Kevin's Ramblings…

Today are Blondie, Hera and Twix’s annual vet check-ups. We still go to a vet in Calgary, so it’s a bit of a trek that I am used to doing, that’s for sure. It took me a long time to find a vet that I liked so when I moved to Crowsnest Pass, I decided that we would continue going to Calgary for regular vet check-ups and what not. I now have a back-up vet in Pincher Creek as well, in case we have an emergency or something, and they have been great for Hera’s follow-ups after her surgery as well, it’s a 30 minute drive as opposed to 2.5 hours.

I have considered using them as our regular vet as well, but, really, it’s only once a year, typically. I think we’ll stick with going to Calgary. He really helped us out by allowing me to pay over time for Hera’s surgery, a lot of vets wouldn’t. He does seem to care more about the animals in his care than he does about the almighty dollar, it’s a nice change for sure.

Speaking of Hera’s surgery, she is doing quite well. She’s walking more or less normally and is doing basically what she was before her surgery. It is now 3 weeks since the surgery, the fur where it was shaved is still growing back, but I think the vet will be happy with her progress. She’s finished with 2 of 4 of the meds she was on and will be done with them all within a week or so.

We’ll make a stop today at Costco in Okotoks, I will buy some bags of dog food and fill up with gas, might get a few other things as well. We’ll then go for a walk around Shouldice Park where it’s off-leash, Hera needs to be leashed, for 2 reasons – she is still supposed to take it easy and she’s sometimes a little too aggressive with little dogs. It’ll be fun anyway, it’s the park we always used to go to before we moved away from Calgary.

On another front, to do with the dogs, Twix is no longer allowed to go to doggie day care. The reasoning I was given is that they are concerned with her, they think there is something wrong with her back-end, she goes all out at day care and is tired at the end of the day and is sore. The vet has checked her out and hasn’t found anything wrong, other than a touch of arthritis. So, after 3 years, if Twix isn’t welcome back, well, none of my dogs will be back. It’s too bad, but, it is what it is. I will ask the vet to carefully check her out again today, it would be nice to know if Twix is in pain, but I don’t think she is, no whining at all, she’s just slowing down – hell, we all are. Twix will be 9 in February, that is a senior dog. The doggie day care people said they didn’t want to be held responsible if she hurt herself. Well, that makes no sense since I signed a waiver of liability when we first started out, so, something else is up, although I don’t know what. Oh well, their loss, not ours. I guess the dogs won’t get socialization with other dogs for the time being.

Wish us luck today at the vet. I will give an update on Hera tomorrow. Have a great day.

Air Canada still has amazingly cheap flights available in Canada. I have booked a trip back to Ontario at the end of October, it is $222 return. Now, that doesn’t include any baggage or anything and it costs extra to choose your seat or to change the flight, but wow, that’s cheap.

I plan on heading to St. Catharines for 4 days and then I will be back in Toronto for 4 days. I booked a rental car to get to St. Catharines, it was the same price as booking Niagara Air Bus, which I find a bit odd, seems like Niagara Air Bus is way over-priced, so are car rentals, but it is what it is.

I am hoping for decent weather, don’t really care how cold it is but I would prefer no rain. We’ll see. I can’t complain about the weather on my last trip, it was just about perfect.

This will be a lower-key trip, not driving all over the place, for sure. Should be a good time.

I am sure the end of October will be here before I know it.

My day yesterday started early. I woke up at 3am, didn’t get out of bed until 340am. A little early for my tastes.

Made coffee. Loaded up my umpiring gear and clothes into the trailer. Even though I had plenty of time, I left the house later than I wanted to. I was off at about 640am.

I decided to take highway 3 East to highway 2 and great North to Calgary. It’s a slightly longer route, but it’s mostly flat and straight, as opposed to highway 22 which twists and turns like crazy. The truck was doing well pulling the trailer, obviously my mileage went down, but it wasn’t horrible.

I got to Nanton and stopped to get water so I’d be able to make coffee while camping. At this point, I realized that yes, I packed my spare coffee maker, but had forgotten filters… At this point I also saw the notification that the parks had been closed, so that meant that the 10am and 1pm games I was scheduled for had been cancelled. Well, at least I didn’t need to rush to Calgary.

I decided instead that I’d do some errands. I went to Cross Iron Mills mall, the watch that I purchased before my trip to Ontario had stopped working, I suspected a battery and indeed it was, they replaced the battery for free, it has a one year battery warranty. Nice.

I didn’t spend any other money at the mall, other than at Tim Hortons. I was being good.

I headed over to the RV park that I had booked for the evening, it’s very close to Cross Iron Mills. Even though it was only 1 in the afternoon, I was able to pull in, nice.

I discovered that in addition to forgetting the coffee filters, I also forgot a hose to connect the trailer to the water supply. Oh well, no water, but they have bathroom facilities. I got the trailer setup, very easy. Had a quick nap and was woken by the phone, was offered a game at 4pm. I decided to take it.

I was umpiring on the plate for a tier 2 game. It was generally not a will played game. It was a long game as well, almost 3 hours by the time it was finished. Oh well, got my first game in anyway.

Games today were lost, bad field conditions, again. I could have picked up a 4pm game again but decided against it, hell, another round trip to Optimist Park would be another 100km nearly. Maybe it’s closer to 80, bit still. So I’m in the trailer, listening to rain and watching a rather boring Bills game.

Other than the rain, forgotten items and lack of umpiring, it wasn’t a bad weekend. I think…

Fall Ball starts today, well, weather permitting. They were calling for showers overnight, I am unsure how much it rained in Calgary. We got a little bit down here, but, we are 2 hours south-west of Calgary, so, who knows? The park needs some work, water tends to pool around home plate and that alone washes out a number of games. The City of Calgary seems either unwilling or unable to fix this relatively minor issue.

I umpire at both 10am and 1pm. If the park is closed this morning, it will be closed until at least after the 1pm game, if it re-opens at all. I won’t know if the park is closed until I will be half way (or so) to Calgary. So, I might get there and the games may be cancelled. I am hoping this doesn’t happen. I am really looking forward to baseball again.

I am taking my trailer with me today. I will be camping just north of Calgary, near Cross Iron Mills mall. This will be my first camping trip with my new (to me) trailer, so I am looking forward to that as well, even if there is rain. I am staying for 2 nights, coming back Monday morning. The dogs are safely with friends who are looking after them. I will be leaving the trailer in a storage area in the south of the city. It’s far cheaper to leave the trailer there than to tow it back and forth.

So, here’s to hoping that the weather isn’t quite as bad as the forecast says. Weather changes quickly in Alberta, so I am hoping that’s the case.

Enjoy your weekend.

Hera gets her stitches out today. The recovery from her surgery is going well, I guess I’ll get confirmation on that this afternoon. I put her cone on her last night before I went to bed, she hates it. I promised that it was the last night that she needed to wear it. I don’t think she cared. She looks so sad wearing it, it was likely unnecessary, but I wanted to be safe.

I got some bad news on my proposed business yesterday, a minor snag shall we say… The business is no longer for sale, makes it tough to buy. So, I’m going to be looking elsewhere for work. I think I’m going to get my class 1 or 2 license and go from there.

I am planning on visiting Ontario once more while flights are still cheap. I’m planning on a late October trip. I still need to iron out some details, but it should be a great time. I’m not going to drive all over hells half acre this time around, I’ll be spending time in Toronto and St. Catharines. I’ll see a few people I wasn’t able to see on my last trip.

We are having a nice dose of late summer weather here in SW Alberta. The weekend was gorgeous, temps were in the low 20’s all weekend, almost unheard of for this time of year. This week is supposed to be very nice as well, I think it’s supposed to be 23 or 24 (that’s Celsius, not Fahrenheit). The warm weather continues all week, cooling off to 19C for a high on Sunday – I can take that, in fact, I can take that all year round.

I wanted to head to the lake with the dogs yesterday, but Hera is not supposed to get her leg wet while she has her stitches in. So, no lake trip, just a slow walk. She gets her stitches out on Wednesday afternoon. I won’t be bringing Blondie and Twix this time around though, it is supposed to be 26/27C on Wednesday, so, far too warm to leave them in the car for sure.

I need to go and change the ownership of the trailer over to my name today or tomorrow. I am bringing it up to Calgary with me on Saturday so I can stay in it on Saturday night. I have rented a spot to park it in South-East Calgary, $50 a month. I will use it until I am done umpiring Fall Ball and then bring it back home and store it at a friends property for the winter. I am looking forward to Fall Ball, it should be a good time.

I am making some headway on my new career path, should find out more today. I met with both Community Futures and my real estate guy last week. Hopefully something does materialize along these lines, would be great. If not, I have a few backup plans.

Well, after the holiday yesterday (Labour Day), it’s the start of a new week. Have a good one.

It’s Labour Day Weekend, the unofficial end to summer. I live in SW Alberta, in the mountains of the Crowsnest Pass, summer sort of ends in the middle of August when we begin our sometimes short Autumn season. The Labour Day Weekend is often quite cold and we also often have snow at ground level.

This LDW, the weather has been gorgeous. Friday and Saturday, the highs were in the low to mid 20s, which is awesome for this time of year. Last night it didn’t even get that cool out, it’s a balmy 16C right now, pretty good.

The dogs and I went to our old walking place down by Emerald Lake in Sentinel on Friday. Hera was on leash and we took it slow. So slow in fact that Blondie and Twix came back a couple of times to see what was keeping us. We didn’t walk too far, maybe a kilometer in total, but Hera was limping when we got home, so it was obviously too much for her. We took yesterday off, no walk at all, we will go back out today, he limp is gone now, thankfully. I guess I will need to slow the pace down even more and perhaps make it a shorter walk. She is getting stronger though, using her back leg more and more. She goes back to the vet on Wednesday to have her stitches removed. Progress, for sure.

Yesterday, I had a bonfire in my relatively new chimenea. It was a perfect night for it, still warm with a bit of a breeze which kept the fire going. The dogs and I sat out until about 1030, listening to music and me drinking a Mike’s Hard Lime, not a bad Saturday evening for sure.

Today, as I mentioned, we’ll got for another short hike. Hera will need to be on a leash for a while still, another month anyway. She doesn’t really mind, which is great, she’s a great dog. She’s still wearing her cone at night and will do so until she gets her stitches out. She reluctantly wears it and is very happy when I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is remove the cone.

Enjoy your Labour Day Weekend and hopefully a day off of work tomorrow.

This past Wednesday was a week since Hera’s surgery, so we had a follow-up appointment with the vet. We didn’t go to Calgary to my regular vet, instead, we went to Pincher Creek to a newly opened clinic, Peak Veterinary Hospital and met with the owner who looked over Hera’s stitches and removed her bandages. Hera is progressing very well which is great news. She was cleared to go for on-leash walks to help to strengthen the leg. All is well on the road to recovery.

Hera will have her stitches removed next Wednesday, again, at Peak. My vet up in Calgary sent Peak all of the dogs medical records, I plan on using them as my back-up vet. It’s not a bad drive to Calgary, just over 2 hours, but if I have some sort of emergency, I can get to Pincher Creek in just over 30 minutes. The vet met Blondie and Twix as well and all of the dogs liked her, in fact, Hera even gave her a kiss which is rare for Hera to do, maybe she’s turning into a softy as she gets older.

So, I am hoping to take the dogs for 2 walks a day to help Hera strengthen up. I am sure I won’t get any complaints from the dogs in doing that. It’s good for me as well.

I am meeting today with my realtor/friend to discuss the business that I am looking to buy here in the Pass. I had a phone meeting with Community Futures and they gave me a lot of information. There’s some work to do, so this is sort of step two, I hope it goes well.

Umpiring starts next weekend and I am looking forward to it. I have scheduled myself for 18 games leading up to the first week of October. I have 4 games every weekend for 4 and then I took two Wednesday night games as well. I plan on doing some playoffs and Fall Ball should wrap up by the middle of October. Now, we just need to have decent weather. I plan on using the umpiring money to head back to Ontario for a week at the end of October. I didn’t see some people that I would have liked to have when I was there in August and didn’t see some people as much as I would have liked. The flights are still insanely cheap, $222 return, so I want to take advantage of that for sure, they will go back to “regular” prices, sooner or later.

Well, the weekend is here, or just about anyway. Enjoy your weekend.

Yesterday morning, I went and picked up Blondie and Twix. They were very happy to see me, and I was happy to see them as well. They had a good time but Twix was a bit stressed without Hera for a day or two, she destroyed a blanket, which is very rare for her. I guess she missed Hera more than Hera apparently missed her.

We got home, I went inside to take Hera’s cone off and Hera made it difficult since she was pushing, trying to get outside to see her sisters, her tail was going like crazy. She was VERY happy to see them and they were very happy to see her. Both Blondie and Twix examined Hera’s leg, sniffed it a couple of time and they danced about a bit, although I kept telling Hera to calm down – she was good, she didn’t follow Twix off when she ran into the upper yard.

Hera has still been eating all of her food, so that’s great, she’s been getting all of her doses of medicine. She and I will be visiting Peak Veterinary Hospital this afternoon in Pincher Creek for a follow-up appointment. It was good that our normal vet, in Calgary, supported us going to another vet to have this quick check-up. It means a 30 minute drive as opposed to 2.5 hours. We have another appointment next week and Hera will have her stitches removed. She seems to be on the mend, which is great.

Blondie and Twix might not like me going out with just Hera, but, it’ll be easier than bringing those two as well and then having to leave them in the car.

Fall Ball for Babe Ruth is right around the corner. I have signed up for all of my games for the Fall season, I get back onto the field on September 11 for a double-header on the Saturday and another on the Sunday. I am looking forward to it. I will be bringing my trailer to Calgary and storing it there. Storing it will save me a boatload of cash over hauling it back and forth.

It’s hump day, the weekend is almost here for those who care when it’s the weekend. Have a good one.

Hera finally ate dog food for the first time since her surgery last week today. I didn’t even know she had gone into the mud room and eaten until I came up from downstairs and saw her bowl was empty. That’s great news for me, I was getting a little worried, although she was eating biscuits and human food and drinking lots of water.

Tomorrow morning, I am picking up Blondie and Twix from boarding. I have really enjoyed spending some one on one time with Hera this past week, I wish it could have been for reasons other than having surgery. I don’t think Hera really misses her sisters, I think she’d be perfectly happy being an only dog. When she’s wanted attention, she’s gotten it for as long as she wanted it and no un-named blonde dog barged her way in to get her own attention.

I am pretty sure that Blondie and Twix have missed Hera and will be very happy to be home tomorrow. I am going to leave Hera at home while I go to pick them up, I think it will be easier to manage a reunion here, as opposed to in the car. I think I will stop for ice cream for Blondie and Twix to make up for the ice cream that Hera got yesterday, we’ll do that on the way home.

Hera is doing well. Her stitches look good, no swelling at all, no redness. She goes into the vet on Wednesday for her one week checkup. We aren’t going all the way to Calgary, we are heading to Pincher Creek to our “backup” vet, Peak Veterinary Hospital. She then goes a week Wednesday to have the stitches removed, again, back at Peak. In the middle of the month, all of us head to Calgary for their annual check-ups.

I am back to umpiring for the Fall Ball season, starting on Saturday, September 11. I am looking forward to getting back on the field and hope that we have good weather for Fall Ball which runs until Thanksgiving or so, weather dependent. I will be using the trailer for sleeping overnight. I am also going to store the trailer in Calgary so I am not dragging it back and forth to the Pass, it will save me on gas money – a month of storage is only $60 and I am pretty sure I’d spend more than that on a round trip. I will be doing 2 double-headers for Fall Ball and the temps will be far better than some games this past summer, that’s for sure.

So, Fall is looking good. I am looking forward to it.