Tag: Japanese chins

Spiders, knees (human, not spider), dogs, book, and new ideas

This week so far:

Found brown recluse spiders in kitchen and one in the hallway bathroom. Exterminator has laid extra traps, but I am unfortunately allergic to most pesticides. It’s not an infestation of the scary buggers like we had about seven years ago when we found them by me being bitten by one. (That was painful and just not something I ever want to repeat.) Then Jon and I had to go away for a week so they could fumigate the house and not poison me. We did research for Blood Noir in Asheville, North Carolina, and even sick from the spider bite we both still loved the town. Need to revisit someday.

Jon’s knee that he had surgery on about five years ago is acting up. I’ve taken him to two doctor’s this week. Just learned early today that next week he’ll be talking to a surgeon. 🙁

Our Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, both have kennel cough, even though they were both vaccinated against it. Apparently, some dogs will get a mild case of it even with vaccinations, or sometimes because of it, but still better than the life threatening full blown illness. Our pug, Sasquatch, who is 11 years old, is fine. Pugs are the tanks of the toy dog world on most things. 🙂 Chins are quite a bit more fragile in a lot of ways. They tend to get sick more often, are more delicate for injuries, and how do you keep their food out of all that lovely, long hair? I swear Keiko rolls in her soft food like some dogs roll in noisome things in the yard. She ends up wearing her food, and since she has medicine in it, the texture on her curls is interesting. We love our chins, but pugs totally spoiled us with their comparable ruggedness and wash and wear ease of grooming. Still planning to have more chins someday, but first we need another pug. We all miss the dual snoring.

In the midst of all the doctor and vet visits, I have actually been trying to write more on the next Anita Blake novel. I announced the title at DragonCon this year, but never put it up on the blog, so here it goes. The next Anita novel is entitled,”Affliction.” Micah is called back home by his estranged family, because his father, a county sheriff, has been attacked and is terribly injured. Anita and Nathaniel are going with him for moral support and to meet his family under very trying circumstances. It’s an interesting book to be writing. I can’t wait for you guys to finally read it!

I had one day this week that I wrote six pages on, Affliction, and four pages on something brand new that demanded to be written. It came out of nowhere and made me go, really? It’s brand new, but I guess it contains at least two different ideas that I’ve made notes on before. I just never thought about combining them, and there were several new ideas added to the old ones, and it just worked. But first to finish the book. I don’t even know if the four surprise pages are part of a book, or a short story? It’s cooking, but whether it’s stew, soup, or something else, I won’t know for awhile. It’s kind of nice creatively to not know for a change.

Best Laid plans . . .

The morning started off with me checking off items on my To Do list, and about to head to office for finishing up the latest chapter and then . . . we’re at the vets. Mordor, our youngest Japanese chin, danced on his hind legs for his treat in the office, then yelped loudly and was suddenly limping badly. He finished his treat with his rear leg out at a bad angle. Keiko and Sasquatch, chin and pug respectively, finished their treats with no sympathy at all for their wounded comrade. We hoped it wasn’t bad, but when Mordor walked he was putting no weight on the leg. *sigh* So, Jon and I are at the vet with our pup. I’m beginning to remember how a multi-dog household can complicate things. The dogs are totally worth it, but the To Do list is totally out the window, until we learn something about our fuzzy boy. He’s sitting on Jon’s lap now, smiling his chin smile, and he’s totally stopped shaking because no one had done anything bad to him. He’s a very social dog, and is willing to believe anything will be fun eventually. When he came to us he was so under weight you could count his ribs, but now he’s filled out, and his coat is coming in longer and fuller, and he’s just a pretty dog.

Did we remember to eat breakfast . . . um, no.

Mordor’s kneecap slipped out of socket this morning, and went back on it’s own. Our pug, Phouka, had this in both knees as a young dog and eventually had to have surgery, after that she was fine. Vet says, Mordor needs to lose about two pounds. He’s not overweight by breed standard, but apparently the more slender, dancer like build of the Japanese chin will not take weight gain. I do remember reading in the breed information that they can have issues with hips and knees if they gain weight, but we’re used to pugs. They can put on a great deal more weight and be perfectly healthy. Phouka’s knees problems weren’t about weight, but the socket where the joint fitted into being too shallow. Vet wants us to give Mordor a week to heal up any issues with the knee and then next week we start with more cardio. More cardio for everyone!

If loosing a couple of pounds and putting some muscle around the joint clears it up, then great. If not, we’ll eventually have to have surgery for him, but here’s hoping that exercise will do the trick. It’s likely that it will, and now we know that what we’ve learned about pug physique doesn’t really translate to chin physique. Lesson learned, we have little track stars, not just miniature heavy weight boxers. Different “workout” routines for different body builds, true for people, and true for dogs.