Oh the joy of having a clean floor. It may not sound like a big deal, but when you have two messy parrots and six dogs in your house, one of those being a pissy little puppy, it is really a special thing to have a clean floor even for a few hours. Clean as in freshly steamed and with no one pooping, peeing, puking, dripping water, or throwing food on it. *Bliss*

I am dog tired. I have been up too late every night this week, and I have GOT to go to bed early tonight. Things have just been very busy for us lately. I don't mind- I enjoy everything I have been doing, I just need to get a little bit more sleep. So this is going to be short.

Ramona got spayed this morning. Andy dropped her off this morning and I picked her up after work. She is a little young to be spayed according to the old standards, but I read up on it and found that spaying them at 12 weeks is perfectly acceptable and she should suffer no ill effects. Actually, they are supposed to rebound a lot quicker from the surgery when they are young.

So far she is doing just fine. She is supposed to be taking it easy for the next week and not jumping or running, but have you ever tried to keep a puppy still? It is pretty much impossible. They just told me to do the best I can. I bought her a bunch of chew toys today that I can stuff treats in to keep her interest so that she will play quietly. We'll see how that goes.

I checked out a whole stack of books from the library yesterday about dog and parrot training and about cockatoos in general. Andy and I are working our way through the books in hopes of learning as much as we can about working with our pets. I read a bunch of parrot behavior books back before we got Charley, but it never hurts to read more, and now that we have Holly I need more specialized information on cockatoos. So I am off to bury my nose in a book, snuggle up with some dogs, and go to bed early- Good night!

Ramona and I just got back from her first puppy class. Wow. She was very frightened of the other dogs, especially the big dogs and she went into vicious attack mode. We had to take all of the puppies off their leashes and let them "mingle." She was pretty awful, but they said it is pretty common for a first session to go that way. She did do a little bit better as the hour went on. It is very clear that she really does need the class- I would hate for her to grow up without this kind of exposure. After the mingling session, the puppies that had been to more than one class went off to one side of the ring to work on some more advanced things, and the three of us that were new to the class worked together on the basics. We taught them sit, down, stand, and tried to get them to roll over. I was surprised at how quickly they caught on.

By the end of the class, Ramona had sit and stand down pat. She was doing them reliably every time and we were working on down. She was just starting to grasp that. I only got her to roll over once, but it is a start. She seemed to calm down quite a bit when we were working on the commands. I hope that in a couple of weeks time she will be totally comfortable with the other dogs.

It was really surprising to me the way she attacked the other dogs. She was making noises I have never heard from her before. She never acted that way toward my dogs, so I never expected it. I wonder what the difference is. Maybe she is prejudiced against non-poodles?

Ramona and I are just getting ready to leave for her first session of puppy kindergarten. I think it is a good opportunity to socialize her with other people and dogs and maybe avoid issues she might have later. She does not like big dogs at all and barks and growls whenever she sees one, so I would like her to work on that. They are really very smart and there is a lot they can learn even as puppies. I'll let you know how it goes.

Did you know that the fifth amendment to the United States Constitution- as in "I plead the fifth"- also deals with property rights? I didn't remember that part of it but have recently become more familiar with it as it pertains to my life. The text of it reads like this:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It is the last phrase that has a lot of significance to us now. As you probably know, we have been trying to build a new house on over seven and a half acres that we own for over a year now. We have jumped through all of the right hoops to get wetland permits allowing us to build our home from both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers, which is no small feat. But yet we are hung up worse than ever in the process now because of our road access issues. So in that line of the fifth amendment where it says "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation," well that actually applies here. Because if the government regulates your land to the point where it is no longer usuable, then that constitutes a "taking" of the land and they are supposed to pay you fair market value for it. Unfortunately most people run out of money to pay legal fees before they can get to the point where they could win in court with something like this, but technically they should win. Our next move is that we are going before the Board of County Commissioners next month to ask for a waiver. Here is the letter we are sending out to the commissioners as the agenda item to be discussed. Road names, company names and property sizes have been altered.

"In February of 2006, we purchased a 7+ acre piece of property on north Merritt Island. Since then we have been working within the county and state regulations with the intent to build our dream house on that property. We have spent over a year and $17,322.28 toward that goal. We are requesting a waiver to the Brevard County Code of Ordinances Section 62-102 (b), which states that in order to obtain a building permit, the property must abut a county maintained road.

Our first priority was to determine how best to use the property due to the existence of wetlands over the majority of it. We have been working with an environmental permitting company for the past year to get a wetland permit to allow us to build on the property. This was finally accomplished at the end of March of 2007. In order to mitigate the .24 acres of wetland impacts we had to dedicate 6+ acres of our original 7+ acres as a permanent conservation easement. In addition, we are required to remove all of the invasive Brazilian Peppers that are growing on our property as a result of the wetland being previously disturbed. Removal of the invasive vegetation will keep it from invading the surrounding healthy wetlands. Developing our property will actually be beneficial to the environment.

The real problems began when we had to determine legal access to the property. Our property abuts a fifty-foot wide public access right-of-way, known as Tortoise Hollow Lane. Tortoise Hollow Lane is an unimproved dirt road that has been used to access our property and four others from around 1969 to the present day. It is cleared and has a drivable surface. Three of the other properties abutting Tortoise Hollow Lane have already been built upon, and two of them use it as their sole physical access. Since Tortoise Hollow Lane is not a county maintained road, in order to get a building permit we had to enter into an Unpaved Road Agreement with the county. Under this agreement we would design, engineer, and build the dirt road up to county standards at our own expense and then pay an unspecified amount of money for maintenance of it. After its completion the county would take over maintenance of the road.

We began the Unpaved Road Agreement process late last spring and spent $8788.28 obtaining surveys, soil bore samples, and engineering drawings of the road. It wasn’t until after the design had been reviewed by county engineers and the SJRWMD and sent back to our engineer, Blank Engineering of Melbourne, for the second time that we discovered that it was not possible to fit the road within the existing right-of-way due to the high water table relative to the road. Because of the high water table the road surface would have to be raised nearly a foot above East Palmetto Road, which it adjoins. This is an increase of almost two feet in elevation for some parts of the road. To retain the storm water runoff, there would be drainage swales along its entire length on both sides. The maximum slope on the back side of the drainage swales is mandated by the SJRWMD and cannot be exceeded. Because of these requirements, the proposed project sprawled beyond the bounds of the fifty-foot wide right-of-way to eighty feet of width. We were told we needed to acquire an additional fifteen feet of private property on either side of the right-of-way to accommodate the road and its associated swales.

This was a major problem. The right-of-way passes narrowly between two existing homes. Even if the property owners would agree to give up some of their land for the project (they would not), there would still be problems. The edge of the drainage swale on one side would extend to within approximately five feet of the foundation of one of the homes. The new road would also cause significant surface water impacts and additional wetland impacts that there is no way to mitigate. Our property has already been dedicated as a conservation easement in order to mitigate the building of our home. Mitigation for wetlands on Merritt Island must occur on the island, where there is no mitigation bank to draw from. In short, the project is not feasible as designed.

The county land development engineer told us that he thought the road would be technically possible if it were reengineered somehow to fit inside the allotted 50 feet. He said that it could potentially be done if the entire road was built up using large culverts and retaining walls along its entire length but even he agreed that a redesign of that magnitude would push the cost of the dirt road well over a quarter of a million dollars, assuming it was possible at all. Regardless of the fact that it might be physically possible to build such a road, we feel that it is simply not right to force a single property owner to bear that kind of burden in order to build a single-family home. Due to the environmental issues that affect our property, even though it is large we can only build one house on it. It cannot be subdivided, and therefore we have no opportunity to defray any of the cost involved in constructing such a road.

The alternative suggestion from the land development department was to have the county vacate the access entirely. We pursued this course of action for several months only to have it turn out as another dead end. Since the right-of-way was platted with the property across from ours, only that property owner can petition the county to vacate the land. They have tried to do so in the past only to run into access issues, which still exist today. The Land Development department of the county requires that a plan be in place to ensure that all properties that take access from the right of way have access to their property before the land is vacated. This plan must be approved by the Planning and Zoning office. However, the Planning and Zoning department will only entertain the application for review after the county commission board has vacated the land. You can see the problem there.

In the end, vacating the land would be problematic at best. If the county were to vacate the right-of-way, it would go back to the landowner that owns the property it was originally platted with. If the landowners would agree to split the land down the middle to create two 25-foot wide access strips, these could be used as flag stems for their property and ours. Easement could be provided to the property at the end of the road over one of those two strips. Because only one property can have easement over a flag stem, we run out of options for one of the properties fronting East Palmetto Road. They have legal access from East Palmetto Road, but since their physical access is from Tortoise Hollow Lane they will not agree to the vacating unless they are granted irrevocable easement over Tortoise Hollow Lane. This is precisely what caused the last vacating attempt in 2004 to be unsuccessful (see attached Board Meeting Minutes). These homeowners came to the meeting and protested because they were afraid that they would lose access to their homes via Tortoise Hollow Lane. These problems only take into account current property uses. The 7+ acre property on the west side of Tortoise Hollow Lane and the 26+ acre parcel at the end of the road could be subdivided in the future, creating even more access problems. Future land use rights would easily be enough to preclude any possibility of vacating being approved.

So, we are at an impasse. We hold in our possession wetland permits from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers to build our proposed home. All that stands in our way is this access issue. The only reasonable solution is for the county to grant us a waiver to the section of the code that requires the property to abut a county maintained road. We have tried to comply with all county regulations and explore the other options given to us by members of the county staff. As outlined above, each alternative solution has either run into huge obstacles or is simply not possible. In our opinion, our situation is unique enough to warrant this waiver. While unimproved right-of-ways are not uncommon in this county, the bevy of environmental issues surrounding Tortoise Hollow Lane and our property, the large size of the properties involved, and the fact that three of the five properties have already been developed make this situation different from the rest.

Ultimately, if we were to be granted this waiver, all parties stand to benefit. The county and state would get a nice piece of environmentally protected land, removal of nuisance plant life and the revenue generated by a newly developed property. The property owners with existing homes on Tortoise Hollow Lane would be able to continue using the right-of-way to enjoy uninterrupted access their homes. We would be permitted to build our new home and be able to live peacefully out among nature. A waiver would also maintain all of the land use rights of the other properties and retain the potential to develop multiple properties in the future if the large parcels are subdivided for development.

We do not believe that the original intent of the Unpaved Road Agreement was ever to force one property owner to shoulder the burden of the entire cost of a public road project allowing abutting property owners to enjoy freely at no cost to them. In a conventional situation, all of the properties would be developed around the same time and more than one property owner would participate in the project. Since three of the five property owners on Tortoise Hollow Lane have already been permitted to build, there is no motivation for them to participate in any such process, making this a unique situation. The environmental issues only push it further into impossibility. The denial of this request would effectively condemn our property from any practical use and would constitute a “regulatory taking” of our land. So, we are asking you to evaluate this situation individually, for what it is, and to do the right thing by granting us this waiver. Thank you."

Phew! If you made it through all of that and this kind of thing interests you you can go over to the other blog I have that deals only with developing our property, www.tortoisehollow.com. There is a lot more information over there. There has been a large break in my posting over there lately because I have been afraid to get my hopes up too much, but I am going to try to get back to regular posting over there. Hopefully good things will happen at the board meeting next month.

When I stop and take a look at my life lately, it seems as though there is always something I am fighting for- whether it be a safety issue at work, finding answers to my health anomalies, or challenging the county ordinances that are standing in my way in building a new house on my property. It seems like there is always some sort of battle being waged. And it makes me think, what does that say about me? Does it mean that I am just an antagonistic type of person that likes to fight things or is it more that I stand up for what I believe in and am passionate about making positive changes in the world? I like to think it is the latter, but I really wish that life could just be easy and that I wouldn't have to fight for everything I believe in.

A great deal of my time has been taken up lately with these things. I have fallen behind in my blogging, reading, posting and commenting. I hope you guys understand and will still stick around for when I actually have something interesting to say again. I think it will be soon. Does everyone struggle with issues like this and find that their time gets eaten up supporting their causes at times?

My hand has been forced. Thanks to the little hotlinking theives mostly at MySpace, I have been forced to enable hotlink protection on this site. My bandwidth for the month, 20GB, is nearly exceeded already and it is only the 22nd. Not cool. So no more linking to my pictures using IMG tags while I pay for it. I have enabled the hotlink protection in the past and it caused some issues with the way this site was viewed, so I am hoping that will not be the case this time. If anything looks strange, then please let me know and send me the exact copy of the address of the page you are viewing that looks funky. Also, if you are using an RSS feed to read this site and the pictures do not appear, send me the address of the feed and I can fix that for you. I added the RSS feeds that I use to the whitelist, but I know there are lots of others out there. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: Based on Poppy's comment, perhaps I should have been more clear. I don't care if any of you, my readers, hotlink to images on this site, but that doesn't happen anyway, because you all understand that it is not a good practice to do so. The problem is that other people on forums and tons of people on MySpace and Live Journal and Xanga and so on use my images as backgrounds or in their comments or whatever using IMG tags rather than saving the photos to their own computers and uploading them and they are eating up my bandwidth like crazy, so it has to come to an end. MySpace users alone accounted for 5016 links to my site from an external page without any page views so far this month, which means they are using bandwidth to view the photos but are not visiting my site, and I had to upgrade to a more expensive hosting package.

You have probably heard about it already as it has been all over the news, but there has been a shooting at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Apparently it all ended up as a murder-suicide. I can't believe that such a thing could happen in the NASA family. Okay, actually I can , but it is still shocking. With recent events such as this and the astronaut scandal with Lisa Nowak I think it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it just doesn't matter how much security you have or how many psychological screening tests a person has passed, we are still human, and very unpredictable. It is impossible to predict what people may do when they are under stress.

It makes you think, what could possibly drive someone to that breaking point? And how exactly do we plan to avoid it in the future? I can forsee a lot more of a pain in the ass in the mornings going to work in order to gain access to to Kennedy Space Center. Because after this event I am sure that the response will be very reactionary until life settles back down a bit.

I don't know what the deal is lately but my damn nose keeps cracking, right at the tip of one nostril. It hurts like hell. It has cracked like this before to a lesser extent during cold and dry weather, but it has been hot and humid here lately, so I am confused. When I wash my face and soap gets in the little cut, it stings like fire and makes my eyes water. No amount of moisturizer or cream seems to help it heal. Ouch! Does your nose ever split like this?

Holly the cockatoo and Ramona the puppy are settling in to life at our house quite well. Holly remains quite suspicious of me, but I try to talk to her and interact with her as much as I can without making her uncomfortable. She seems to prefer Andy and he has been working with her every day so that she gets used to him. She lets him pet her, but isn't quite ready to be held yet. Almost, but not just yet. She is making progress with both of us, though.

And Ramona is doing really well. Her housetraing is coming along better than expected, and she is a smart little thing. I taught her over only a couple of hours how to go in and out of the dog door. She was a little scared of it at first, but now she runs in and out through it like a champ. This afternoon when I got home, I took all of the dogs out to pee. She peed and then we went inside and I started preparing the birds their afternoon meals. I noticed Ramona go over to the dog door and she went out all by herself. I walked over to the back door to watch what she was doing, and she went straight out to the yard and pooped! I was so proud. Usually it takes them much longer after learning how to use the dog door to realize that they can go out there on their own to poop or pee. And she is only on her fifth day ever of learning not to pee or poop inside the house. What an awesome little pup!

Today I had the appointment to get the results of my liver biopsy. This was supposed to be the big revealing moment to find out what has been going haywire with my liver for the past six months. And I got a big fat "I don't know." Another couple of things were effectively ruled out and I am left with essentially nothing. Something is wrong with my liver but no one knows exactly what. And there isn't anything left to test for. Maybe some day someone will come up with an idea of what it could be.

The microscopic report was as follows:

The basic architecture of the liver is preserved. The hepatocytes are arranged in a normal plate thickness, do not display atypia and hepatocyte inclusions, including fatty change, is not identified. There is a slight increase in the amount of iron as confirmed Perl's stain. There is a mild lymphocytic infiltrate within the portal regions without extension of the lymphocytes into the parenchyma. There is not an increased amount of portal fibrosis as confirmed with the Trichrome stain. Central veins are identified, and there is no evidence of cirrhosis.

The only possible thing left is an exposure to something. I asked what viruses could cause this kind of thing, and the doctor said, of course Hepatitis A, B and C (which I have tested negative for) and the mononucleosis viruses, but I had Epstein Barr in 6th grade and Cytomegalo Virus (CMV) in 11th grade, so it is not possible for it to be either of those. Those were the only viruses he could think of. Even if it had been a virus, chances are that it would have cleared up in six months time. And then there are industrial solvent and chemical exposures, but I don't see where I could have been exposed to something like that.

There is nothing left to test me for, so the doctor said that I could just have the enzymes checked every six months or so, and just let it go at that. If that is all I am going to do I don't really see the point because whether they go down or up, there is nothing that can be done about it. Just knowing for the sake of knowing seems stupid and pointless to me. The only other option he gave me was to go to Shands and get another opinion. I am thinking about it but it is a rather long drive (two and a half hours each way) and I have already wasted so much time and energy only to find no answers. If only they would set up a phone appointment for me, but I don't know if they do that. There is nothing for them to examine physically, they would just need to look at the test results and perhaps order some more, so i don't see why I need to drive there, but I doubt they can do anything over the phone.

So, the news is that there is no news. I had tried not to get my hopes up because I kind of figured that the outcome would be like this, but still I had hopes that they could find something. Oh well. I told Andy that for once I just want to be able to go to a doctor and have them say "you have blankety blank illness, and here is the treatment." But it is never like that for me. It is always, "well something is wrong with you but we don't know why." Damn practice of medicine.

We've just been enjoying the day with our recent additions. Ramona is pictured here as she wildly tore around the yard like a nut playing with Michaela. Michaela, or Mickie as we call her for short just loves ghaving someone to play with that has so much energy. Everyone is getting along well so far. Ramona's housetraining continues, but she did have a couple of accidents today. Hey, nobody is perfect- I am pleased with her progress. And I worked with her a little bit at the dog door. She is starting to get it, but is a little intimidated by it. She did come into the house through the doog door all by herself a couple of times and I gave her tons of praise and some tiny pieces of hot dog to reinforce how well she did.

The new bird, an Eleanora Cockatoo, which we are calling Holly is doing well but is still getting settled. Her name was Harley previously, but our other parrot is Charley and we found the names too similar and we were getting confused, so we modified hers to be Holly. It sounds sort of like Harley, so hopefully she will adjust to it fairly easily. There will be pictures of her to come as well, but I didn't want to freak her out with the camera just yet as she is still feeling a bit shy.

Today has been a big day for us. First, at close to midnight last night Andy came home from work to meet little Ramona, who has been doing just fantastically so far. For a puppy that has never been worked with at all on housebreaking she has been great, or we have just been *that* vigilant about taking her outside. In any case she is doing very well.

This morning we had dog training class for Denny, and we brought Ramona to sit outside the ring with Andy and observe because it is goood for her to be socialized. She was funny. She decided she did not like this one large doberman puppy that was there and barked her piercing little bark at him. She carried on for a while, then finally settled down. Denny was great in class again and won the contest for the fastest "sit." He can do better than he did, though, so we are going to work hard this week.

After we got back from class we started getting our furniture rearranged to make room for the next new arrival, the gorgeous cockatoo my aunt was bringing for us. My aunt and her significant other got to the house sooner than we expected and I went out to meet them and explain how we would bring Denny out on his leash to meet them first and give them treats and that they were to praise him. This is in an effort to keep Denny from wanting to nip at people that come over. As a rescue dog that had been through a lot when he came to us, he is very proptective of his home and family and kind of wants to bite visitors because he thinks they are trying to take him away from his home. That is why we started him in training classes. His instructor told us to give the visitors treats for him and it worked very well. Denny was thrilled to get praise, hot dog pieces, and cheese from them and was as good as gold. The trick worked well with the other dogs too, and they settled down a lot more quickly after they got their treats.

The new bird did well on her trip and they got her all set up in her cage. We all had lunch and she was doing fine and played a little with her toys, ate, and drank while they visited with us. Since they left, she has been a little reserved, but that is to be expected until she gets comfortable with us. She has been talking a little, very softly, but she is a quiet bird. I hope she will feel a little more comfortable tomorrow, because I would like to take her out of the cage and play with her a little. She is just a little too nervous right yet, so we talk to her through the cage. I opened the door of her cage to give her a little piece of cheese, but she was too suspicious, so I left it sitting on her perch. She came and got it after I left the room, though. Baby steps, right? She is darling.

So all in all, we are doing very well. While you would expect that our house would be utterly chaotic right now, it really isn't. Amazingly, things are quiet. Go figure.

All the the mess of the Puppy Mill raid aftermath finally came to a conclusion today. The lady that was jailed for neglect of the dogs went to mediation and negotiated to take 26 dogs back. It was a very sad thing, but the animal officers showed up at the rescue house this morning and took the dogs she chose to keep. She is under strict orders to modify her facility and will be checked up on very closely or she will lose all of the dogs for good. She is being forced to spay some of the females that are past their breeding prime as soon as their puppies are weaned and adopt them out. There are all kinds of conditions that she must comply with or she loses the dogs. Still, it doesn't seem quite fair.

The original owner took some of the best breeding dogs, but she also took a lot of the puppies. Almost all of the puppies pictured in this post are gone. There was a litter of puppies that was born after they were in the rescue's custody and we decided not to dock the tails of the puppies and after a few days it is too late to dock them, so she had no use for them. She also left a bunch of male puppies because she is more interested in the females for breeding purposes, I guess. So very sad. But at least the poodle rescue was left with a chance to give the rest of the dogs better lives.

I took half a day off of work today to go help with the dogs. The president of the rescue needed a computer with an internet connection so she could go through the website and try to match up the remaining dogs with foster homes. There was no phone or broadband internet in the house, so I set up my iBook tethered to my cell phone through Bluetooth for her to use while I was there. I did some basic cleaning around the house, played with dogs, and then washed eight puppies that had been digging holes and were a bit filthy. If you know me at all, you know that it is very dangerous for me to be around puppies at all, due to my addiction.

Well, I succumbed to the cuteness; my addiction took hold. Of the puppies that were left there was one girl, a little blonde/tan girl, and it just so happened that she particularly caught my eye- imagine that! We were kindred spirits. And I was given the opportunity to take her home. She is currently our foster dog but if you have been reading this blog for a while, you know how that usually turns out for us. I got Andy on the phone right before I had to leave the poodle compound to ask him and he said "You know you are horrible, right?" But he also said yes. So little Ramona- I named her that when they were asking for names for the puppies to ID them- came home with me. Andy hasn't even met her yet, but he will love her; I don't even have to worry about that. What's not to love? She's awesome. She is snoozing next to me right now. And the rest of the kids like her already. She has been playing with them and seems ecstatic to be here. Isn't she great?

I got some photos today from a friend with the poodle rescue. She took these pics of me with the gorgeous puppies. The ones in the first picture I sort of even named. Andy thinks I am totally nuts. We were talking on the phone about the legal disposition of the puppies today as the case went to court and it was on the news this evening that they are trying to work it out in mediation. The woman that neglected these poor dogs is trying to get about 30 or so of the "breeders" back so that she can sell them. I say that she should have thopught of that before she neglected them to the point that they are so fearful now.

Anyway, back to our phone conversation we were talking about how that soon the puppies will probably need foster homes. I said "We could at least foster Leo and Natasha, right?" Andy was all like "You named them already?" I said "Sure, Leo is the little tan one cause he looks like a lion, and the brown one is Natasha." I think I heard back something to the effect of "Oh Geez." The sound of a broken man, I expect. Hey, I am what I am. And I did have three poodles already when Andy met me.

I am kind of stoopid when it comes to computers sometimes- I know, I know, say it isn't so, right? Like you hadn't figured that out already. However, I am always trying things out of necessity and every once in a while I am successful in figuring something out. This morning after much frustration, I finally figured out how to "tether" my iBook to my Bluetooth cell phone wirelessly so that I can access the internet from anywhere I can get a cell phone signal. Yes, I have an unlimited data plan that covers this, so I won't be racking up huge charges- I made sure to research that extensively. It is not terribly fast, but the ability to use my laptop nearly anywhere is very freeing. So you may see me posting at different times of the day now that I have a reason to take my laptop along. Hooray, success!

Last Saturday I posted about the raid of a local puppy mill that the poodle rescue I work with was involved in. Coastal Poodle Rescue has temporary custody of over 76 poodles- not sure how many more there are now as puppies were born on Thursday. They are being kept a a private home on over five acres in an agriculturally zoned area, and it takes a constant stream of volunteers to care for them all.

This afternoon I went to work at the poodle rescue house. The work consisted of walking the adult dogs to try to get them to pee and poop after their meals and to exercise them and socialize them as well. I also got to work with the puppies, playing with them and eventually getting them settled down and ready for bed, which was a major undertaking. There are SOOOOO many puppies, and they are mostly in that "puppy crazy" phase where they have boundless energy. We had them all in pens and some would try to climb, some would try to play with puppies in adjacent pens through the bars, and pretty much all of them constantly peed and crapped, so most of our attention was spent cleaning up the messes before they could step in them. The puppies were great, though, they are so much fun. I had one that was my absolute favorite that I totallly could have taken home in my pocket, the little dark brown one in the first two pictures. She was a real sweetie. My pictures are horrible because it was starting to get dark and the puppies were so very wiggly, but you get the idea.

After we got the older puppies that were weaned down for bed, I went inside and got to spend some quality time with the baby puppies that are still nursing. They were unbelievably gorgeous. I held these two sweet little black ones, a girl and a boy, and while I held them I also got to play with six funny little wild and crazy fat babies that were about the color of my little Cody, sort of an apricot/brown color and some were mixed with white. They had been driving their momma crazy because they were so rambunctious that she was quite glad to have a break from them.

It will be interesting to see what happens Monday because the woman that was running the puppy mill that held all of these dogs will be seen by a judge in court then, and hopefully there will be a legal disposition of the dogs at that point. Right now they are still in limbo legally, and all we can do is care for them and wait for a decision. Aren't they the cutest ever?

I guess we are running a zoo here, after all. After some careful deliberation, Andy and I decided that we will be welcoming a new member of our family, a lovely Eleanora Cockatoo, also known as a medium sulfur crested. I am not sure yet when she will arrive, but we are looking forward to it. Interestingly, she is the same age as our Charley, an Eclectus parrot, and they both come from the same part of the world.

Currently her name is Harley, but that is so very similar to Charley that we might have to modify it a bit. I thought maybe I could drop one letter and call her Haley? She is very social and was raised with an African Grey parrot that escaped in January and has never been found. She is kind of unhappy without a bird friend, so my aunt thought of us and Charley and thought they might get along well. From what I hear from my aunt she is so well behaved that maybe she could give some lessons to Charley. She sounds like such a sweet little girl.

Things are mostly quiet around here. Cody has made a full recovery and is back to his perky little self. I have been taking Denny on a walk almost every day this week to practice what we learned in Saturday's training class.

And speaking of dogs, I have signed up to volunteer for the night shift on Saturday night at the house where all of the poodles from the puppy mill raid I posted about are being kept. It was initially 76 poodles, but there were even more puppies born yesterday. I am sure Andy is worried about me being around so many puppies because he knows how I am with them, that I love them so much I just want to take them all home, but I think I will be okay. And there is no taking these puppies home anyway until a judge decides who will take custody of them permanently anyway. It is probably a good thing for me at least. Oh, the little chubby puppies with their sweet little baloney breath. I can't wait to see them.

On another topic, what would you do if you were me- meaning you were slightly crazy- and someone offered to give you a cockatoo as a friend for your parrot? It is certainly something to ponder. Charley is great and all, but maybe he would benefit from some bird companionship. I am not sure if he even knows he is a bird now. I think he thinks he is a human child. Thoughts? The title of this post is what Andy said when I first asked him about it, but he is not opposed to the idea, it just caught him off guard a bit.

This has to be the cutest tortoise butt in the world. This is Virgil stretching to get a drink of water out of his bowl.

Denny is doing famously with his training. I have to take him out for a walk to practice the stuff from his class so that we are ready to learn some new things on Saturday. He is just an eager to please cute little boy and I am very pleased with his progress.

On the other hand, Annabel needs a little work. The other day, I was sitting at my desk with Charley the parrot sitting on his playgym next to me. Charley got spooked by Anna barking at a shadow or something and took off flying around the room. I caught him in the air and put him back in his cage. Somehow in the commotion my one gigabyte SD card must have gotten knocked off the desk, and in a couple of swift chomps Anna laid waste to it forever. I just stood there and stared at her in disbelief. I don't care about the card much as they are cheap, but there were some pictures on there that I lost forever. There weren't too many I hadn't transferred to thhe computer yet, but there were some cute ones. Oh well.

This morning I went in for my liver biopsy. It seemed like a big production for something that only took about ten to fifteen minutes, but I had to go through the whole surgical prep area where they made me put on a lovely gown and lay down while they put an IV in my arm. I almost felt kind of silly. Then they wheeled me two floors down to the radiology area for the procedure. They had to use the ultrasound to guide where the needle was going, so that is why it was in radiology. I have had surgery before, but whenever i was wheeled around in the past I was on heavy drugs and not very coherent. This time I was completely awake and alert because they hadn't given me any drugs yet.

The doctor came in and the nurse jokingly introduced him as a high school student because he looked so young. He explained the procedure, which involved inserting a biopsy needle and then taking three samples from my liver. He numbed the skin on my side, then numbed my liver, which hurt a little, but not much. Then I got to watch on the ultrasound screen while he took the samples. It was basically just a quick flash on the screen and a click each time and it didn't hurt. They gave me a little bit of IV valium but I swear it didn't do much to drug me- I felt about the same as I would after maybe two beers. But it was quick and relatively painless. The most painful part was pulling the tape off where they had draped me.

After the biopsy was done, they wheeled in a machine and did a quick chest X-ray to make sure there was no air that had enterd my chest cavity- and there wasn't. Then I got wheeled back to the discharge area where Andy and I got to sit and wait for two hours before they could let me go. They have to keep you lying down for two hours so your liver doesn't bleed. It was pretty boring, but no big deal. My blood pressure was already pretty low when they checked it in the morning, and after laying around for about an hour and a half it finally went so low that it set off an alarm at 88 over 43, but I felt fine so they really weren't concerned. They just upped the IV drip going into my arm and it went up a bit. And finally the two hours was up and we got to come home. It seemed like such a big fuss for such a little procedure, but hey, whatever.

I'm glad that it is over now, but I have been just laying around all afternoon per the discharge orders I received. No heavy lifting or stairs or any of that junk for a couple of days. But I'll be back to work tomorrow doing whatever I can at my desk at least. Now I just have to wait for results.