A Scare, A Blankie and An Excellent New Swap

This past week, it has been Abbie's turn to give us quite a scare. It all started when Mr. C, who is normally the perfect life-partner, made a Very Bad Mistake. He has the bad habit of not closing drawers, cabinets and closet doors after he has opened them. It irks me to no end, but since he actually enables my yarn addiction, I can usually overlook it. Earlier this week, he made some pork babyback ribs, of which I am not a fan. Even worse, he didn't close the sliding drawer that contains our garbage can after he disposed of the bones. Then he left to run an errand and I wasn't home either. These are the times Abbie often gets herself in trouble if she is left to run loose in the house, usually by snacking from the kitty box or chewing up something of mine.

This time, however, her excellent beagle nose led her straight to the open garbage can. When Mr. C got home, he found her chewing on one of the bones. He found the remains of 2 others. And I mean chewed. Into little needle-sharp shards of bone. And, being a typical man, he under-reacted and did nothing about it, not even calling me, because "she was acting fine.". I didn't get home until about 3 hours later. Of course, I freaked out. Then I went to trusty Google and called up some websites that offered advice to other idiots who had not protected their dogs from pork bones.

What I read freaked me out even more. If she didn't end up with a blockage, she could end up with a pierced or ruptured bowel, leading to peritonitis and a slow, agonizing death. Cooked chicken bones can do the same thing. Several people recommended feeding the dog lots of bread, to help the bones pass through their bowels more safely. It sounded like a good idea to me, so I made Abbie a "bread pudding" with torn up chunks of bread, a jar of lamb babyfood, 2 giant spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, 2 giant spoonfuls of pumpkin and sprinkled on a bit of garlic powder (good for digestion)and she scarfed half of it down. I gave her the rest about an hour later. Our vet told us what to watch out for and bring her in if she was exhibiting problems.

She seemed fine that evening and the next morning, passed a stool that contained a lot of bone fragments. She was not exhibiting any of the symptoms of possible problems, including dry coughing, unsuccessful attempts to throw up, pain in the abdominal area, straining to poop and passing blood (I am only giving yucky details in case any of you ever have a similar problem). By the second day, she had thrown up about a handful of very sharp bone shards, and got us up several times during that night to go out. She started having normal BM's after that and we are hoping we are out of the woods and that there isn't trouble brewing. I really think the bread pudding idea helped enormously, and we are still giving her some yogurt every day.

So I kept her close to me all week when I got home from work, and it is amazing how fast the time passes (and nothing gets accomplished)when I am hanging out with my fur-babies.

But I did manage to get quite a bit of knitting done. I even (gasp) picked up the crochet hook, which I had shunned since I began knitting 3 years ago. The spring campaign for Afghans for Afghans has been announced and they need hats, mittens, socks and blankets for infants and toddlers. I have a couple of wool baby hats I had already made and thought I'd make one or two more as well as knit a blanket. I remembered how much I liked the patchwork blankets we made from squares for the Greensburg, KS project and thought it would be fun, as well as a great stashbuster to make one of the for the campaign. So I knit a few squares and decided to crochet one for the center. After I made the crocheted square, I realized how much faster I can crochet than knit and decided to crochet some more to scatter around in the blanket.

I figured I'll need 40 or 48 squares to make the requested size, and I have finished 13 so far, in a little over one week. Abbie-nursing has made me very productive. I can't wait to see it come together. I have until at least sometime in March to finish and at this rate, I should be able to do another hat and maybe some mittens.

Here's the hat I am working on - I have to check the size as it may be bigger than toddler size.



And here are some of the squares:


And because of Abbie's little mishap this week, I have not been able to blog, which means I haven't been able to tell you that the second edition of the Mix Makers Swap is about to begin and signups are still going until midnight tonight. You can find out more by going to Ravelry groups and looking up Mix Makers Swap. The first round was a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to this next go-round. Of course there's yarn involved, but my favorite part is getting to burn and receive cd's full of music I haven't discovered before. I have a huge music library, but there's always room for more! So if you're looking for a very pleasant little diversion to lift you out of the winter blahs, this could do the trick! And if you're late, go over there anyway and ask Jen, the wonderful moderator, if you can squeeze in. And blame it on me, or rather, blame it on Mr. C.

We are supposed to emerge from our deep-freeze conditions tomorrow - sunny and high in the 60's. I will be outside, soaking up the sun and warmth. Hope it's coming your way soon!