EAR CARE for DOGS

Groomed a dog today that had really bad yeasty ears and thought it was a good time to post a great homeopathic ear recipe.

“Purple Power Ear Treatment”
INGREDIENTS:
16 Oz. (= 0,47 litres) Isopropyl Alcohol
4 Tablespoons Boric Acid Powder
16 Drops Gentian Violet Solution 1%
Mix together in alcohol bottle and shake well.
NOTE – You will also need to shake solution every time you use it to disperse the Boric Acid Powder.
To use, purchase a small “Clairol”  squeeze type plastic bottle or a  baby ear syringe bottle to dispense solution to affected ears.
TREATMENT:   Evaluate condition of ears before treating and if very inflamed and sore do not attempt to pull hair or clean out ear at all.  See your vet.
Shake bottle each time before using.
Put cotton balls or similar absorbent material under their ear.
Flood the ear with solution, (gently squirt bottle), massage gently to the count of 60, wipe with a tissue.
Flood again on first treatment, wipe with a tissue,and leave alone without massage.
The dog will shake out the excess which can be wiped with a tissue, cotton ball, etc as the Gentian Violet does stain fabrics.
SCHEDULE of treatment is as follows:
Treat 2x per day for the first week to two weeks depending upon severity of ears
Treat 1x per day for the next 1-2 weeks
Treat 1x per month (or even less frequently, depending on the dog)
All of these ingredients should be available at a pharmacy or local Wal-Mart.  Wintergreen alcohol can be used for extra soothing.  Boric Acid Powder soothes the ear while Gentian Violet is an anti-infection agent.
The solution appears to work well on any and all ear problems from mites to wax to cankers.
After the 2nd or 3rd day you can clean out the ear with a Q- tip or cotton balls.
Happy Ears!!!

STREAKS OR NO STREAKS, A Window Cleaning Epiphany!

I never cease to amaze myself. Not because I'm smart...... I'm not. It's just that every so often something so simple happens that makes me wonder how did I not know that, why did it take 56 long years for the light bulb to go off on this one!!

Happened today.

My sister-in-law is coming to visit my dad and I in Arizona and staying for a week. I have been so busy grooming dogs, boarding a few and looking after dad that I realized the house was kind of messy. EEEE GAD, time to do some cleaning! The dirt on the patio door has been bothering me somewhat, though not enough to do something about it until now. Deciding that cleaning this window would be my first chore, off I went armed with a full roll of paper towels and vinegar windex in hand.

Now...let me just say, I HATE cleaning windows! I can never, and I do mean never, get them clean or streak-free. I don't know why, I just can't do it. It wasnt' helping much either because this particular task looked daunting thanks to all the wind and rain we've had lately. The glass looked like a dirt road, a red dirt road mind you as our soil here in the desert is reddish pink.

As I faced the door, I firmly planted my feet ample width apart, carefully raised my arm, placed my finger on the trigger of the windex and.........wait, don't shoot! Something in my little pea brain went, "Hey dummy, try wiping the dust off with a dry paper towel first". WHOA, where did that come from!

Oh my goodness, it worked! I didn't spend a half hour washing the door or waste a whole roll of paper towels trying to get the streaks and dirt off! "Hmmm", I said to myself. "Self, I bet there are other people out there that would like to know about this wonderful, easy, time saving tip." I was excited, I'd found something I could share with others that could help them and make their lives easier! "A great topic for my Blog", I thought. I could be the next Martha Stewart.

Then reality set in and I realized the solution had been easy, way too easy in fact. I started feeling rather foolish that I hadn't thought about this before. I mean, come on, what happens when you add rain to dry ground....you get mud. Guess it sort of goes without saying that you spray wet solution on a dirt/dust covered window, it's going to get muddy and streak. DUH.

Funny how some things are soooo simple. I don't know why I never thought of this before or why my 'muse' decided to pipe up and finally let me in on the secret........but I'm glad she did.

IS IT JUST ME?

Ok.....I have something to admit. I have issues! There, I said it.

One of my issues, or if you'd rather call them, 'pet peeves' involves other people getting into my personal space.

It seems to happen to me most when I am in line waiting to check out somewhere. Usually it's another female that treads too close. You know the kind, totally oblivious to the world going on around them. It's all about them! Typically they have an arm load of 'stuff' and a huge purse all getting ready to tumble out of their arms and land on me because they are almost standing on my heels! They are the ones that seem to believe they are the only ones in a hurry to get somewhere. News Flash.....we are ALL in a hurry!

Yesterday, however, while standing in line at the drugstore, it was a man threatening my comfort zone. There were three people in front of me and the line wasn't moving but he kept inching closer. As he did so, I found myself automatically stepping a bit nearer to the person in front of me until my frontal personal space began to cringe as much as my backside. My forward motion did nothing to stop his. As I moved up, so did he, eliminating any relief from my personal space infringement. Finally when I could go no further, I slowly turned my body side ways so I could see this interloper. He must have realized something was amiss because this tiny shift in my position caused him to back a way a bit. SUCCESS!

Oddly, I find that most female intruders don't get that subtlety and rarely move back. I wonder why this is. Is it a male/female issue or do they really think if they keep this forward motion pressure on that it will actually get them up to the counter faster? Male or female, I have news for them, IT WONT! No matter how hard you try to physically or mentally 'will it to be so', that personal space violator isn't going to get there any faster than I am.

I sometimes think I should go around wearing a sign on my body saying, "please respect my personal space" but would it work? Without defining just what my 'space' is, how do others know where that line in the sand is? And when pondering this subject, I don't know if even I can give you a definition of exactly where my space boundary's are. My limits are different from the next persons and I honestly think they can change on a daily basis. For instance, with the drugstore incident, I was tired and extremely stressed that day. My 82 year old diabetic father, had come down with a cold. A simple cold for him can turn into something very serious and he can't take certain medications because of the diabetes. Upon reflection, I think had I been in a more relaxed state, my boundary would have been closer to me and I wouldn't have felt bothered at all.

According to Wikipedia personal space is defined as: "the region surrounding a person which they regard as psychologically theirs. Invasion of personal space often leads to discomfort, anger, or anxiety on the part of the victim". Wikipedia goes on to declare that personal space is: "variable" indicating that people living in extremely populated areas experience smaller invisible barriers. Variable huh? So does that mean those people who invade your space have teeny tiny personal parameters? Does that mean we should be more 'forgiving' of those trespassers because they don't feel what we do?

I don't really have the answer to that question but I do know, I don't care who you are, when someone bangs your body with a grocery cart, a purse, their body or something they are carrying, I believe that is close enough to affect ANYONE's personal space.

Or is it???

IS IT WINTER IN PHOENIX?

Yes it's true the weather here in Arizona is wonderful.....most of the time.

But like anywhere else in the country, this State too experiences its share of winter weather. Last week a tremendous winter storm ripped through Arizona, dumping over 22" of snow on Flagstaff residents alone. To skiers, as well as Phoenix tourists, apparently a snow event in the North country is a great opportunity to make a trek several hours upstate to see the winter wonderland. I, on the other hand, prefer to stay home having seen enough of the white powder during Indiana winters.


Here in the middle of the State, we did not go unscathed and for a time, thought it might be a good idea to start building an ark! Rain poured non-stop for three days accompanied by winds of up to 40 MPH. If that wasn't enough, a tornado was said to have touched down in Scottsdale. Unheard of!!!


The empty lot next to the house had so much standing water that I was beginning to wonder if I was living on lake front property!



Many of Arizona's beautiful Palo Verde trees were uprooted from the wind. Their roots are so shallow and when the tree grows tall it becomes top heavy.

A strong wind simply blows them over.



Some can be righted and replanted such as the one in the picture above will be. However that does not always mean the tree will survive after having it's roots exposed.


This winter storm in actuality seemed to me more like an early spring storm in Indiana. I love the crisp fresh smell of the air after the storm cleared out. All is refreshed and renewed again, dust washed away. The landscape and desert animals seems to give thanks for the respite from the normally arid conditions. We snowbirds go back to enjoying the outdoors, sitting on patio's, cooking on the grill, walking, biking and......thinking about how cold and nasty it is back in the Midwest! Whew....glad we dodged that bullet!

CHRISTMAS IN THE DESERT

Yes Virginia, there is Christmas in the desert!
And I have the pictures to prove it.

I remember the first Christmas season I spent in Phoenix. Four years ago, we headed out to the sunny State of Arizona on the morning after a cold snowy Christmas in Indiana. Intent on finding somewhere to spend the winter in warmth and sunshine, we arrived in our targeted area a few days prior to New Years Eve. How strange it seemed to me to see Christmas lights and adornments everywhere. I thought I had left the land of Christmas behind.

It didn't feel right. It was warm, no snow and we were in the desert. Christmas is supposed to be about all those things we were escaping and all the festive decor in the warm desert sunshine just wasn't computing! Everywhere we looked there were cactus aglow with red, green, white and blue lights. Santa hats sitting atop tall thorny spines. Christmas balls stuck on the ends of others.

Slowly, as the New Year came and went, the out of place decorations disappeared and I forgot all about my convoluted opinions on the subject. That is....until the next Christmas!

The coming of the second Christmas in the desert found us arriving a month well before the Holiday. Bathing suits and sun tan oil were the routine of the day until one strange day, out of the blue, lights appeared on my neighbors house. There it was, in the middle of the desert....... a gingerbread house.


Complete with a mailbox that opened and closed automatically, the unique decoration contained of all things, a letter to Santa. Their backyard was also a riot of colored lights and a sign proclaiming it to be of all things, The North Pole! Suffice it to say that this house has won the annual community decorating contest for two years running.

Somehow though, it must have inspired me for a made a feeble attempt to decorate by hanging a stocking on our front door. This Christmas I even hung a second stocking on the back door. And while I still have not embraced the idea of a decorated tree, I did concede to putting out a 12" tall metal fire tree with a a Santa standing next to it. And....shhh.....please don't tell anyone this but, I have really come to enjoy the decorated golf cart parade lead by a large and fancy local firetruck, that goes right by my house every year.

Who knows, maybe next year I'll decorate our cart and enter the parade!

SCORPION!

It was bound to happen sooner or later. You can't live this close to the desert and not have close encounters with desert creatures, though some, I certainly prefer not to! Definitely not with the ones that can hurt you.

But....there he was.... on my bathroom floor.....a scorpion! I didn't realize that's what it was right away as I've never seen one that small. I just noticed a speck on the floor that my eye kept going back to because something didn't seem right about it. At first I thought it was just a tiny dust bunny but finally I put on my reading glasses, bent down and sure enough, a teeny, tiny scorpion.

I do mean tiny! He was no bigger than the tip of my little finger.

His size sent me into a tizzy, 'assuming' he was a hatchling and there could be more. I grabbed the first thing I could get and smashed it soundly with the back of my hairbrush. I immediately went inspecting the walls all over the house and madly vacumming the carpets. A call to my pest control company has them scheduled for spraying this week. Can't be soon enough and shame on me for not getting it done before I returned two weeks ago.

Conversations with my neighbors tell me that my fears about it being newly hatched, or however they are born, is probably unfounded as the tiny ones are just a different variety. Apparently the 'sting' of those smalls ones is much more virulent than the larger cousins. That is something I don't want to learn first hand!

My resolve not to go barefoot is revived however much I enjoy it. However, even that is not always a solution as one of my neighbors was stung while taking a shower!

I've heard it said that there is nothing in this desert that won't sting, bite or prick you. Even so, it is still beautiful here, and to enjoy it to the fullest, you just have to be careful!

BACK IN ARIZONA

It's been a week now that I've been back to spend the winter in sunny Arizona. I've managed to unpack, mostly put things where they go, do yardwork, grocery shop and laundry. Heck, this morning I even participated in the community's annual fall Patio Sale. So it seems, this cycle of life for the next six months goes on as usual.

The weather has been wonderful, temperatures reaching into the mid-90's. Even better, there have been no rattlesnake or scorpion sightings for now! The coyotes have been much more vocal this year than last, heard them howling up a storm in the middle of the night last night. I must say, being so close to the desert here in Gold Canyon, I do really enjoy seeing the wildlife (well not the snakes and scorpions)! Today I watched some sort of very large hawk circling over head and screeching out his warning as if to say, look out little insects, rodents, etc, I'm watching you. Yesterday I scared up a bunny hiding in the neighbors brush. I am hoping that this will be the
year I actually get to see a Javelina but maybe not since they don't usually come out around here until late at night and I'm not usually outside then. Last season there were Bobcat sightings and the year before, a Mountain Lion.

Not to be forgotten, the sunsets have been beautiful and the ever alluring and mysterious Superstion Mountains are never tiresome to gaze at.



















Life is good!