest building.” I can leave chicken thawing in the sink, bananas and butter on the counter. I remember coming home one night to find an empty crock pot on the floor, the pork chops gone.

I have many precious memories of him. I don’t want to forget them, but I do wish I could remember without hurting.

“His spirit is probably out there running through the woods,” my friend Annette texted me. “He will be near you always.”

Yes, he will. But I just can’t touch him any more.

This is the one I chose for his urn.
December 26, 2010

Goodbye, Moses

Moses loved to ride to barn with me in my UTV.

It’s the nightmare of every owner of an aged pet. You go away for a trip fearing you’ll find him dead when you return. This time, my nightmare came true.

About 4 p.m. Friday, July 15, I got a call from Jesse, who feeds my barn animals, waters my plants and checks on my dogs when I’m away. Moses, my 11.5-year-old American Mastiff, didn’t come out his doggy door to bark at him. I was at Gulf Shores, taking my chair and umbrella back to the condo after my last day on the beach. My daughters and grands had already left, but I had paid for seven nights and wanted my money’s worth.

Jesse went through the house calling for Moses. He says he checked upstairs and down. He jumped in my UTV and rode my trails, then walked one or two that were impassable by vehicle. After taking his brother home and buying more gas for the UTV, he returned for another trip through the woods. He stayed until sunset, when he couldn’t see to search any longer.

I feared the worst, that Moses had gone off into my woods and died. I texted my daughters and a close friend, Diane, here in Ashville, to pray. Then I packed up and left. I knew I wouldn’t get home until after midnight, but I couldn’t have slept at the condo anyway for worrying. Somehow, I felt that if I were home, he might show up. I was determined to search my property myself, regardless of the hour I got back, if he didn’t.

All the way home I alternately prayed, cried, felt peace, then repeated the cycle. Amanda and Diane tried to reassure me that he probably ran off into the woods chasing a deer or squirrel. “He’ll come back,” they said. It would have been totally uncharacteristic of Moses to stay gone for hours. So I knew he was either dead or dying. I just prayed I would find him before the coyotes did.

Maggie, my mixed-breed rescue, and Major, the lab I share with my next-door-neighbor, greeted me excitedly when I pulled up to my house about 12:45 a.m. Saturday. I called Moses’ name, holding onto a glimmer of hope that he would bound up to my car after all. He didn’t. Once inside, I noticed an unusual odor, not of decay, just something funky. Major pointed his nose toward the loft and sniffed. I knew where Moses was. Sure enough, I found him up there, behind my childhood doll bed and the open wooden crates my daddy built to store my LP albums. How Jesse missed him I’ll never know, because he was only partially hidden. 

After thanking God for closure, I came unglued. I’ve been a basket case ever since. I called Jesse and Diane to help me get him downstairs. We brought him into my office on a sheet, and I covered him with a quilt and locked the doors. Jesse left, but Diane stayed until after 3 a.m.

Before she left, and again after I woke up from a brief two hours of sleep, I kept going into my office and stroking his head and legs. I knew I had to get him out of the house so I wouldn’t keep doing that, but so much of me wanted to keep him here a little longer. I recalled that Roy Rogers had Trigger stuffed, but I couldn’t bear seeing Moses every day without hearing him breathe. It had been a week since I had seen him alive. I kept wishing I had been here, to cuddle him and whisper soothing words to him as he lay dying. 

Jesse and Diane came back at 9 Saturday morning. He helped me load Moses into my car, she accompanied me on Moses’s last ride to the vet’s office. The crematorium will pick him up Monday. I’ll get his ashes back in a week or two, in a box mounted with his name plate and at least one photo frame. The package includes a paw print in plaster and some hair clippings.

I sobbed all over the vet’s assistants. I felt like a blubbering idiot. I know this sounds morbid, but I had them take my picture with him, as I cradled his head one last time.  

The vet will check him over to make sure there are no puncture wounds, because of the snakes in my woods. I didn’t see any wounds, though. He looked as if he had gone to sleep and his heart just stopped beating.

I’m so grief-stricken, I fear mine will do the same.