I went out a couple of hours ago to take a little walk through the neighborhood, once the sleet had gone all the way over to snow and it was sticking pretty well. First thing I did was go around back to see if Lucy was outside or had barricaded herself in the basement against the advancing glaciers.

...but isn’t it a scary resemblance? I’d love to find out the breed makeup of the dog in the picture. (It’s from the SMARTHOME catalog, BTW.)

OK, so Lucy and I won’t be heading to the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge anytime soon.

With Miss Lucy’s pre-August-2004 life a mystery to us, we have freely indulged in all sorts of speculation. Since she’s likely a Border Collie mix, I had wondered if she might have done any agility stuff in the past. Well, I think that’s been answered.

The Fayette County Humane Society held a fundraiser on Saturday, June 2nd, at the Peachtree City Dog Park. One of the many attractions brought in for the event was the Doggie Fun Zone, a traveling agility course specially designed so that dogs with no experience can run the course.  A typical agility course contains a number of obstacles such as jumps and tunnels scattered about an area, and the handler must direct the dog through the obstacles in a specific pattern. Doggie Fun Zone had a definite course laid out with mesh fencing, directing the dog (and handler, sort of) through a maze that contained the jumps and so forth. There was also a lure line running through the course—a white cloth on a cord that would hopefully entice the dog to chase it through the obstacles. All in all, a pretty cool setup, and some of the dogs were barreling through the course for all they were worth.

Lucy chose that particular time to act like she knew how to heel.

Baby gates were set up between the sides of each obstacle and the mesh fencing, to ensure that the dog didn’t go around an obstacle. Handlers, however, were cautioned to go back and forth over the mesh as needed rather than over the baby gates. So I was doing quite a bit of awkward swinging over the mesh, while encouraging Lucy to stay on course. (Do as I say, not as I do.) The lure was of almost zero interest to her, and she was very content to wait around until I had finished my gymnastics to find out where I wanted her to go next. But to her credit, she didn’t balk at the tunnels as some dogs might—if she could see me calling her on the other side, she would happily trot through, and then continue to stick right with me until the next obstacle.

Our not-exactly-blistering run was capped off by Miss Congeniality’s noticing a group of dogs she wanted to meet just outside the Fun Zone, and she hopped right over the mesh fencing, missing the last tunnel. Honestly, instead of a cloth, I think the very best lure for her would have been one of the other dogs running through the course at top speed!

But, we’ll be ready for ‘em next time. Lucy doesn’t have any “fetch” instinct that I can detect, but we’ve been quite successful with a game called “Get The Treat!“, where I throw a dog treat across the yard and she runs after it, then comes back to me for another round. Not “fetch” exactly, but it’s a start. Maybe I’ll start tying the treat to a white cloth or something. We’ll get this figured out—she’s a smart girl, not to mention the best doggie in the ‘verse.

I am continually amazed by Lucy. Maybe it’s just because she’s my first dog, but I dunno…

Over the weekend I was cleaning up the bedroom. Lucy found a small box, picked it up in her mouth and walked out of the room with it. Since that was exactly the sort of thing I was trying to collect and throw away, I griped, “Aww, Lucy, bring that back here.“

She put the box down and came back to where I was.

Intrigued,  I went for broke. “No, go get that box and bring it back here.“

She DID.

Massive hugs and praise ensued.

I know border collies are notorious for this kind of thing, but it’s amazing to see it in action.

Tonight, in my ongoing redo-the-home-office project, I put together a bookshelf.

I did several like this some months ago, and Mickie was so intent on being right in the middle of everything that I literally had to assemble it around her, thus giving new meaning to the term “kit furniture”.

Mickie’s about 18 months old now. She may have just been trying to be a cool teenager, but as I was noisily constructing away tonight, she gave me a Look from the adjacent chair, displeased that I had disturbed her nap. If she had eyebrows she would have raised one.

But a few minutes later, she did walk all over the back of my masterpiece, and once it was upright, she jumped up briefly to check out one of the shelves. Since she didn’t leave an “Inspector 12” sticker anywhere, I’m going to convince myself that this was a return to kitten mode. Eeeeyup.

In the last few days Mickie has been acting strangely.

Well, more strangely than usual. She will go on a catfit-like spree, her tail lashing wildly (she often chases it because it’s acting like a wild animal) and the fur on her back twitching and writhing as though she’s being tickled by invisible fingernails.

One day I picked her up during one of these fits and started running my fingernails along her back in the area that was twitchy, and she settled right down and let me do this for as long as I wanted to. In the course of this, I dislodged mass quantities of shedding fur from under her guardcoat.

Twice more that same day as she was in the middle of a crazytail fit she jumped up onto my lap and looked at me, as though asking me to do some more of that soothing thing I did before. Since then, Chris has gone at the area with a soft brush designed to dislodge loose fur, and it’s done wonders for her. Apparently Mickie’s undercoat is very coarse and has trouble making its way out from under the outer guard-hair coat. Instead it stays trapped, the loose ends of the individual hairs tickling her skin.

She’s much calmer now, but she can still be incited into another fit if, for example, I sneak up on her and tickle here right there with, say, the corner of a catalog.

Hey you dunderhead cat,

These past 9 months or so, we have been working so hard at trying to get your blood sugar regulated and your neuropathy healed up. And now you’re doing great.

So, what did I find you doing last night?

Eating a shoelace.

What is that, some kind of Siamese thing? I knew a guy once whose beloved sealpoint ate an entire ball of twine, and the cat was lucky to survive the experience. Surgery, the whole bit. Not fun.

I also knew a Siamese who would cheerfully devour any soft plastic that came his way, such as drycleaner bags.

Kevin told me he found you eating string once before. He said he just stepped on the end of the string and picked you up… and you didn’t like that very much. But apparently the lesson wore off.

I’m very grateful I caught you when there was still shoestring yet to be eaten, so we didn’t have to make an emergency vet visit. You don’t even like the routine ones.

No more bonehead moves, OK, Tazzber?

A long overdue Taz update.

Sometime last fall, when we took him in for glucose testing, his reading was too low for comfort (although he appeared to feel fine). At that point the vet cut his insulin in half, down to two units twice a day. This turned out to be a bad move, since Taz’s sugar went back up with a vengeance, and his diabetic neuropathy, which had been fairly mild, got a lot worse. He was walking flat on his heels in back, slipping on smooth surfaces, and even was showing signs of a little hock-walking on his front legs too. So we took his insulin back up, but had quite a time getting his sugar down again. It was pretty frustrating, especially since the vet had no suggestions whatsoever for improving the neuropathy—“It might get better, or it might not”, he said.

So I decided to do some research. It has been my experience with medical personnel of all kinds that they do not necessarily know about everything that might be helpful in a particular situation. Googling on “feline diabetic neuropathy” brought up Jasper’s story.  Jasper was a diabetic cat who had neuropathy so severe that he couldn’t walk, and he was greatly helped by supplemental methylcobalamin (a form of Vitamin B-12). The site references a study that was done on humans with diabetic neuropathy, but there were also a number of anecdotal reports about it being good for diabetic cats too. Since this site wasn’t selling anything, and the risk of toxicity seemed to be low, I decided to find some of this inexpensive supplement and give it a try.

B-12 is normally given by injection for better absorption, I think, but I got methylcobalamin in tablets, cherry-flavored tablets to be exact. I grind them up and mix them in with his food, and fortunately Taz doesn’t seem to mind the taste. Of course, this is the kitty boy who eats brandy-soaked fruitcake. I mean, “used to”. (Probably not on the “good list” for diabetics.)

I started giving him methylcobalamin right around New Year’s. At first there wasn’t much change except perhaps more energy, but in the past week especially I have been blown away by the improvement. Taz is pussyfooting around, back up on his toes in fine cat style! It is so wonderful to see. He keeps his footing on the linoleum just fine, and he has even stood up tall on his hind legs to paw at me while I was preparing his dinner.

So today, we went in for his first glucose check since the holidays, and it’s 98! Maybe we can actually get this boy regulated after all!

So I walked into the bedroom, and as has been their habit now that it’s cold in the morning all three of the cats were in there on the bed. And although Suzie Q prefers to curl up next to Chris’ pillow Taz and Mickie were fairly close together—also in accordance with their habit though the weather has nothing to do with it.

I put my hand down next to both Taz and Mickie, and Taz sniffed it for a second or two and then started licking. Hearing this, Mickie—who had initially ignored my hand—looked at Taz, watched him for a moment, and then started licking my hand as well.

In the past I’ve found these two in a yin-and-yang pose, each with face toward the other’s belly fur. Last night Chris watched them move into a spooning position.

Occasionally if Mickie catches Suzie curled up in that spot by the pillow, she’s able to get in some licking on Suzie’s head—but if she tries to move the washing down toward Suzie’s chest the older cat will raise a paw in warning and Mickie backs off. And sometimes goes back to washing Suzie’s head.

Lucy can be scary sometimes.

Just now sitting here at my computer I heard her do something uncharacteristic—bark like an ordinary stupid dog for no good reason. Normally if she’s just excited about seeing somebody in the next yard she will stand on the deck and wag her tail. If she gets overexcited she may give out with a bark or two and then shut up. But this was a veritable State of the Union speech by her standards.

So I went to the nearest window from which I could see her, and I opened the window so I could speak to her. In a matter-of-fact tone that an ordinary stupid dog would have interpreted as merely attention and therefore a reward, I informed Miss Lucy what I would do if she got into the habit of barking like that—the idea involves going to PetsMart and buying something to put on her.

An ordinary stupid dog would have stood there wagging and hung on every word.

Lucy put her head down and looked penitent. She either not only understands English but can parse compound sentences, or she’s psychic and picked up the mental image of what I was predicting as her fate.