I was about to write, “we finally did some harvesting from the garden!” But really, it wasn’t our first harvest. Just our first big(ish) harvest. Before today, we picked some sprigs of rosemary, mint, and parsley, some sweet peas, and enough lettuce and kale for a couple small side salads. But it doesn’t feel like much when it’s really just herbs and leaves.
This past weekend, however, we finally dug up some of the things that had been growing under ground! We got some Yukon gold potatoes, and some ‘short n sweet’ carrots. They were both delicious, and it was really rewarding to make a vegetarian dinner with those, some bolete mushrooms we found foraging, and some produce from a local farmer’s market. Of course, I can’t wait to see if we get tomatoes, peppers, russet potatoes, cucumbers, squashes, watermelons, and all the other summer crops.
Now for the part about the “garden pupdate.” We have a 10, almost 11-year-old rottie mix named Macy. She’s our garden pup, and we always say she’s “guardin’ the garden” when we’re out working. This isn’t exactly blog related, but I wanted to get it out there because it would have been easier on us if we’d known in advance. About a week ago, Macy started stumbling a lot, and losing her balance. After she fell over a couple times, I knew she needed to go to the vet.
They were able to see her that same evening. I was hoping it was going to be a quick and easy diagnosis of an inner ear infection (she loves playing with the hose and easily could have gotten some water in there), but the vet said it didn’t look overtly infected. They took some bloodwork, which came back normal. Despite not being an obvious ear infection, her vet started her on some antibiotics, in case it was deep in her inner ear, somewhere that he couldn’t see.
But, after the bloodwork came back normal and she was still getting worse (like, I had to hold her upright and put a bowl of broth right in front of her face in order to get some fluids into her), we had to make a decision about whether to get a chest x-ray (which would tell us if she had any cancer that had spread to the lungs, making other testing unnecessary, and costing about $500) or a CT scan of her head (to see if there was a tumor in the brain, or if an ear infection was present, and would cost several thousand dollars).
A stressful few days, as all of this unfolded. I was still holding onto the hope of an ear infection, which would start to show improvements after about 3 days or so, with antibiotics. The other possibility I was hoping for is called “old dog syndrome,” or canine vestibular disease. It’s idiopathic, meaning there’s not really a test to diagnose it, or even really any specific treatments. But for many dogs, it clears up in again, about 3 days. So we waited.
THANK GOODNESS she showed some serious improvement on Thursday evening. She was eating, getting around better, and even wanted to play with her toy. It’s been consistent since then, with no backsliding. She may always have a head tilt and be a little wobbly, or those things may resolve over time. We still don’t really know if it was an ear infection or vestibular disease, but because of how scared and stressed we were last week, I figured that if any of my readers have a pup, this could be some useful information to have.
Macy will keep guardin’ the garden, and hopefully we’ll have an even bigger harvest soon!
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 