At 11am this morning I am checking in to the local hospital in nearby Grants Pass for a colonoscopy. I am very hopeful that this routine examination will not find anything to worry about.
However, yesterday evening I had to take the first of two doses of Bowel Preparation ‘Kit’. That was after a full day staying off solids!! The second dose is being taken at 7am PDT this morning. One could take a tongue-in-cheek view that the results will not be a pretty site. Once back home a decent shower and a lovely meal will be the order of the day.
Getting pets into the bath can be a tricky endeavor, but these two dogs seem content to be in the tub. Now if they only had the same idea of how to behave there …
The husky on the right is just there for a relaxing soak and maybe a good shampooing. Its pal, on the other hand, wants to dig through the water the entire time as if there’s a bone somewhere buried just below the water.
To the husky’s credit, it allows its puppy companion to live in its own bath tub truth, but we all know that deep down it’s thinking, “I just wanted some quiet time and some cucumbers on my eyes. Is that too much to ask?”
Sometimes I think a particular Picture Parade series will be impossible to follow. So let’s see what I can find for next week. Dear Bob, thank you for these!
When Paloma died on the 16th, a little over a week ago, and, in turn, just a couple weeks after the sad loss of Casey, she was the last of the ‘kitchen’ group. To explain to newcomers, ever since we moved to Oregon in 2012 we had our dogs divided into two groups: the ‘kitchen’ and ‘bedroom’ groups. Primarily to ensure the minimum of any tensions between what at times has been 12 dogs.
There is a gate between the living room and the kitchen area and we have been leaving that open hoping that Ruby would work out when it was the right time to join the others.
That right time was yesterday afternoon around 4:30.
I grabbed my camera and quickly took a few flash photographs. They weren’t very good because Ruby is upset by camera flashguns. But the following is the best of the set and Jean and I wanted to share the lovely occasion with you.
From the foreground: Oliver, Sweeny, Ruby and to the right little Pedy.
Why did I choose the title I did?
Because a few moments before Ruby jumped up on to the settee Jean and I had been giggling about something silly.
For 11 years she has comforted me through my troubles.
For 11 years she has filled me with love.
For 11 years she has loved me.
For 11 years I treasured every moment.
For 11 years now… and I am fully aware that we are running out of time.
Here she lies, sleeping next to me on the sofa.
Dreaming a dogs dream with all paws moving.
She is perfect.
How will I ever do this without her sleeping next to me on the sofa?
This is Raya.
She is perfect. Even with her imperfections.
She keeps me safe when I am scared.
She watches over me as she sleeps on the foot of my bed.
This is Raya.
She is perfect. Even with her imperfections.
When she is happy, I smile with her.
When she is hurt, I fix her pain.
When she needs help, I stop what I am doing and I help.
When I am sad, she comforts me.
She makes what I do possible. She makes the bad days good. She makes the good days fantastic. She makes the horrible days bearable. Through every move, through every fight, through every depression, through every tear, through every laugh, through every moment of joy, through every moment of peace, through every moment of serenity, through every nightmare, through every feeling of desperately wanting to run away, through all of the times that I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, through all of the times I prayed for death, through all of the times my insides were screaming so hard it made me feel like I was going to burst, through all of the times I felt my heart break, through all of the times I felt my heart mend again. She was there. Depression has many faces and she has seen them all and helped me overcome. She has given me reason because her love deserves attention.
….. and we are running out of time. The possible will become impossible.
This is Raya.
She is perfect.
She is mine and I am hers.
I am hers and she is mine.
We are equal in love, in pain, in joy, in life.
I am proud to be her human. All of the mistakes I have made in the past… with Raya, I did it right.
She is perfect.
When you look into her eyes you can see her soul. Her character, her goofiness, her lust for life, her love, her mind, her cleverness. Her loyalty. I sometimes wonder what she sees when she looks back into my eyes. Does she see everything that I see? Would she also call me perfect? All I see in that connection is love.
She is perfect.
My Raya, my girl. All my love. We will live forever.
I was left behind, abandoned by my owner who has had me for 14 years. He left me tied up on a 3-foot leash in a trailer for about two weeks (maybe longer) with little or no care by my owner’s parents who were unable to care for me daily. Luckily, a kind and lovely lady named Chrissy, found me after she heard my desperate cries. Chrissy spoke to my owner’s parents and was able to get me out of my filthy living condition and to my foster home, where I’m getting endless love and doggy playmates. Please help me find a forever, loving home!
Roman is old, but he’s still strong and playful. He hops, runs, and bounces around as if he were still a pup. If you’re interested, please contact me!
ooOOoo
Roman’s present home is in Seattle, Washington and if you know of anyone who might be interested then the contact details are here.
Plus, please share this as far and wide as possible.
Thank you!
UPDATE
In response to me querying what Roman was like with other dogs and how far he could be taken in terms of meeting up with a new owner:
He is great with other dogs 🙂 I have two other big pups and they all get along just fine.
It depends on the location. Within a 5hr drive is fair.
This will take us away from the daily beat of life!
On the 18th. February the BBC News website carried an article that I found incredible. It was the story of Naica’s crystal caves in Mexico.
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Naica’s crystal caves hold long-dormant life
By Jonathan Amos, BBC Science Correspondent, Boston, 18 February 2017.
The caves were discovered by miners 100 years ago. Picture credit: Penelope J. Boston
It is a remarkable discovery in an amazing place.
Scientists have extracted long-dormant microbes from inside the famous giant crystals of the Naica mountain caves in Mexico – and revived them. [Ed: my emphasis]
The organisms were likely to have been encased in the striking shafts of gypsum at least 10,000 years ago, and possibly up to 50,000 years ago.
It is another demonstration of the ability of life to adapt and cope in the most hostile of environments.
“Other people have made longer-term claims for the antiquity of organisms that were still alive, but in this case these organisms are all very extraordinary – they are not very closely related to anything in the known genetic databases,” said Dr Penelope Boston.
The new director of Nasa’s Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California, described her findings here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
oooo
I was delighted to find more details in many other places on the ‘web’.
Creatures that thrive on iron, sulfur, and other chemicals have been found trapped inside giant crystals deep in a Mexican cave. The microbial life-forms are most likely new to science, and if the researchers who found them are correct, the organisms are still active even though they have been slumbering for tens of thousands of years.
If verified, the discovery adds to evidence that microbial life on Earth can endure harsher conditions in isolated places than scientists previously thought possible. (See “Life Found Deep Under Antarctic Ice for First Time?”)
“These organisms have been dormant but viable for geologically significant periods of time, and they can be released due to other geological processes,” says NASA Astrobiology Institute director Penelope Boston, who announced the find today at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “This has profound effects on how we try to understand the evolutionary history of microbial life on this planet.”
By Neil Shea, National Geographic Staff
In a nearly empty cantina in a dark desert town, the short, drunk man makes his pitch. Beside him on the billiards table sits a chunk of rock the size of home plate. Dozens of purple and white crystals push up from it like shards of glass. “Yours for $300,” he says. “No? One hundred. A steal!” The three or four other patrons glance past their beers, thinking it over: Should they offer their crystals too? Rock dust on the green felt, cowboy ballads on the jukebox. Above the bar, a sign reads, “Happy Hour: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.”
This remote part of northern Mexico, an hour or so south of Chihuahua, is famous for crystals, and paychecks at the local lead and silver mine, where almost everyone works, are meager enough to inspire a black market. “Thirty dollars.” He leans in. “Ten.” It’s hard to take him seriously. Earlier in the day, in a cave deep below the bar, I crawled among the world’s largest crystals, a forest of them, broad and thick, some more than 30 feet long and half a million years old. So clear, so luminous, they seemed extraterrestrial. They make the chunk on the pool table seem dull as a paperweight.
Nothing compares with the giants found in Cueva de los Cristales, or Cave of Crystals. The limestone cavern and its glittering beams were discovered in 2000 by a pair of brothers drilling nearly a thousand feet below ground in the Naica mine, one of Mexico’s most productive, yielding tons of lead and silver each year. The brothers were astonished by their find, but it was not without precedent. The geologic processes that create lead and silver also provide raw materials for crystals, and at Naica, miners had hammered into chambers of impressive, though much smaller, crystals before. But as news spread of the massive crystals’ discovery, the question confronting scientists became: How did they grow so big?
It takes 20 minutes to get to the cave entrance by van through a winding mine shaft. A screen drops from the van’s ceiling and Michael Jackson videos play, a feature designed to entertain visitors as they descend into darkness and heat. In many caves and mines the temperature remains constant and cool, but the Naica mine gets hotter with depth because it lies above an intrusion of magma about a mile below the surface. Within the cave itself, the temperature leaps to 112 degrees Fahrenheit with 90 to 100 percent humidity—hot enough that each visit carries the risk of heatstroke. By the time we reach the entrance, everyone glistens with sweat.
That article continues here.
Finally, lose yourself in this video. (If the voice doesn’t get to you!)
How to close today’s post?
Both by embracing the power of the natural order of things, life and death, and by reminding us all that there are in the order of over two billion stars in this universe.
That universe must be teeming with life, current and dormant, and the day when we truly confirm that will put everything into perspective!
By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
Scientists have discovered what they say could be fossils of some of the earliest living organisms on Earth.
They are represented by tiny filaments, knobs and tubes in Canadian rocks dated to be up to 4.28 billion years old.
That is a time not long after the planet’s formation and hundreds of millions of years before what is currently accepted as evidence for the most ancient life yet found on Earth.
The researchers report their investigation in the journal Nature.
As with all such claims about ancient life, the study is contentious. But the team believes it can answer any doubts.
The scientists’ putative microbes from Quebec are one-tenth the width of a human hair and contain significant quantities of haematite – a form of iron oxide or “rust”.
Matthew Dodd, who analysed the structures at University College London, UK, claimed the discovery would shed new light on the origins of life.
Learning from Dogs 