All three of my greyhounds were poisoned as a result of the latest recall from Natural Balance pet food.

The official diagnosis was stable kidney failure. After 36 hours of heavy IV fluids to have their kidneys flushed, Daphne and Phoebe are recovering and came home Tuesday night. They are still spending each day at the vet for more fluids and observation. Joey did not do as well and ended up at a specialty hospital in canine ICU. Yesterday he finally turned around and is on the road to recovery, but with the possibility long term kidney damage. He comes home on Friday.

What you need to know is that the food they were eating does not contain wheat, but still contained melamine — an industry chemical — which was found in rice protein this time around. They had no more than three meals of the tainted food, and several thousand dollars later it looks like they are all going to make it. The long-term effects, however, remain to be seen.

Bottom line: The FDA does not have a handle on what’s going into pet food. I STRONGLY URGE you to switch over to cooking food for your pets today. While it may be more work, think about what’s happened to us and you may think otherwise.

Symptoms that affected our dogs: Nausea, excessive drinking, excessive urination. If you see any of this in your pets I would call your vet, regardless of whether or not your food has been recalled since our dogs were sick days before the recall actually happened.

Technorati Tags: pet food recall, natural balance, melamine, food safety, rice protein, imports

So it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted… busy few months. I’m finally finishing my MBA, working hard, and trying to have a life in between.

Thursday night I was sitting in class listening to what had to be the one of the most unfulfilling parts of my graduate school experience: listening to 40 minutes of training demos from an open source software site for a piece of software I did not own and likely never would use. As I was sitting there thinking about how this was 40 minutes of my life I’d never get back, I decided to seize the moment and make those 40 minutes count.

Now many people in that situation will do something like make a shopping list, but not me. I opted to make a list of things I’d do to become a better person. I’d dedicate myself to making a real change and to doing the things that are often lacking in my life. I’d put myself out there and do things that may be a little scary.

I thought hard and scribbled down what I knew were things that would make a difference, carefully choosing my words so that I stayed focused on what was most important. Satisfied with my progress, I sat back and read through the 12 things that I vowed to do each and every day. I would carry the list with me at all times as a reminder of the promise I made to myself.

I went home Thursday night feeling a little wiser and that I had already grown. I told my husband what I’d done and he liked the idea and thought maybe he’d make a list of his own.

I’ll be damned if I didn’t forget that list 10 hours later when I left for work.

Technorati Tags: 12 steps, self help

I got this post wrong. It’s even funnier than I remembered.

It says:

Fish tremble at the mention of my name

Damn photographic evidence.

technorati tags: austin, texas, traffic, bumper, sticker

On the back bumper of a Dodge Ram truck:

Bass tremble at the sight of me.

Ah, Texas.

technorati tags: bumper, stickers, Texas, Austin

I spend a lot of quality time sitting on Mopac in the mornings. I see a lot of interesting things: people reading, putting on make-up, arguing with a passenger, having elaborate one-sided arguments with other drivers (with the windows rolled up, nonetheless), and singing encore performances.

Today I noticed a bumper sticker on the Kia in front of me that made me smile. It simply said:

“Lord, please help me to be the person my dog thinks I am.”

Perhaps it’s that simple.

technorati tags: Austin, traffic, life

Like the swamps of Louisiana, Southeast Texas is full of ghost stories. The one I remember the most from my childhood was Crybaby Bridge, where supposedly a baby was thrown from a bridge in Orange County and on foggy nights you can still hear the baby crying. My cousin used to swear she heard the crying, but I never did.

Over the years I’ve often questioned religion and my beliefs, but one thing that keeps coming back to me are the stories of strange things that happen following a death. People telling these stories are often 100% stable and would not normally suspend disbelief, so it seems to me that there has to be something to it.

Take these stories that I heard this weekend:

• In the mid-1990s my father was concerned about some financial matters, and went home to take a nap. He woke up from his nap on the sofa and found his father’s business card laying on the coffee table. My grandfather had been dead since the early 1980s, and retired for many, many years before his death. We did not have any of his business cards, and to this day no one knows where that card came from.
• My cousin could make train whistle sounds with his mouth. He died in a car accident in the late 1990s. The night he died the family gathered at his parents’ house. About 2 am everyone heard a train whistle outside that sounded so much like the sounds he could make that his toddler son called out “Daddy.” The next morning my uncle, who lived next door, swore that he saw my cousin walking towards his parents’ house.
• My mom’s sister died from a lengthy illness last November. She had been in the hospital for several months before she died, and there were none of her medications at home. My mother, who had been her primary caregiver, spent several days straight cleaning out her room at my grandmother’s house, and finally decided to take a short break. She went back into the room after a couple of hours and found a pain pill laying on the nightstand — the type of pain pills my aunt took.
• My grandmother was worried about something a few years ago to the point that it was keeping her awake at night. She opened her eyes to find her aunt Kathleen (who had been dead for several years) standing there, and Kathleen said something to the effect of “Everything is going to work itself out. It will be okay,” and then she vanished.
• My grandmother has a very old rocking chair that has been in the family for generations. It has a very distinct sound when it rocks. Several people in my family claim they have heard it rocking at night.

My husband has a theory about when pets die. He says they die so that there’s someone waiting for you. And I think maybe I’m starting to believe that. Perhaps when you lose a pet and for several weeks after they die when you keep thinking you see them out of the corner of your eye, maybe you really are….

technorati tags: voodoo, texas, ghosts, loss, swamps

My beloved cat Morrison died on Friday. He had been sick off and on for the last couple of years with a variety of ailments: diabetes, hyperthyroidism, arthritis, etc.

Over the last few months he had started to slow down. I knew something was wrong, but we could never figure out what. Finally on Friday his specialist discovered that he had a huge tumor in his chest. She didn’t think he’d make it through surgery, and I didn’t want to have him doing chemo once a week when we all knew it wouldn’t cure him. He had between two and eight weeks left, and eventually he would suffocate.

So, I decided that enough was enough, and to let him go before he really started to suffer. It absolutely broke my heart, but I firmly believe that it’s the obligation you have to your pets to know when to say goodbye. They give so much to you over the years and ask so little in return, and it’s the least you can do.

I got Morrison on September 24, 1993 when he was 13 weeks old and I was 19. He was the first thing I got when I moved away from the dorm and into an apartment in college. He was my roommate when I lived alone, always welcomed me with a purr no matter how bad my day had been, traveled with me countless times to visit my parents, moved five times without complaining, welcomed my new boyfriend who later became my husband, lived with four dogs, slept by my side every night for 13 years, and took his entire illness in stride.

What I learned from Morrison was to take things as they come and to not sweat the small stuff. And to always be friendly to anyone and everything… life is just easier that way.

I’ll miss you, little man.

technorati tags: pets, cats, death, loss

Today we had to have out our beloved cat, Morrison, put to sleep. He’s had diabetes and arthritis for the past two years, and today we learned he had cancer and that there was nothing that could be done. We let him go before things got really awful for him.

This is probably going on in Heaven right now (after Zephyr finished sniffing his butt that is)…

Believe it or not, there’s actually very good news today too, but it will have to wait.

technorati tags: pets, cats, death, loss

After about four weeks of downtime, I’m starting a new job on Monday. This summer was the first time I’ve had this much time off since college, and it’s been great but I’m ready to go back to work and I’m really excited about my new job.

Here’s what I did on my summer vacation:

• Read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Threw a baby shower
• Watched the first two seasons of 24
• Re-read Lord of the Flies
• Made going to the gym more of a habit
• Added a third column to my blog
• Saw Soulive
• Started going for more walks with my dog
• Learned how to play Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords
• Made a dent in my magazine backlog
• Started reading The Third Policeman

And here’s what I did not get done that I wanted to do:

• Go to the Dr. Pepper Museum
• Clean out my garage
• Visit my family in Orange, Texas
• Thin out CDs

technorati tags: leisure, unemployment, life

I like numbers. It’s the precision of numbers — and the importance of that precision — that makes me respect numbers so much. Also, it’s easy to detect patterns in numbers and predict future patterns.

As a child The Count was my favorite Sesame Street character. For years I also played soccer for as a kid growing up in Orange, Texas. Like many great pro athletes, I insisted on having the same number each year even when I changed teams. The number? 3

I’ve always been partial to odd numbers as well. With the exception of the number 2, all prime numbers are odd. I was born in an odd month, on an odd day, and both are prime numbers. So today I thought I’d ask myself what number I am.

Funny, both 3 and 5 represent numbers in my birthday.

technorati tags: numbers, childhood, counting