Why do people not own more dogs?   horror story #578 .  janine noticed carl had a swollen foot—and took his temp...104—a significant high temp(101-almost 102 norm). since she was just babysitting this dog she didn't want to take any chances and figured she better take him to the vet... well it being Saturday there were not a large number of vets available so she went to Bulger an Andover which is a 24 hour emergency vet place...  the result of that was that she sat in A room with Carl on the floor not even a fluffy to sit on for five hours when finally th  vet came in gave him a shot and prescribed bottle of pills and she went out to the front desk and the bill was over $400..   I realized that people have to make a living but somehow the cost of veterinary care and the availability of veterinary care is prohibitive. And very discouraging for people to even own a pet..  and one thing they teach in vet school or certainly right after that school because I've seen the course..  is how to make your client feel guilty if they don't spend more money on their pet on various tests and pills . I know of a veteran to whom I gave a service dog that was perfectly healthy nothing wrong with it he took it to his vet just to be introduced in case he should ever in an emergency need him the vet kept the dog overnight and charge the vets insurance company Over $7000 for a bunch of perfectly normal tests when nothing was wrong with him ..the veteran had great insurance. Janine was equally upset over the 5 hours out of her life..

That swollen front foot--- I have seen before ----for a while George Myers thought I was crazy because all the dogs related to BMW kennel seemed to come up with one swollen front foot a really high temperature over 105 feeling lousy and by the time I noticed it the temperature was down and they were feeling a lot better .. so in the course of my many years I found that whether we treated this Bigfoot disease or not it seemed to go away all of a sudden they never seem to get it twice---  I did see on a chart somewhere where doctor Myers finally had given it a name several other dogs too ---but it's always one front foot as this problem with Carl seemed to be..

 

Plan for the day--I've decided that I should have a better organized plan for the day and this day reigning or not I am going to plant some of those sunflower seeds---it was wonderful to think I'd get the rototiller around inside the pond area but that's just never going to happen so I think I'll plant some of these along the fence which I think will still be in the view of the camera..

Elizabeth had some fancy idea about asking camera people to guess which one got the biggest or whatever but these are supposed to be super duper sunflowers so it seems like I should be able to get them in the ground... so be it for the day