Two Rivers 100 – 2012

Posted on March 19, 2012 by stinkypup

Ilana and some of the gang ran the Two Rivers 100 this year. The race was originally scheduled for the week before, but we got a lot of snow so the race was postponed one week.

The trail was great! Due to the extra snow there wasn’t any overflow at the bottom of Iowa Dome and there was minimal overflow at the very bottom of the Dome. Temps were warm in the day (around 25-28 above), but in the evening it was -10– perfect temps for running dogs. The race started on the north side of CHSR in Chatinka. After going up/down hills on the north side (e.g., Cleary Summit, Iowa Dome), we stayed on the north side and ran some trails I’ve never run, and ended up at Two Rivers Lodge for a four hour layover. We then continued on the north side running east until we crossed under CHSR via Jenny M creek. Once on the south side we picked up some speed and ran trails that we’re quite familiar with. The gang didn’t have too much of a problem when we passed the trail to our house, their initial reaction was to turn, but I was able to get Nikki to go “on by.” The race ended at Pleasant Valley. As expected, we came in last (5 out of 5). Note, I clocked 90 miles on my GPS and not 100. Our speed was around 7.2 mph.

The line up:

  • Nikki & Wayne (lead)
  • Ahab & Shrek (point — I dropped Ahab at Two Rivers. He’s an older dog an his head wasn’t into the run.)
  • Moe & Snowball (team)
  • Capella & Phanty (team)
  • Zeus & Spike (team)
  • Cozzy the alligator (wheel)
Posted in Ahab, Capella, Cozzy, Moe, Nicky, Phanty, Races, Shrek, Snowball, Spike, Wayne, Zeus | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Danny’s an inside outside guy

Posted on March 15, 2012 by stinkypup

Around a month ago Daniel had an abscess on his side, sort of over his shoulder. I tried to drain it by aspirating it with a needle, however my effort was not successful. The fluid-like lump didn’t completely dissipate and small firm lump appeared. The abscess was  possibly caused by Daniel getting into a tussle with some of the other dogs (e.g., Snowball, Shrek, Rocket, et. al).

We took Danny to the vet and the hard lump we felt was fibrous tissue left behind by the abscess.  He had most of his shoulder shaved and a drain put in.

Since he had a large spot shaved, and a drain, Danny needed to stay inside. He quickly learned how to use the dog door and became a loving (cough cough) member of the family.  I was ready to keep him inside permanently, but due to his counter surfing, chewing on the furniture, and a small incident of locking Greg out of the house (Danny jumped on the door handle and locked the door), and then flooding the kitchen (Danny jumped onto the kitchen sink and turned the water on and ruined part of the kitchen floor),  Greg wanted Danny OUT.

Once Daniel got better, we put him outside with Rocket and Peetie. Rocky and Danny got into a fight, so we brought Daniel back inside. He stayed in for another week or so until Greg moved him out with Red, Monkey, and Pumpkin. Red isn’t too keen on having Danny as a pen mate, so we’ll see what happens.

Posted in Daniel, Fighting, Rocket, Vet Visits | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Chez gets the bloat

Posted on March 11, 2012 by stinkypup

We don’t know why, but Chez got bloat without stomach torsion (aka gastric dilatation without volvulus). This is good. Many times when dogs get bloat their stomach twists (gastric dilatation with volvulus or GVD) and it’s a medical emergency. Luckily Chez got bloat (filled up with gas and food with no release of either), without the twisted tum.

I came home from a mush and noticed that Chez was quite big. Luckily, my neighbor who is an MD was over and showed me how to tap his stomach and lungs to determine if air was in his stomach– it was. I brought Chez to the emergency vet (of course this happened on the weekend in the evening), where they took his vitals and have him mylanta and took ex-rays. The ex-rays showed gas and kibble in his stomach. After the ex-rays, they gave him morphine to induce him to vomit– he never did. Since he didn’t vomit, we waited a while and tried gas-ex. This didn’t work, and soon my favorite doc showed up, Doc. MP, and she and Doc. R and the vet tech put a tube down his throat into his stomach to relieve the gas. Note, they stuck a Kong in his mouth and taped his snout. Doc. R sucked the other end of the tube to get things flowing. Yummy!

Chez getting tube stuck down throat

Doc MP sticking tube through the Kong hole.

After some of the gas (and kibble) came out of the tube I brought Chez home and he was under watch for several days. He’s doing fine now; however the Docs told me that he could bloat again at any time.

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When it’s colder than -40, beware device limitations

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Greg

Fairbanks just finished a long run of unusually cold weather, including numerous days colder than -40F (-40C). In the StinkyHouse, we have a Davis Pro Vantage 2 automatic weather station, which is our main inside view on the outside temperature and a super device to have. We also have an old style thermometer off the front porch, and another one in the dog yard. I had been perplexed that while the radio and our favorite online weather site, (the Weather Underground) was reporting temps well below -40F, our thermometer seemed never to to beyond -39.3.

My first theory was that there are just temperature variations, and this is certainly a factor. Due to different elevations and other factors, it is common to see 10 degree differences or larger among weather reporting stations just a few miles apart. I saw that a number of personal stations reporting to Weather Underground were around -40, then a number of other stations (including the official NOAA and FAA stations) were substantially colder.

The real answer is that our weather station stops registering temps colder than -40, plus or minus one degree. I checked the manual to verify this, and asked some of my professional weather pals (in the National Weather Service) and other weather geeks. It looks like lots of people in Fairbanks have the same unit, including at least one that is operated by the University. The Weather Service did an experiment a few years ago, and found that the same Davis units would get very flaky below -50 or -60, yielding sporadic results. A firmware upgrade, which was applied to later units like the one I bought, limited the lower range to -40F.

The moral of the story is that if it’s colder than -40F, trust to the stations that are reporting lower temps (or, consult your analog thermometer!), rather than the large group clustered right around -40. Free advice to Davis Instruments: rather than reporting a number at the bottom of a range, a message like “out of range” would be more useful.

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