Thursday, July 19, 2007 First comes the blood, then come the boys...

Xochitl is going in for her spaying tomorrow. I'm so not looking forward to it, but it's a very good thing to do. It minimizes the chance of mammary cancer in dogs, especially if it is done before their first heat cycle. Plus I really don't want to go through the whole mentrual streaks on the floor or pillows again, like I had with Konichiwawa. I know you're thinking "Mikey, I thought that you like blood?" Well, that would be fake blood, or the occasional non-life threatening wound that is picture worthy. Certainly not dog pussy blood... And like Margaret White said, "First comes the blood, then come the boys... Sniffin like dogs..."





If you want to see what the spay procedure involves, click on the following link: http://www.thepetcenter.com/sur/sp.html

UPDATE:
July 23rd, 2007
Xochitl did just fine. Although, she was about to go into heat, so the vet charged me another "nominal fee." She was really sore the first day & whined a lot because she couldn't get on the bed or couch by herself. The vet sent home some puppy painkiller so she's doing better with that now too. By Sunday she was pretty much back to normal, except the nasty scar & stitches on her belly which will hopefully heal quickly.

Monday, July 16, 2007 Caddo Lake - Friday the 13th weekend - July '07

Craig & I went ot Caddo Lake this Friday the 13th weekend. We rented out Big Cypress Cottage again, which is so much fun. We stayed there once last winter & couldn't wait to come back in the summer. Usually we take our camper & stay at Caddo Lake State Park, but every once in a while we like to rent a cabin. The cottage is right on the water, which made for easy access for our kayaks. We got there about 6:00 pm on Friday after our 3 hour drive from Dallas. As you can see here, I had to bring some F13 paraphernalia to celebrate Jason's birthday....

We got up early Saturday morning & headed over to Crip's Camp for breakfast & a boat rental. Breakfast there is eggs, bacon, toast, & hashbrowns (your choice of eggs & NO substitutions, but it's cheap & good.) The temperature never broke 80 degrees all weekend, which is really odd for Texas in July, but I'm not complaining. We headed out into the swamp about 10:30 am & started our 5 hour exploration of the sloughs & bayous. It was overcast & drizzly most of the day, but it never rained too hard while we were on the boat. The water level was higher than I had ever seen it, so navigating through narrower areas was much easier this time. The high water level did make it impossible to do any geocaching though, since most of the caches looked to be underwater at this point.

I have no idea what this expression is all about...

Here's a lake house that I would love to have...

Waterfowl.....

We came across this steamboat taking visitors on a swamp tour...

It's Captain Craig!

Us in our glamourous ponchos...

Craig snapping a pic of me peeing...

After the swamp exploration, we headed back to the cottage & took our kayaks out for a while. The current was pretty strong in the open channel, so we stayed in the bald cypress canopy. That was a lot of fun, but it was also creepy. There were HUGE swamp spiders crawling all over the trees & jumping across the water. I didn't get any spider pics, but you can see some here: SWAMP SPIDER

Here's a few videos I took while out on our swamp expedition: (PS- Youtube's video conversion sucks!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YKT3vydFkg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mix4VubnII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usM2uk4y-Y8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqjyixP13IM

We had a terrific time, but as usual, the weekend went by way too fast. I wasn't ready to come home yet, but I'll be heading back to Caddo Lake at least once more this year... Hopefully soon!