Every good horror film (and most bad ones) gets a sequel. Less than a year after the first installment, my dogs are somehow killing birds in the yard again.
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Last of my ongoing photographic and gibber-acular tribute to my home office, now that I’m moving back into a cube farm.
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I’m up in NYC on business for the day, so no real updates. Here’s a nice shot of Porter and Pearl cuddling up on the couch:

I buy a lot of stuff, and sometimes my highest hopes turn out to be the biggest disappointments. I’ve evaluated the things I’ve purchased last year, with an eye to what I use on a regular basis that Gibberish readers may use often as well. Sure, I “use” my Keltec PF-9 every day when I carry it, but most of you don’t have carry permits and its appeal is not as universal as this year’s winner. Here’s a look back at the best and worst gadgets covered on Gibberish in 2007.
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I’m going to take a job that puts me back in the Washington, D.C. area. I’m not 100% sure I’ll be moving, but chances are very high. Having three dogs makes searching for a place to live more difficult, especially when most of the places nearest to where I’ll be working are high-rise apartments. I searched properties for about two hours and walked downstairs to find this:

No matter how big of a pain in the ass it is to find a rental that will allow three dogs, or to find a home with a fenced in yard, damn they are worth it.

Sometimes I’ll buy something and will have to wait for the right time to review it. The Bissel Little Green Portable Deep Cleaner is a good example. I started thinking about buying a portable steam cleaner after I got Pearl. She had the shits off and on for her first month here, and after watching Lady Jaye spend nearly an hour get poo-spew out of the carpet I was like, “fuck this, I’m buying a steamer.” And then Pearl got better. Heh. I’ve used it a few times before I started this review, but I was waiting for some gnarly incident to happen. Luckily, Porter was willing to oblige by barfing up a nice present on my cream-colored carpet.
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Last Saturday we hosted the second annual reunion for Rosie and her litter mates. Last year the reunion was at a public dog park, and it was way too hot for everyone. This year we had the benefit of shady oak trees, a doggie pool, and air conditioning. As a big improvement over the year before, there was dog cake. More on that in a second.
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Three weeks after her adoption, Pearl has fit into the family quite nicely. After being afraid of her for the first week or so, Rosie has taken to Pearl like a true big sister. The two are mostly inseparable now. They cuddle together, run outside together, and do chores together, such as digging a bomb shelter in the backyard for mommy and daddy. Pearl now weighs in at 24.4 pounds, up over six pounds since we got her.

Pictures after the jump.
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It first started about a month ago. Porter brought a stick up to the porch when I called to him. As normal, he dropped the stick before trotting inside the house, except it wasn’t a stick. It was a dead bird. No big deal, I thought, and scooped the bird in a doubled-up plastic bag. I may have mentioned it to Lady Jaye but we didn’t give the incident much attention. Fast forward to today. I picked up another dead bird, again dropped from Porter’s jaws. This brings our known casualty total to five or six in a month. I think we either have some sort of bird epidemic on our hands, or Porter and Rosie are waging a campaign of terror on the local avian population.

Before we begin, let me clarify a few things and set the stage. Rosie is about thirty five pounds. Porter has lost weight, but is still probably lower fifties/upper forties. Rosie is super fast, and Porter has good burst speed, but he’s no greyhound. Plus he doesn’t bend his knees when he runs. I can’t imagine either one of them running down a bird and killing it, let alone five or six of them. The dogs certainly don’t jump, although Porter and Rosie are about two and a half feet tall or so when they stand up on something. Porter can stand up like a bear indefinitely, but his coordination doesn’t seem good enough to actually, you know, snatch a bird mid-flight.

So what the hell is going on? At first Lady Jaye and I thought a bird was sick, or died in some less-fantastic fashion, and dropped to the ground. We also considered that a young bird was testing his wings and failed. But when the bodies starting piling up, I had no option but to consider that my two furry children were bird-killers. I really can’t imagine the dogs charging down a bird. However, I seem to recall from my hunting days that when ducks “set” their wings to coast in for a landing, they must land before flapping off again. Perhaps the mongrels are pouncing at this moment, giving them enough time to strike before the birds fly off again. Or maybe Porter distracts them while Rosie ambushes them from behind? Seems unlikely, but the idea of Rosie in a Ghillie suit is just too humorous to ignore.

To our knowledge, the body count and prey composition is thus:
1 blue jay
3 (perhaps) juvenile or female American Robins
1 or 2 “others,” it was too, uh, well-handled for identification. Possibly a juvenile sparrow, although the bird was taller than what I would consider a sparrow.

Not to put a super serious spin on this post, but I am worried about them picking up some disease from the birds (or bringing it to us). Both dogs have had decreased appetites last week, which has only returned to normal two days ago. Every time I fetch a “stick” from Porter I think, “if this was an H5N1 situation, we would be dead.” If we get the Avian Flu in the US, it looks like the dogs are going to be on attended leashes when we go outside.

It’s approaching summertime here in Virginia, and after Lady Jaye and I went on a hike Saturday (more on that later) we knew it was time to break out the flea and tick medication for our dogs Porter and Rosie. I normally get FrontLine, but it was over three times the price of any other topical flea and tick product. I don’t remember it being so expensive. We purchased SentryPro XFC instead.

SentryPro XFC promises to kill fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, flea eggs, and flea larvae for up to three weeks. Sounded good to me. We bought two appropriate dosage sizes and applied them as directed to Porter and Rosie. Unlike other medications that go all the way to the base of the tail, SentryPro XFC is only to be applied from the base of the neck to halfway down the back. I thought this was odd, but didn’t think much more about it at the time.

Everything seemed to be going fine, and Lady Jaye and I went out for a bite to eat. We came home about three hours later. Rosie was flicking her tongue around, as if she was trying to get a funny taste out of her mouth. She drank some water, ran around, and then licked the side of the couch, tail wagging. Both dogs were scratching, but I chalked that up to the fleas biting for one last time before the SentryPro XFC put them to sleep … permanently.

An hour went by, and Rosie was still air-licking. She was also hacking and dry-heaving. I figured that Rosie had licked some of Porter’s treatment off his back. This would explain why we were directed to treat only halfway down the spine, so that the dog couldn’t lick off its own dose. I called the hotline on the back of the SentryPro box and talked to a very nice and helpful lady. She said that it was okay that Rosie ingested just a small dose, and gave me a tip to help soothe her mouth. I put two tablespoons of canned tuna fish juice in a bowl and made Rosie drink it. I think put one tablespoon of tuna fish juice in a small bowl with water, and gave it to Rosie. I made another one for Porter, just in case. After some coaxing, Rosie and Porter quite happily drank all of their nasty tuna water. The hotline lady asked us to watch Rosie to see if she if her dry heaving continued and be wary for a bloated stomach. If Rosie kept trying to vomit and wasn’t producing anything, her stomach could become distended. Another hour or so passed, and Rosie stopped licking. Things were looking up. We all went to bed, cradling Rosie like a baby in my left arm as usual.
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