News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

I went for a short hike in the desert this morning with my friend Les. Hiking along a wash, we saw an old mine shaft up on the hill and decided to check it out.

We climbed up to it, and it looked like it went back in for a ways, at a slight downward slope. I didn’t have a real flashlight, but I used the Flashlight app on my Android phone and started down. The mine shaft was only 4 feet wide. I was watching where I was going, but there were lots of largish rocks that I was stepping on, and I couldn’t see down into the shadows very well.

About 20 feet in, I heard a rustling sound by my feet. I couldn’t see anything, and then I heard it again, slightly behind me. I finally saw the 3-4 foot long rattlesnake, about a foot away, between me and the entrance. I jumped forward, further into the mine and it let out a strong rattle, pulling its head back with its neck in an “S” shape, ready to strike.

So there I was, down a narrow mine shaft with a rattlesnake between me and the exit. The shaft was too narrow to get by him, and the shaft ended about 20 feet further in. No exit that way.

The snake sat there, semi-coiled, facing towards me, and it was a standoff. I tossed a small stone towards him and unfortunately hit him on the tail, which caused him to come towards me a little. I climbed up on a ledge, out of his reach and pondered the situation.

I found a few more stones and tossed them at the snake, trying to hit between him and me, to scare him into going the other way. After a few stones he turned and started to move away. I lost sight of him as he crawled under a rock, but Les was watching from the outside and assured me that he was under a large rock and should be safe for me to come out past him, which I hurriedly did.

It made for an interesting morning!

(Above) Looking down into the mine, after I had escaped. You can see the snake just right of the center of the picture, on the right side of the mineshaft, draped over the rock. You can just see the edge of the left side of the shaft on the left edge of the picture.

Next week Dale, Karen and I are going backpacking in the east somewhere, probably western Pennsylvania. We should be gone 4 days/3 nights.

This will be my first experience backpacking back in the east, but I understand it is nothing but non-stop rain, mud, chiggers and leeches. I’ll humor my back-east relatives by pretending to enjoy it anyway.

I’ve posted before about Apollo having occasional seizures. These are full-blown grand mal seizures, lasting a minute or so, then taking 5 – 10 minutes to fully recover.

The vet diagnosed epilepsy, not uncommon for huskies. He averaged maybe one seizure every two or three months, and the vet said as long as they don’t happen more often than once a month, nothing needed to be done. Just live with them.

It went on this way for about 3 years. Then about two months ago, he had a normal seizure. A month later another one. A week later, again. Then 20 hours later. Then 3 hours later. We didn’t like this trend at all, so we took him to the pet emergency room, where he spent the night under observation. No more seizures that night, but they said it is time to start treating him.

After a visit to the Veterinary Neurological Institute (which fortunately happens to have one of their two national centers about 10 miles from our house), he has started taking twice daily doses of phenobarbital. I knew phenobarbitol was a depressant, but looking it up on Wikipedia I see that its main use now is as the “first line treatment” for seizures, in both humans and canines.

Unfortunately, it has side effects. The first week or so it made him hyper (which the vet said to expect). He stayed up all night whining and yipping, and broke out of the kitchen and woke us up by jumping up on our bed one morning. Then he transitioned into a sedated state, spending most of the day lying on the floor. When he tried to stand his legs sometimes slid out from under him and he walked very slowly.

After two weeks he is starting to get used to it, and is a lot more normal the past couple of days. He seems to have regained a passion for playing fetch with his ball, dropping it at our feet multiple times a day, saying “Let’s go out back and you throw the ball for me!”.

Unfortunately, the vet said that he is due for an increase in dose. I hesitate to put him back in that groggy state again, after seeing the old Apollo showing up, but I guess we should follow medical advice. We’ll probably wait another day or two.

So far no seizures since that bad day. Let’s hope it stays that way — if he starts to seize again, we will have to increase the dose, or even put him on other drugs with worse side effects.

Devon is part of a big ad campaign for “Peacock Cookies” in Taiwan right now. Here’s his face on the side of a bus:

And here’s an ad. This first shows a Flash application. You can click the various links at the bottom (all in Chinese) and see a couple of scenes showing Devon, but the most interesting is the link labeled “TVCF” on the lower right. That will run the two TV commercials, one after another (repeating infinitely).

The commercial is for a kind of cookie. The guy in the suit represents the “cool mint” flavor. He’s supposed to be “cool”. Devon represents the “warm” flavor. The girl tries to decide between the guys/cookies.

Devon said the ads are running frequently on Taiwan television, several times an evening.

Crazy, huh?