Monday Afternoon in Fairbanks

I took two of the three boys to a veterinary appointment today.

Guy is literally tearing his hair out from a staph infection. This is the second spring now that he's done this:

So now I've got a soothing spray and ten days' worth of Cephalexin for him, and he gets to stay inside while we're at work, though he does have to wear this:

Beenie has a gunky ear, so he got a bottle of cleaner that will get squished around in his ear once a day until his next appointment in three weeks.

Oh--gross aside. The doctor said he didn't see any mites in Beenie's ear, but that the gunk looked odd and he wanted to be careful; hence the re-check next month. Then he told me about a dog he had been treating last year for ear mites, who kept not getting better. Then when they put that dog under anesthesia, the air going through the dog's nose created an unwelcoming environment for the nose mites that were there. And the mites all came out of the unconscious dog's nose and were wriggling around on the table. "I read about nose mites in school," the doctor said, "but I'd never seen them before. And they can travel from the dog's nose to its ears, and it turned out that that was what was wrong with the dog. Nose mites, not ear mites." So I am following Beenie's regimen to the letter.

On my way home after their visit, I saw this stopped at a red light at the corner of University and Geist:

It might be hard to see, but there are two wheels in the back, and the trailer is hitched between them. He also had Canadian plates.



The first part of this post has nothing to do with the second, except that one happened right after the other. I was feeling pretty good because the boys were so well-behaved at the vet's, in spite of the presence of small dogs and a cat, a probing camera and skin scrapes. "Are all of your dogs so big and calm?" one of the techs had asked me.

When I saw this motorcycle guy, and my first thought was: At some point, don't you have to concede and just get a convertible?

But then I realized that this dude might be my new hero of sticking to your guns. Maybe I do want stability and a lot of stuff, but I'm still on a motorcycle, and I'm riding it all the way to Alaska!

So with solstice nearly upon us, I want to wish everyone a good summer, including my doggies who both already feel better. And to the motor-tricycle dude I say, Ride on, friend, ride on.