Hi, my name is snow. Remember me? Snowmeggadon, in words and pictures

Hi, my name is snow.

Remember me?

I hang out in winter.                     

I am winter.

Oh, this isn’t winter? What, with the Ides of March and St. Patty and Spring Forward and all?

Coyote Wall Syncline of the Columbia Gorge. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Surfboards and boat floats, Snowmeggadon March 2019. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I was a Snow Angel

when you were a kiddo.

A snowman you patted together with soggy gloves,

beaning neighbor kids with snow ammo.

Snowboarding the front yard - super-G downhill Olympics! The THRILL OF VICTORY! The agony of defeat!

Sticking your tongue out,

gulping down snow flakes like frosted flakes.

Doxie Doodle’s snow day. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I am a snow dog day.

Nose and paws

porpoising up from the depths in the yard -

skying up, up and away!

Surfing frozen waves -

paws and tail and tongue

in mid air!

Barking and biting at little white treats…

sprinkled from above.

Catatonic inside. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I am a Snow Day.

And another

and another

and another...

AM commute. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I threaten life if you’re not careful.

I am power outages and

long term sub-freezing temps.

I am no internet! (Like, O M G!)

I am no longer just a day, or

a week, or

a month….

I am Snowmeggadon.

Snowpocalypse.

Hear me roar.   

A force of nature. 

I AM nature.

Was there ever any doubt about

who was in charge?

And you…

far below,

shovel driveways and sidewalks

and plow and scrape the roads,

unearthing cars from

my smothery, mothery snow blanket.

Yellow vee-dub. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Cars don’t work in this stuff, so we go old school. Snow boots. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I am icy roads and

spin outs

and

I am the heart of the hearth -

the fireplace glow.

And I am

digging out with my neighbors,

taking care of the quail in the yard,

defrosting the hummingbird feeder. Daily.

Quail neighbors and friends. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I am snow bus routes and

snow days,

delaying school,

cutting into summer.

But it wasn’t so long ago

that I was

Drought Emergency Declaration 2015.

And Eagle Creek Wildfire, #1 fire in the country, 2017…

Be careful what you wish for.

Garden party. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Oh, that’s right, but this isn’t winter.    

We’re springing forward!

This isn’t Global Warming.  Or Climate Change.

This is just…. The New Norm.              

Snow day still life. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Endless summers.

Never ending winters.

I once was

your Snow Angel.          

Don’t you be so

Snowmeggadon Curmudgeon

now.

Our Snow Man. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Snowmeggadon: will it never end? Yard art speaks out

Rusty. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

 

Dear Dog Diary:

Recycle dog Rusty here.

In a former life, I was a toaster. And scrap metal.

We Oregonians are way into reuse and recycling - so now I have a new life. As yard art.

Tiki Dude and I are surfing, or should I say, suffering, snow in the yard. Lots and lots of snow. In the Columbia River Gorge - surf dog central - normally.

Here are a few pix before, during, and now.

It’s Snowmeggadon 2019 - the biggest winter in decades.

Tiki Dude and Rusty. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Tiki Dude and Rusty. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

We thought two years ago, Snowmeggadon 2017 was bad. Snowpocalapse! It snowed for three months straight! There may be something to this global warming thing. Because winters are not normal anymore.

Ask any person about shoveling snow, every day, for three months and see how they react.

This Snowmeggadon hasn’t lasted as long (yet) - only three weeks so far, with no sign of stopping- but the dumps are way higher, way deeper every day. You can’t go anywhere, do anything, move. You’re just stuck.

It’s late February! It’s supposed to be over!

So, we just hang out. Yard art for Surf Dog Diaries.

Watching, as the girl runs around, shoveling snow. Again.

The dog and cat guarding the house, inside, warmed by the fire. Not motivated.

Snow day! Tia and Doodle, author animals, inside. Photo (c) Barb Ayers, Dogdiary.org

Now she’s scraping the roof – there’s a thing called snow load - too much snow can cave your roof.

For sure this is too much snow.

Tiki Dude and I thought we’d pitch in and do the Dog Blog.

I’m trying my best here to be cheerful but Tiki’s smile is a little scowly lately.

He’s keeping a stiff upper lip….

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Ooh! Sunshine came out for a moment!!! Here’s my happy ear flap up - crumb tray out look….

Hey, would you believe – I have a defrost button!?! We may have to try it out this winter.

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

I checked on surfboard dude in the driveway and here’s what he had to say…

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Nada.

Guess he’s the strong, silent type.

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

And the BBQ boyz?

They’re pretty silent, too.

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

 Momma quail yard art is almost visible again. She’s just peeking out.

Her kids, still buried under snow.

Thankfully, our actual quail neighbors still commute through the yard – their food is buried, too. So the girl puts out seed every day for them.

And defrosts the hummingbird feeder.

On the front porch are the prayer flags. They flitter and float. They’re a little more lively than the rest of us.

Of course, a roof overhead can’t hurt.

Then again, they are hanging with icicles.

Prayer flags, front porch. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Here are cars.

Now they’re yard art, too.

Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, www.DogDiary.org

Snow day! It’s super fun at first.

But then you want it to go away after about a week. Like normal.

Day after day, snow and snow and snow, just wears you down.

My tail’s drooping a little here.

I may be a little rustier than usual.

We’d appreciate a normal winter, is all.

Can you help us with that, Diary?

Rusty

The ups n downs of life – this is the ride. Surfing over, and through, that dreaded word - “cancer.” (Part 4/finale)

Part 4 of “The Elephant in the room” mini series

Now, after surgery, banging around the house with a Cone Of Shame, doxie Doodle’s eyes are a little less glisteny. The indignity!

Cone no mo! Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDairy.org

But, cone is good – it helps protect those eight angry black stitches on Doodle’s head. Those pesky, annoying, scratchy itchy stitches…

Wieners are thin-skinned anyway, with tiny, pointy faces. They’re almost all nose and some eyes and there’s not a lot of hair or skin (or maybe even excess brains) left for a comb-over for the hole she cut.

Our lady vet must have run out of room. Some of his charismatic doxie forehead wrinkles got removed in the process.

It was a face-lift, like his eyebrows were raised all the time, exclaiming “WHASSUP, DUDE?!”

Normally, aren’t we all up for a little face-lift in middle age?

But it’s really weird on a middle-aged doxie.

I didn’t shoot a lot of pictures of his bad side until it was OK. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

I didn’t shoot a lot of photos during this time of our lives.

I waited until emancipation day – the day the cone came off – to resume my normal hundred-plus--dog-pictures-per-week habit.

It was the right thing to do.

We have a dog blog but the cone of indignity was plenty to deal with. You know, doggie HIPPA and all.

My baby doxie a year after surgery. From his good side. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDairy.org

His head zipper slowly melted, from angry raised red skin, to flat, bald scalp.

I clipped the stitches out myself with tools from my own personal disasters.

Doodle was a rather patient patient, which is so unlike the humans of my family.

Another eight stitches swam beneath the surface of his little forehead, and they’d dissolve on their own in another month, vet lady said.

I can’t breathe until biopsy results come back.

I can’t breathe, just thinking about it.

The elephant on his head.

In the room.

The surgery.

How quickly things can change.

Fear.

The Big C.

Doodle, Christmas 2017, after flying with me to his grandpa and grandma’s. Here, living with the shadow of cancer - before elephant surgery. Photo: Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Before that bad year, it was four surf dogs on board - including me. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

Phone call, please don't take me back to last year when my old blind dog, Dude, got sick and never recovered.  

I miss my Dude, surfing life, and surfing waves with our Surf Dog Diaries family.

Even after losing one eye, then two.

Surfing with glaucoma. Cancer. And Alzheimer’s.

I miss my Elvis, proud basset nose rider on my surfboard. Seeing Eye dog for his blind brother. And me.

Since that crappy year of dog disasters, we’re still trying to find our Mojo, Doodle and I.  

Trying to act like the house isn’t painfully empty of another 40 toes, tap dancing when the food bowl calls.

Surfing with one dog, not three.

But after the adjustment period, the grieving and the trying-to-act-normal-again, I think Doodle is secretly happy to earn the top dog spot.

He lived in the shadow of the basset boys.  

He has now expanded to fill the void.

He shows me the way through grief – without blinking a stitched-up eye.

Now, no more fast-growing tumor that threatened to take over his head, and our lives, secretly ruining Christmas.

No more elephants.

His or mine. 

Doodle’s only seven and a half - 49 in dog years. Too young for cancer.

Right?

My sweet son. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

RING, RING! 

The dreaded vet call came today.

Biopsy results.

Heart in throat moments until the vet spoke….

“A sebaceous adenoma, nothing to worry about. Should not recur or grow back. It’s all good news!”

But I read up on it –

“Adenomas are a cutaneous condition characterized by a slow-growing tumor usually presenting as a pink, flesh-colored, or yellow nodule”.

Hmm, that’s weird, I thought the elephant on his head was grey….

And Doodle’s tumor grew from zero to one-half-inch in less than a month, which is both fast and huge on a four-inch doxie brain.

His tumor was also not slow growing. What does that mean?

Google said, “Adenomas are not significant on their own, however may be associated with a genetic condition that predisposes individuals to cancer and particularly colorectal cancer.”

Which begs the question; do they do doxie colonoscopies these days?

OK. So we’re back to fake normal. Totally inappropriate thoughts.

Whew!

A couple of years ago, the biopsy wasn’t so rosy for my blind dog Dude.

He had bad cancer that spread.

Still, we cheated death until the very end.

He never stopped living.

We stole another two years out of his cancer’s life.

My brave little doxie walks the plank of life…. Photo: (c) Barb Ayers, DogDiary.org

THE MORAL OF OUR STORY IS THIS:

NO MATTER WHAT THE DIAGNOSIS –

WE’RE IN IT TOGETHER.

DON’T LET FEAR STOP LIFE.

OR DRIVE LIFE.

SURF THAT BIOPSY INSTEAD.

-The end-