.....AFRICA HOTTTTTTTT

I would love to have a summer place in Australia, but not much chance of that happening. A semi would have to land on me to get those kind of bucks.

Juneau normally blows his coat in May. It's a three week event of hairnormous proportions. He has been blowing another coat this past week. Hubby and I disagree about dates and times of the blowing. Bottom line is this is not usual for the dog. Does this mean it will be a really hot summer? At least the fireworks don't bother him.

Miss Jessie is on everyone's very last nerve. There is no comforting her. Years ago I was talking to one of our vets about Jessie's reaction to fireworks. This doctor was quite competent I felt, but odd. Just an odd duck and someone I could never establish a rapport with. I can find some common ground with 99% of people, almost immediately. Not this guy. He had no visible sense of humor. The more I tried to find something to make him smile, the more he stared at me with this disgusted/bored look. The more he stared, the more nervous I got and the more I kept trying. Kind of like when you're having a pap smear and you begin this stream of random chatter - as if the chatter will magically transport you to some happy place. Good thing this guy went into animal medicine. He never would have made it as a gyno.

So, the doctor was prescribing tranquilizers (they didn't work) and I commented that here was a dog who would rush full speed out the door into a totally dark backyard, to face who knows what. No fear or hesitation when running through that black hole. Yet let a firework go off two streets away and she was beyond scared. He looked at me like I was the most stupid person he had ever seen and said something about not being able to apply reason to a dog's paranoia. Either he's an uptight jerk, or I'm a total blond airhead idiot. Or maybe it's a little of both.

At the visit before that one, I had asked if he felt it was odd that every night after dinner we had a family howl to just reinforce our "pack." I was expecting him to chuckle and say he had heard of people doing that, or make a comment about that being a good idea. Nope. He gave me the same disgusted/bored look and asked, "Do the dogs howl too?" I said they did and he said, "Then I guess it's not odd."

We see a different vet now.