A Tale of A Tail

 

Long Post

It’s been a busy and tiring couple of days, on Thursday, we noticed that something was wrong with Louie, his tail didn’t look right, when I touched it the hairs fell out. Boston Terriers don’t all have the same size of tail, some are cork screw, some are stubby an inch or two long, some are what is called a button which is what Louie had, a little roundish tail about 1/2 inch long, There was never  enough of a tail to wag.

Louie

When Sophie was about two years old her tail inverted, we didn't,’t know anything about tail inversion and neither did our vet, so it was  a scary time for us when she had to have surgery to have  her tail removed.

When we noticed Louie's tail on Thursday, we immediately thought his tail was starting to invert. We knew there wasn’t a vet in Borrego Springs, so we would probably have to take him  into Indio or even Yuma, I emailed  Al and Kelly to see if they knew of a vet, Kelly emailed back right away with the name of a vet she’d heard good things about in Brawley. I phoned and got an appointment for 8:30  Friday morning.

Neither one of us got much sleep that night,it’s hard to take your pet to a strange vet, when you know that surgery might be necessary, By morning I had come to the conclusion that if the vet couldn’t manipulate the  tail to it’s right position, we would take him home to our own vet on Vancouver Island.

We left Borrego at 7 Friday morning, of course we were 1/2 hour early when we arrived at the vets office, so we waited in the parking lot.

When we met the vet I was surprised, he appeared to be quite old for a practicing vet, he walked slowly with a cane, and he was quite deaf. 

As soon as he examined Louie, he knew what the problem was, he could feel the tail inside and said it was pressing on his colon. We knew then we wouldn’t be able to take him home, if his colon was perforated or damaged  he would  be in real trouble, so we signed to agree with the cost estimate and the surgical release to have his tail amputated. The vet had done the surgery before but only on bull dogs.

Now Louie has never spent any time away from us, if we leave him behind for any reason, he has Sophie and Jake for company, and he is still sits at a window and watches for us to come back. Every time. It was so hard to leave him, I promised him I would come back for him.I wanted  to pick him up after the surgery, they wanted us to leave him, but I said if he was okay we would take him home.Which we did.

His poor  butt was a mess, he was pretty sore Saturday night and couldn’t get comfortable, so no none got much sleep.

This morning ( Sunday ) it looks much, much better, and we are all feeling better.

I was going to put in a picture of his butt post surgery but it is a pretty graphic so I didn’t

Jean

Slot Canyon

 

We spent a good part of our Christmas day hiking a slot canyon that  is off part of the highway 78. We entered the slot from Borrego Mountain Wash. Skip and I hiked part of the slot  in 2010, but we had entered from the other end.

On top of Borrego Mountain Drop Off

Looking down on Borrego Mountain Wash

The Slot Canyon

 

 

Nicole is going to catch it.

The slot gets pretty narrow

The slot canyons are formed by erosion of both water and wind, must have been a big wind to move these rocks.

A really amazing canyon.

About of a third of a mile the other way  are the Borrego Mountain Wind Caves, which are  one pretty cool, not as big as the ones at Split Mountain  but fun to climb

 

Even John and Nicole’s dog Nibs had a good climb

And what a view from the top.

Our cars are across the wash on top of the Borrego Mountain Drop Off, it was quite a climb back up after a long hike.

The weather has not been very good the last few days, we have had some really windy days, and the nights have been really cold. We would move on but the weather seems to be the same everywhere right now, and there are a few more hikes we want to do here.

 

Sophie has to be really close, so that the second Louie lets go of the bone, she can grab it and run. She has her own but naturally his is better for some reason.

 

Jean

Sun Running in Search of Rock House Canyon

 

 

Yesterday John and Nicole and Skip and I setout to find the Indian ruins in Rock  House Canyon which is15 .5 miles from the junction of S 22 and Rock House Road.

 

Along Clark Dry Lake Bed

At first  the road isn’t too bad

But it quickly worsened

It was really slow going

Sometimes John guided

 

 

 

Our destination was the valley ahead

It got so rough and so late we decided to turn around and go back, we intend to try again after Christmas,We will leave earlier and walk the rest of the way, we want to find Hidden Spring as well as the ruins.

 

It was a fun day and our Sun Runner and John and Nicole’s Side Kick, were amazing.

 

It was almost dusk when we got back, I think Louie was glad to see us, he was acting a little silly.

 

Jean

Borrego has gone to the Dogs

 

We have been  at Borrego for a week now, we arrived in a downpour and took the first available site we found in the Rock House  area. The next morning we looked around and we were basically in a muddy field that looked like a bull dozer had gone through and left piles of dirt everywhere. We quickly packed up and moved over to the dispersed area at Clark Dry Lake Bed, where we have stayed the two previous years.

The site we had last year was occupied so we moved into  the first site we had in 2010.

RV Sue and her lovely dogs were camped a little ways away from us. Sue and I  met and talked briefly on Monday,then Skip and I made a trip  to A Thousand Palms to buy a waterless cleaner for the RV called the Solution. We had got the address from internet, however when we arrived at there we discovered that they had moved their operation to Prescott Arizona. It was a nice drive though, too bad I didn’t bring my camera.

Ivan  was  here when we got here, so were Martin and Gay, and Tuesday night John and Nicole pulled in and parked just down from us.

Yesterday the site we had last year became available and we moved  over there, and John and Nicole moved into the site we vacated.

Ivan had his helicopter up and took an aerial shot that is pretty cool. You can find it here.

http://roadtrip-06.blogspot.com

Sue and her dogs were here to day and we tried our best to get some shots of them interacting with Sophie and Louie but they didn’t cooperate at all

I love this picture of Spike,

And Bridget

Louie running from Spike

Sophie and Bridget

Sue is thinking she will leave in the morning,we enjoyed meeting her, maybe we will see her down the road.

Our camping area with the Santa Rosa Mountains behind the lake bed

 

Jean

Windy Days

 

The last few days have been really windy, we have not done too much, other than  a trip in to Yuma yesterday to Al’s RV shop to buy some more LED lights, we are gradually replacing all the lights  in the motorhome.They are not cheap  but because we rely on our solar system almost always, it make sense to change them out.

The dogs are loving it here on Ogilbe Rd, because they don’t have to be on their leash  when we take them out.

Skip took the stick because  they were fighting over  it.

They weren’t about to give up so he put it out of reach

Today we went out looking for caches, there  were three of them  off Sidewinder Road all within a mile or two of each other. We found the caches without too much problem.

We also came across this. At first from the distance we thought it was a graveyard.

There were no markings or sign of any kind, except the white square in the distance, which was a four sale sign, 40 acres for $160,000.

Looks like a Labyrinth sort of.

We have one more day here then we are heading to Borrego Springs for Christmas, we will likely spend a couple of weeks there, and after that no plans yet.

 

Happy Birthday Alma!

 

Jean

Pilot Knob

 

Pilot Knob is a rock formation that sits by highway eight, about seven miles from Yuma, in California. It is called Pilot Knob because in the nineteenth and early twentieth century  the Pilots of the river boats that went up and down the Colorado River  used it as a land mark.

We knew  there was a geo cache  on  the mountain so we set out this morning to try and find it.

 

From the bottom.

We knew the trail was beside the rock quarry, we found one but  it wasn’t much of a trail, and we weren’t sure if it was the right one. I think Skip is wishing he had his hikers on.

The trail was rocky with lots of loose rock and many switchbacks.

But the view was pretty nice going up.

That’s Pilot Knob RV Park where the green is and the scattered Rvs are in the dispersed camping  Long Term Visitors Area

The buildings are the Pilot Knob  gas station, and the little green dot down there is our  tracker

Almost at the top

It was a hard hike because of the ground but the views were worth it.

 

That is Algodones Mx and the black line you see is the fence between Mexico and Arizona.

The green produce fields and Yuma is behind the smog (?)

The Chocolate Mountains

We are camping  on the other side of Black Rock, the dunes are in the background

Signing the hikers log, the cache is beside it.

It’s a long way back down and I don’t like the loose rock.

Finally at the bottom and we put a rock on these boulders, not sure why .

There goes  the border patrol,

Sophie and Louie were  happy we were back, the ladder is to keep Jake off the dash.

Jean