ErkkilaDotOrg

MG, it’s a CC.

The Spore folks reconsidered after a lot of bad press and complaints. So, our pre-orders are back on!

The new John Williams score for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out. How can an 80’s kid possibly resist?

Not to mention a Richard Cheese-ified version of the Indiana Jones theme on Itunes (Plus, so no DRM, if I read the fine print properly).

Baby chicks–Ameraucanas– (and keets–pied) should be here by June 27th or 28th. With any luck the coop will be mostly done, if we can find someone who can blow in insulation before then. If we’re super super lucky, we will get Squeak and the silkies to raise them.

Icky’s on chemo. So far so good, but he can’t have any doggie visitors for awhile. We still aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Cupcake’s liver and lipomas, but she goes in for more work on Thursday.

-epe

Coop II work continues. I feel queasy thinking about all the inside work that has to be done before we can get chickens in (insulation, wallboard, plastic sheeting, nestboxes, chicken dooors…) We’re hoping for more Ameraucanas and some pied Guineas this year.

Icky starts chemotherapy this week. He’ll be on Chlorambucil and Prednisone.

I haven’t blogged in awhile. Just haven’t felt like it. :P

• I have ordered a bag that bites after seeing one on Jenna’s blog.
• Cupcake had a liver enzyme reading that was a little too high before she had her last lump removal/dental…but after taking her off her l-thyroxine (she’s hypothyroid) and cutting the ground beef out of her meals, it’s coming back down. *Sigh*. 3 small dogs over 10 and the big one going on 8. It will be expensive for awhile I think.
• Candy mania. I ordered Easter chocolate from See’s (can’t resist the various filled chocolate eggs) and more Japanese candy from J-List/Jbox. A little every day, that’s the key.
• We might go to Dublin (Ireland) later this year as that’s where the next IETF is being held. Whoot! (assuming Icky is not sick, in which case Paul will go but I won’t)
• Our future neighbor (lives in San Diego currently) called and rather sheepishly asked if his friend the mason had ever come by to build a chicken coop last year…nope, and we still have windows purchased for the project in our barn. But he himself is coming to town in April and is lining up work, and asked if we would like it built! So maybe we’ll be picking up a few more Ameraucanas after all! Maybe some Jersey Giants, too. /me crosses fingers for more green eggs in the fall.
• Squeak is out of the house and living with the silkies in the barn in a little swimming pool pen. Everyone’s happy not being picked on in the big coop. Hopefully in the new coop we can subdivide into pens for this sort of issue. Thank God. Squeak is cute and all but she’s terribly loud and smells horrible.
• Speaking of ’smells horrible’, the RIR hen caged in our kitchen better get her feathers back soon. OMG. She has gotten so friendly, though.

Oops, dinner.

We noticed back around Feb. 16th or so that Icky’s lymph nodes were slightly swollen; we got the biopsy results today, and Dr. Oros says it’s lymphoma, but fortunately it’s the indolent (slow developing) type. Now we just have to wait for immunohistochemistry results to figure out what kind so they will know what treatment to use. Our vet said if they have to have lymphoma, this is the least-bad type.

One fox down. 18 to go if we’re to make it all even. Unfortunately, in the process one chicken (Minty) was seriously injured and might not make it, and Icky got a minor leg injury during the melee (either puncture wounds in leg from running through heavy brush, or possibly a ricocheting shotgun pellet (he wasn’t anywhere near the action at the time, and the vet didn’t think this was the case). I hope it’s the same fox that got Beardo a couple of weeks ago. We know there must be more as this one was a rather small female and we’ve seen a larger male around. Notice the chicken feathers in her mouth. Normally I’d feel bad, but not when they’re eating our pets. Poor pee. I was not even home and within a few minutes he had shot his first fox, had to put an injured chicken into the barn, and rush Icky to the vet (he’s fine btw, just a small skin injury and is all bandaged up).
P.S. He used my .22/.410 rifle/shotgun combo…shotgun stopped it, .22 finished, one more .22 to ensure.

Today is, besides being Grep’s 12th birthday, also the hatch date for our second set of chickens from last year. Unfortunately, our favorite, Beardo, didn’t quite make it; she got taken, probably by a fox, on Monday the 23rd. :( We were too complacent since all previous attacks had been in the afternoon; this time it was at 7:40 am and all I found was a pile of feathers near the barn. Of course, Pee was out of town so I feel guilty.

We have not had terrific luck with birds. Of 37 we’ve had in the past year or so, we lost 19 to predators (mostly fox/dog/coyote, 1 to hawk), 3 to illness (all guinea fowl), had to kill one rooster for people aggression, and we have 14 left alive. We nearly lost a silkie hen to a hawk the other day, if the silkie roosters hadn’t come along and kicked its ass.

At least we get to watch Ellie the IG this weekend!

It’s definitely Providence (a Rhode Island Red) laying eggs. The other day we kicked Squeak off the nest and Provy ran right in to sit there. Squeak chased her back off and she stood around with her legs crossed (figuratively) til we set her up in the other dog kennel. Sure enough, later there was another brown egg (even darker this time). Squeak’s currently sitting in a bucket in our kitchen (screened) to break her off her empty nest. Paul’s got a sign on it that says ‘Bucket of Chicken–do not eat,’ which Sobe can’t seem to read.
In other news, Cupcake was diagnosed as hypothyroid–which means, maybe after being on a pill for awhile, she may start losing weight! I hope someday she can run as fast as Icky and be able to jump up and down as easily as he can.

And, finally, my mom and I went out to the outlet mall and replaced all the chipped lids for my Corningware–I had only one left that was OK.

That little guy in the front, Pidge, is still looking for a home. Check out the Rochester IGs Drupal for more info.

We have had a great couple of nights for movies. We rented Aeon Flux and Superman Returns from Netflix. The first was not bad, worth a rental at least. Loved the second. We’ll probably pick up the big box set. If you pick one up, be careful–there were some things missing from the first batch of sets released. Check here for more info. We also made a trip to Walmart and picked up Clerks II (watched and loved it yesterday), Da Vinci Code (watched earlier today while decorating the tree!) and Young Frankenstein (old favorite).

Michelle F with Rochester Italian Greyhounds is seeking a home for a male, blue, 7 year old IG. There is more information and contact information listed on the (as yet unofficial) Rochester IGs drupal site if you are interested. (Not sure if she’s only looking for someone in the Rochester NY area–ask Michelle).

Well, no sooner did we lose one that we noticed another guinea keet had a different kind of problem–looked as if it was gasping for air. This was on Saturday morning, and we pulled it out immediately in case it was contagious. Since we weren’t sure if it was bacterial and it was all we had, we started him (her?) on terramycin.

Of course. Animals always get sick at the start of a long weekend.

Googling gasping problems in poultry, we found a lot about gape worm (snail/slug larvae in the lungs/trachea). After the last keet fiasco, we were loathe to name this one, but Paul couldn’t help it. It just popped out. The bird is Gilbert Gape. Of course, if he gets well and goes back into the coop we will never be able to tell him from the others.

So Tuesday morning, I called one animal hospital with an avian vet and got an appointment immediately…only, it turned out when I got there that the vet didn’t normally deal with poultry (miscommunication with desk staff). She was very nice and said she’d take a look, anyway. She seemed to think the problem might be an impacted crop, but was about to go on vacation and was uncomfortable about doing surgery then leaving with no followup care (as was I).

So, turned around, came home, called another vet (just a few miles down the road from the last one, half an hour from here). This vet seemed more familiar with guinea fowl (even owns one)! He wanted to rule out gape worm, so we’ve got Gilbert(a) on a dewormer and will see how that goes.

In other news, Cupcake is no longer a foster but is now our permanent dog.

Able to leap small love seats in a single bound…look, down on the couch…it’s a slug…it’s a seal…it’s…HOUNDENBERG!

It looks as if we are fostering an Italian Greyhound named Cupcake. She loved me at Michelle’s, but I think she lost the love a little when we got home and she found out we already have three dogs here. Her owner is in the hospital (other owner is unable to care for her), so she’s spending the summer here at Camp Erkkila. With any luck she’ll get used to the other dogs and lose a little weight (she’s adorable, but a bit hard to lift for an IG). In the meantime she’s camped in front of the air conditioner and in the bathroom (cool spots and free of other dogs). Sobe greatly covets her newspaper squeaky toy but is, like the other dogs, rather indifferent to Cupcake.

After reading this we decided they were big enough. Now we’re crossing our fingers that they’ll be good flyers by the time a coyote or fox starts sniffing around.

Looks like we might be fostering an IG. Maybe. Or not. Situation unclear. Guess we’ll know by Friday.

Phil Lau dropped by with his beagle, Scout. As you can see, Icky liked her a lot. Good thing Icky’s neutered.

I think I forgot to mention we went to another Rochester Small Dog Playgroup event last week. Here are pictures. Another guy posted some here.

OK, so I’ve been waiting for the technology to mature before getting an HD DVR.

Waiting for them to work out the copyright issues so they could allow video extraction, without my having to go through an additional analog-to-digital conversion on another box (yes, I’ve been spoiled by ReplayTV and DVArchive) to edit the video and burn a DVD (yes, this is still legal. It’s called fair use, if we’re only making a copy for ourselves).

Waiting for CableCard so that I don’t have to connect the analog output of a cable box to an external DVR that *does* allow video extraction.

Tivo version 3 may be that box. But I don’t feel like waiting months.

Time Warner has the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. So far, I’m finding it has an extremely crappy user interface compared to either ReplayTV or Tivo. But at least it’s HD, I didn’t have to pay for the box, and when I get sick of it I can just take it back to them and cancel whenever. Like when the Tivo V3’s come out.

A work in progress.
Note the new wiki (in link) icon. Pee insisted either I make a new icon that didn’t cut off Icky’s head, or forgo an icon entirely.

Happy birthday Icky !
A round of butt sniffing should make it a perfect day :)

What do you get when you mix many dogs and people in a small room? Bedlam. Icky got to meet Tanner and Marley Blue and Melody the Whippet, who was apparently a bit unhappy with this Boston Terrier: (that’s Icky’s head at bottom).
Hopefully we can do that again someday:

• Rochester City IGs
• Rochester Small Dog Playgroup

I went to join an Italian Greyhound forum the other day, set up an account, and edited my signature to include a couple of links: one to this page, and one to Icky’s gallery. Well, yesterday we got back a private message saying my signature had been edited to remove both links. Apparently the first doesn’t constitute ‘family content’ because of ‘implied profanity’–apparently ‘WTF’ and ‘Bitch and Moan’ offend some peoples’ delicate sensibilities. That, I can understand–after all, we do want to make the internet safe for all 5 year olds, don’t we (seriously, if they don’t want to link to that, I can understand). However, the reason they gave for removing Icky’s link is that on that page is a link to Icky’s breeder, Dierking’s. Now, I could understand their not wanting a commercial link (she does sell puppies) on *their* forum, but we’re talking about a link to my own dog’s pictures, with the link mentioned incidentally as the place from which he was obtained.

So, it’s either edit my page because they don’t want anyone seeing a link to Dierkings (not on their own page, mind you, but on *mine*), or don’t post links to my dog’s pictures.

Guess not, guys. Regrettably, I won’t be participating in that forum. *So* sorry, I just don’t feel guilty about purchasing a dog from them. Especially given the dearth of IG rescues in western New York (at least based on the last few months of Petfinder listings), and the reluctance of those further afield to adopt outside their area.