Max Visits the Vet

Bonnie took Max to the vet today. The vet said Max is the perfect weight, and has very little body fat. We've had Max for a little over a year, and he's gained two pounds since we got him.

But the bad news is, he has heartworms. They didn't show up last year when we had him checked, and we've had him on a preventative. The vet believes the worms had not matured during the first test, and the preventative doesn't help him once he's infected.

Heartworms are passed to dogs via mosquito bites. Once infected, a dog may show signs of fatigue, coughing, weight gain, etc. If left untreated, congestive heart failure is the result. Treatment from our vet will run $300, but how can you put a price on the friendship.

Our options are simple: We either spend the $300 and treat Max, or don't treat him and wait for him to die (life expectancy of about 5 years). So we are starting the treatment in about a month.

The treatment consists of arsenic shots to kill the worms, but the hardest part for us will be keeping Max inactive once the worms are killed. Any exersion once the worms are dead in the blood stream could result in instant death. So we'll have to find a way to keep our normally hyper-active Boston Terrier under bedrest.

The goal will be to start getting him use to the inactivity a few weeks before the shots. This way, if he won't settle down for us, we can correct the action before it kills him. We'll try and keep him in his crate most of the time. The biggest problems will be people knocking at the front door, the cat running around, and his excitement when we finally make it home.

We'll have to do this for about 6 weeks once the treatment starts. So it seems like it will be an eternity. I've read the survival rate for heartworms is around 90%, so statistically we're on the good side. But we've recently beaten the statistics on the bad side for other medical conditions, so overall we're on borrowed time.

We're expecting the best from Max, and hope everything works out fine.

The U.S. press is a bunch of whining babies!

I'm sitting here watching the President's press secretary get bombarded with questions related to the Vice President's accidental shooting of another hunter while quail hunting in Corpus Christie. The press secretary, Mr. McClellan, gave his vague statement on the incident and is dodging any specifics related to the timeline of who knew what, and when. Although I don't agree with the amount of time it has taken to release the information ( the shooting occurred around 5:30pm Saturday, and the press conference started Monday around 11:30am ), but I understand why they waited until they had the full story before speaking with the press.

Had they released a quick statement saying, "the vice president shot a man", the news would have twisted the story into horrible speculation similar to the situations we saw during Katrina, Rita, the Koran flushing, etc. Instead, by the time the major news medias were aware of the incident, enough of the story was released for the news media to report it as an accidental shooting, but the victim was stable.

But to top it off, the press is whining about the way they learned about the incident. The story broke because the owner of the ranch issued a statement to a local Corpus paper. The major press is acting like a two year old because they were not immediately contacted, and allowed to break the story. And how do they throw their tantrum? By asking for such specifics related to the timeline that they could write stories calling the white house administration a bunch of dolts who do not have their act together. According to the press, immediately after the shooting, the Vice President should have contacted the White House to release a statement. However, history has shown that such actions have always backfired on this administration because of the horrible biased the media has against this administration.

I know what the story will be for the rest of the week, so I'll save you a lot of time by summarizing it right now: The Vice President shot a man, who is recovering fine, but this administration was so disconnected that the facts were not disclosed until 2 days later. Oh, and it's President Bush's fault. So save the money you would have spent on the paper, and don't bother watching the televised news.

The only suggestion I have for the press is to stop whining! You are not the only people in the world with the ability to repeat a story. In fact, you do such a poor job of repeating a story, I understand why you were the last to be informed of such an incident. If you keep up the style of mis-information you refer to as "reporting", then I have no doubts you will be left out of other breaking news reports.

Briggs Made the Sun

A friend of mine, Larry Briggs, has made it in The Baytown Sun newspaper. To everyone's surprise, it's not bad news. :) In fact, he's supporting Kinky Friedman for Texas Governor. He made the paper because he's trying to spread the word about Kinky's campaign, and what voters must do to help Kinky make it on the ballot. Personally, I would like Kinky to make it on the ballot. The main issue I would support is his stance on teacher pay raises. :) I don't mind the idea of casinos in Texas either (not that I have any money to gamble).

But there are a few issues which I disagree with, but I think it will do the state a lot of good by having an independent run on the ballot. And for this election, it looks like we might have two independents! Carole Keeton Strayhorn is also preparing for an independent run. She is currently the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. She also wants an increase in teacher pay, and like I said, that is my biggest issue right now. :)