juliet | Entries tagged with finlay

Finlay died overnight. Probably kidney failure; we think (in retrospect) most likely his kidneys were already dodgy & the drug reaction just triggered acute failure.

He was a very lovely dog. We didn't have him for nearly long enough.

Just returned from the emergency vet -- Finlay's been throwing up all day & we finally concluded that a) he wasn't going to stop of his own accord, & b) he was sufficiently miserable & dehydrated that we had to do something. He's being kept in there for IV fluids, blood tests, & general monitoring; *hopefully* we can collect him tomorrow but it may be all weekend. Most probable cause is a bad reaction to his painkillers (his hips have been giving him trouble so we've already been in the regular vet's twice this week).

They had to carry him out of the vet office (he was doing his Passive Resistance thing) & I bravely managed not to actually blub until he was out of sight. (He must think I've abandoned him! I did leave a T-shirt with him, at least.) Also he's been looking at me all day in a "please to be fixing this" way (& had his head on my knee in the taxi) so I feel like a terribly rubbish dog-person because I can't just make it better. Wah.

Anyway. Hopefully tomorrow he can come back home & we can crack on with working out what the problem with his legs is. *sigh*. Emergency vet is all the way over in Streatham, so it was all a bit *epic*.

In better news: splendid NYE party last night at

marnameow &

sbp's place. Lovely people, lovely food, lovely booze, & despite the increased security at Stalag Lockwood, you can still get up to the roof to see the fireworks over at the Eye.

Finlay likes eating snow, apparently. It is about the most excited I have seen him be about anything outside since that squirrel he chased in St James' Park. (Well. I say 'excited'. What I really mean is 'focussed'. He's not what you'd call an excitable dog, in general.) Unfortunately he seems to have some belief that snow is a sensible alternative to actually eating his dinner, but hopefully getting Xmas leftovers will help with that.

Stomach bugs really, really suck. Particular highlights: throwing up so hard my sinuses hurt; the stage at which moving from upstairs to downstairs required a five-minute lie down on the landing in the middle. Feeling a bit better now but still wobbly.

Saw Nine Lessons & Carols For Godless People last week, which was fun. Some good, some less good, but the good was well worth attending for, & if they ran it again next year I'd go.

Will the Xmas knitting be done in time? Who knows! Current bets say: maybe, just about.

I am sure other things have happened, but I can't remember any of them. Trafalgar Square clearup, LARC solstice party, snow snow snow. My ongoing attempt to get rid of more stuff (have just started to go through the CDs. Anyone know of somewhere that will take piles of CDs in exchange for cash? Only worth it if they will just take the lot, so the MVE is no good.)

Taken by P's brother at the weekend. (P took photos too, but doubtless those will take rather longer to make it onto the interwebs.)

Went past LARC today to do diary-synchronising (A BETTER SYSTEM IS NEEDED) and potter round the garden briefly; then on up to the Castle for an hour of very energetic bouldering.

Climbing is *awesome* fun. I am very pleased with myself for doing two 4C problems[0], both of which were overhanging & thus Harder. Doubtless tomorrow I will ache, but hey, I can climb things that require me to hang backwards off them! That is pretty damn cool! Plus it does the thing that I wanted to get out of it, viz: when I am climbing I am not thinking about anything else at all. (See also surfing.)

[ BTW, anyone who fancies having a go at climbing, I am happy to sign people in. Doesn't matter if you have zero experience -- all you need to know for top-roping is how to tie a harness, & how to belay, both of which are straightforward to demonstrate. ]

ION: after all the faff with the boiling up bones &c, Finlay is *very impressed* with his lentil stew stuff, so it was at least worth it. It'll still be vegan next time.

IOON: am on target with NaNoWriMo (hurrah!); have worked out that I am trying to fit more things into the day than there is available time for things (so nothing new there, then); the Archive Of Our Own is in open beta! (I have a spare invite code if anyone wants it) & I have top running in a window over there <-- so I can keep an eye on it; & teaching is going well except that my individual lessons keep getting cancelled due to e.g. torrential rain & 30mph winds.

[0] It's indoor climbing, so what you have is sets of coloured handholds set onto the wall, and each colour is one problem. Ratings start at 4A, & I've been climbing 4A and 4B pretty reliably recently; 4C I tend to fall off. Bouldering is not far off the ground, so you don't need a harness or someone to belay you. Top-roping is where there's a rope & a pulley at the top & it goes up a lot higher because you're attached to the rope so it's OK if you fall off. I mostly do bouldering because I go up on my own in the daytime. I think possibly problems is the word in bouldering & routes is the word when top-roping? I dunno. I am a beginner!

OK, so, after asking about pans to cook up Finlayfood in, I thought "come on, get over yourself, the pressure cooker has had meat cooked in it before" (it used to belong to my parents).

So I defrosted the bones[0], gave one raw to Fin, and chucked the rest in the pan to stew for 3 hrs.

Turns out that whilst I can handle Finlay tackling a nice raw bone whilst lying on the (linoleum, washable) floor next to me, I cannot really handle 3 HOURS of SMELLY HORRIBLE bones stewing on the stove. Ew ew ew ew. I am starting to feel a little unwell. Plus then you have to dispose of them (hopefully in Marna's bokashi compost) whereas if you just give him them raw, then he disposes of them in his stomach. WHICH IS MUCH TIDIER, being as how it is *inside* of Finlay & thus pleasingly invisible.

(It was a smallish bone this time, but still. Crunch crunch crunch industriously for half an hr, then CRUNCH CRUNCH and a funny gulping sound, and no more bone. I was kind of impressed.)

So. This time, I have a big pan of rice, lentils, carrot, & marrow (well, we weren't going to eat the damn marrow) in bone stock. Next time, he can have the bones neat, and the rice & lentils will be veggie.

ew ew ew ew ew. there are still bones in the sink, cooling off. EW.

[0] free from the traceable-meat organic butcher at Borough Market.

Today Finlay took 2 x lifts, 3 x tube trains[0], 2 x regular trains[1], and a small down escalator, with minimal hassle. Bless him.

We did have some discussion on the train about where it is appropriate for a dog to lie. Finlay felt that right across the aisle was the best place. I preferred "in the footwell out of the damn way, dog". I won (eventually).

He wasn't wild about the down escalator (nearly refused to follow me on, then kind of half-lay-down across two steps & refused to budge until we got to the bottom, causing a small but understanding traffic-jam) but he was v brave and didn't seem flustered afterwards.

He and

angelmine's Oscar *mostly* got on OK. There was some controversy around the fact that Oscar doesn't really like

angelmine petting other dogs, and Finlay doesn't really like me petting other dogs. But no actual damage done (just some snapping and snarling), and we explained that *actually* it is up to neither Finlay nor Oscar who

angelmine & I talk to, and they were on reasonable terms by the end. Plus there was a lovely long walk.

Finlay is sleeping the sleep of the tired dog now.

[0] The lift at Waterloo wasn't working in the morning, so we went back to Southwark & walked up.
[1] He has done this before but only for shorter journeys; this was 1 hr 10 min.

We occasionally get free bones from the hippy organic butcher for Finlay, which he then only makes a very tiny dent in before we have to get rid of them. I was considering using them for stock to make some of his food with (rather than feeding him entirely on the commercial stuff, even the nice organic commercial stuff), but this would mean using one of OUR PANS to put MEAT in urgh urgh urgh[0]. So I wondered if anyone had a fairly heavy-bottomed pan that they don't actually use and/or want rid of? It is a long shot, I know.

[0] This is *marginally* irrational, b/c one of OUR PANS is the pressure cooker that used to belong to my parents, which has very definitely had meat cooked in it in the past. So I should really just get over myself.

Things I have been doing this week:

Harvesting weeds and experimenting with herbal teas from actual herbs (thyme with a little honey is good for sniffly blocked-up-ness, it seems).
Hanging out with Finlay, who continues to work hard on his "lying down and snoozing" skills. He's also getting much better at down-stay, & will now stay put for long enough for me to go upstairs & fetch things, as long as I do it quickly. (This is good as the stairs aren't great for his hips, really.) His ear infection is back, so ho! for the vets where he behaved very very well until he tried to bite the vet :/ whilst having Ear 2 examined, after which he behaved very very well again. I am a little concerned but hoping it was a one-off and will spend time prodding at his ears to teach him not to react. This evening we have found out that he likes chestnuts.
Visiting lovelybug and bathtubgin -- lovely to see both of them! Finlay came too, and we went for a nice walk around the common.
Starting New Job! Except I'm not properly working yet because I need to observe lessons before I can teach them. First observation is tomorrow afternoon.
Fixing sysadmin-y things for the Organisation for Transformative Works.
Starting in on the Russian-learning again from the free online version of the Princeton Russian Course, which (so far) is very good. I am moving very slowly through it. привет!
Dealing with the Continuing Sciatica Saga. Vascular surgeon confirms that it is sciatica rather than Exploding Leg Disease. Nice sports/remedial massage person charged me a really quite reasonable sum of money to cause me significant pain in a hopefully-therapeutic fashion (it does feel better today, after aching like hell post-massage. GP has promised to refer me to physio. Progress!
Going climbing! Which is probably not good for the leg but hey, I FAIL TO CARE, because if I let my various joint issues stop me from doing stuff then I would have been stapled to the sofa for the last several years. (Except sitting on the sofa hurts atm too, so, um.) Anyway. I am improving! Also I fall off at intervals. Both of these are good things. (Falling off because that implies I'm trying to climb beyond my abilities, which is how you improve, right?)
Baking biscuits. Mmm tasty biscuits.
Contemplating NaNoWriMo.
Buying books at the Anarchist Bookfair. Which was top fun.

Right, that will do.

Finlay-the-dog appears to be settling in reasonably well (he is currently snoozing over the other side of the room). ( dog behavioural details! )

ION, last week I went to see the Orbital band (seriously awesome! Here is doop being glowy and me being less glowy.), & Aphex at Matter (bit rubbish, although he picked up in the second half of it. Nowhere near on-form, though.).

Yesterday evening Pete & I went to the opera. Specifically, La Grande Macabre at the Coliseum. Fantastic cast, musicians, and staging; shame about the godawful crap that they were saddled with singing. Ligeti, musically, is Not My Thing. The staging was genuinely brilliant, though, and probably worth staying just for that. Also there was a splendid disco background in the penultimate scene which I found entertaining enough that I have no idea what the people who were supposed to be in the foreground were doing at the time (on reading the Times review (not of the ENO version, but the same staging etc), I think they were getting Death drunk). I was also somewhat disenchanted with the casual misogyny, although P didn't see it as being as bad as I did.

(Reading the Times review, I see that the ENO changed the androgynous lovers from Clitoria and Spermando to Amanda and Amando. How ridiculous.)

dogrando & I have a DOG! His name is Finlay (it was Omar when he was at Battersea but he doesn't know that yet so we felt it was OK to change it).

He's a Battersea rescue, probably aged between 7 and 10, & probably an Anatolian Shepherd crossed with something else (or several something elses), possibly including some variety of labrador. He's incredibly laid-back, likes people a lot, and seems to be settling in fine, apart from a disinclination to eat his dinner (not unusual in the circs). Also he threw up on the kitchen floor, but, hey, there we go.

Photos! On the platform at Battersea Park station. (He was very well-behaved on the train on the way home, too.)

He's a bit bigger than we'd anticipated but the laid-back-ness makes up for it.