not to be crass but december 2009 can go suck it - i have never experienced such a shit sandwich of a month as december 2009 in my life.  sadly it wasn't even the type of crappy month that once you get past it you can look back and laugh - it was chock full of "only time will heal" moments.  after demeter's diagnosis and the loss of astrid i couldn't shake that insipid "bad things happen in threes" idea and i really wish i was able to.  the day after christmas we were enjoying some down time when murray started acting funny.  he had gotten knocked over earlier and i thought he was having back pain because he was stumbling around and wouldn't sit down but then he vomited and then i looked at his eyes and 5 minutes later we were in the car heading for the emergency room.  his eyes were darting from side to side and my thought was that he was having a stroke.  after an interminable time in the waiting room we got to talk to the vet where finally we got the news that murray had idiopathic vertebral disease. ivd is also referred to as "old dog disease" - how the hell did we not see that one coming?* long story short it took a few weeks but murray has made a full recovery and lives on to slowly waddle through life.  a few days ago dave let it slip that when we were in the er waiting room he didn't think murray would ever be coming home.  i'm here to tell you that he is one lucky guy that he was wrong because, dear gravy, i would not have been able to come back from that.

so that was december 2009 and while i'm sure it meant well it sucked...bad...really bad.  as you know we've since lost demeter and sadly it's time for us to try to move ahead.  i hope for only joyous posts in the future but the reality is with the amount of dogs we have our chance of crud happening is exponentially larger and yet our chance of joy is also exponentially larger...so there you go.  

here's a recent shot of murray...could you die???

 *a proud direct copyright infrigement of denis leary "lou gehrig. died of lou gehrig's disease.  how the hell do you not see that coming?" and if you aren't familiar with denis leary get to be because he's hee-larious.

you know how motocross riders will test new tricks in a foam pit first so they don't kill themselves...dooley takes this idea of safety first to the extreme.

can you imagine his look of "i told you so" if one of us gets hurt while running?

fortunately for me nature provided some inspiration with which to ease back into blogging.  last weekend we had the largest snowstorm we've seen in nashville in the 15 years we've been here.  it was a fantastic weekend of being snowed in together and that along with the beautiful white blanket over everything (along with the silence) did my heart good.  here are a few snippets for your enjoyment:

indi relished being covered in snow

we got a good bit of snow but the tail end was sleet so we ended up with a thick layer of ice on top.  carly quickly figured out the way to make the most of was to ingest it.

white trash cardboard sledding was ultimately unsuccessful

we often refer to murray as the ice road trucker because of his very slow yet steady gait (and admittedly probably also his chunky body type) - this weather gave him a chance to show his mettle.  it also illustrates the small amount of square footage we all took up in this weekend of togetherness.

in a fantastic twist of fate we happened to have started building a natural pool the week that nashville happened to see its largest snowstorm so we happened to have a bobcat with which to plow our asses out.  were it not for the available large machinery i'm pretty sure we would have been stranded here for quite a few days.   

plenty of muscle power for all our plowing needs

i am still shocked by the amount of snow - the likes of which we've never seen here

in the middle of december we took demeter, jewel and dooley to the vet for what we thought would be unremarkable annual check-ups for jewel and demeter and for a recheck of a large laceration carley inflicted on dooley’s flank.  at that point i thought my biggest worry was whether dooley’s butt was going to heal okay.  we walked out of the vet broken-hearted after finding out that demeter had a large mass in her colon and probably a few weeks to live.  an ultrasound a few days later didn’t deliver any better news.  we took her to our holistic vet for some antioxidants and herbs hoping to make her as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.  the news was a bit hard to swallow as other than some constipation she was exhibiting no symptoms and to that point she seemed an incredibly vital, happy 14-year-old dog.  i can say we enjoyed about a month of her continuing to show that vitality but on  tues that ended and we said goodbye to our sweet demeter yesterday. 

this has been a rough month for us and we’re hoping for some sunny days (literally and figuratively) ahead.  demeter’s passing has left a large hole in our family – i’m sitting here feeling incredibly lonely even though at this moment i’m surrounded by a husband and 14 fantastic dogs (or more accurately 12 fantastic dogs and 2 rotten ones).

i know i’ve been very slack on my blogging these past weeks and the posts i have written have not been the light-hearted dog stories i’d like them to be but after a few days to regroup i hope to be back posting more regularly.  

this is not the post i want to be writing today but sometimes life gets in the way of what we want.  today is astrid’s (seen here most recently) time and we are letting her go peacefully.  this decision of allowing our animals to die with dignity and peace is one that i take very seriously and one that i wish we afforded people.  it is an enormous decision and one that cannot be taken lightly.  when we know the time is coming we agonize over whether we’ll know when it’s appropriate, hoping we haven’t let them suffer for our sake, and each time we’ve gotten there we’ve found the clarity we’ve needed.  i am happy to be able to offer astrid this gift and to be able to hold her as she leaves but i am incredibly sad for the loss we’ll all feel when she’s gone.  if you have a minute in your day please wish astrid peace.  

i apologize for my extended absence but holy canoli i think the stress of trying to think of a blog post essentially completely incapacitated me.  i’ll just put this out there so it’s common knowledge – my life is pretty boring, and i mean that in the greatest possible way.  yes, i live with 16 dogs but dogs are creatures of habit and so they do the same thing day in and day out and are rather uninteresting.  i apparently need to work harder to make something out of nothing which i guess means you can look forward to, well, nothing.

we in nashville were lucky enough to have some absolutely gorgeous weather deep in the heart of november and the following is some video from that time…enjoy!

well, we’ve made it through burr season (see this) and now find ourselves firmly entrenched in what we fondly refer to as “berry eating season” (i said fondly refer to not wittily refer to or creatively refer to...it's a very literal title, not unlike doorman).  very simply this means the dogs spend all their time outside foraging under our trees for any kind of fallen debris they can ingest.  the one exception is carly (she's always always the exception), who chooses not to wait for things to fall but rather aggressively rips items off the trees.  as a result she gets more than her fair share of berries and tends to emit smells that are very reminiscent of the smell of someone getting a perm.