Tag: compound

…scratch….scratch….twitch…scratch….

Apparently between the raucous celebrations of Pride and Independence Day, there’s something I didn’t know about called the Million Mosquito March. I stepped right into it to get these flower photos from the ‘hood. If you don’t WANT a virtual garden, feel free to click on by. But remember that I probably got some weird mosquito-borne illness for you.



(Shouldn’t he be EATING the damn mosquitoes?)

Not for the squeamish

I do still have photos from NYC and maybe even from NOLA that include actual people that I want to get on here. However, something interesting happened when I was in New York. I kept meeting people who read Tim’s and my LiveJournals. Upon hearing that they did, I expected the following questions:

1. How do you guys write together?
2. When’s your next book out?
3. Does Timothy J. Lambert really sleep in the buff?
4. What’s the deal with BBQ Fritos and how can I make Greg Herren send them to me?
5. Should I buy Famous Author Rob Byrnes a drink or donate money for his suite at Betty Ford?

But no. The most frequent question was, “What got you on the raw food kick for your dogs, and tell me more about it.”

Evidence that people love dogs more than reading, eating, and getting info on hot men.

After my dogs died in 2000 and then Margot and Guinness came to us, I stopped buying any commercially prepared dog food except Wysong. We fed them dry and flavored it with Wysong’s canned organs, beef, and chicken. But when I researched foods before I decided on Wysong, I kept finding people who recommended raw diet. There were parts (ha ha) of the raw diet that grossed me out, and I just didn’t think I could do it. I was satisfied with Wysong, and my dogs gave their hearty approval of it, so that was good enough for me.

Then River came along with his many health problems, and Tim researched how diet might exacerbate or eliminate some of those problems. Again, raw diet kept being touted. There were (and are) plenty of people against raw feeding for dogs, but they were usually people who hadn’t tried it. Some vets don’t approve of raw diet. They weren’t educated to use it, and frequently, their nutrition teachers in vet schools came from companies like Science Diet, the food you most often see sold in vet clinics. I’m not anti-Science Diet, and I’m pro-Wysong. But I wanted to get away from all commercial food, because, for example, it bothered me that Guinness scratches so much. She seems to have a problem with yeast that leads to chronic ear infections. Could it be something in her dry food causing the problem?

Those who tried raw diet talked about better breath, better coats, less skin problems, better stools, less allergies, cleaner teeth (healthy teeth are an indicator for a longer lifespan in dogs as well as people, which is why vets now offer to clean your dog’s teeth), less joint problems, less health issues that led to vet visits. Having spent thousands of dollars on three sick dogs, fewer costly vet visits sounded good. My dogs get two checkups a year, and they always will. But if anything could spare us the heartbreak of putting another three dogs to sleep, before the full life expectancy of their breeds and after a range of mystery illnesses, it was worth trying.

It’s a sad fact of life that most of us with a normal lifespan will outlive many dogs and cats who bless our lives with their love and companionship. But if something offers the hope of keeping them with us longer–and in good health during that longer life–it just makes sense. Still, though Tim and I talked about it, we knew it was going to take work, research, time, energy, and commitment, and other things seemed more pressing.

Then the pet food recall and all those animal deaths hit the news. Although none of the foods we used were involved, it seemed the story kept developing, with more disturbing details and more products added. It was the right time to jump. We’re lucky enough to have a raw food supplier in Houston, so I went there first, to get food and advice. (All that information is also available on the Internet.) Now we’re doing it all ourselves. If we ever have to board our dogs, I can see going back to her because she sells raw diet in forms that would make it easier for a vet or a kennel to feed them.

Raw diet is time consuming, I don’t deny that. My time per week probably averages five hours, mostly because I sometimes have a difficult time finding the right food at our grocery stores and making sure it’s from the USA (not China). I’m also stuck begging butchers for help, which always entails explaining things like how uncooked bones will NOT hurt the dogs. Uncooked bones are soft, and it’s fun to see the pleasure in the dogs’ eyes as they crunch on chicken and turkey necks or chunks of catfish with the bones still there. This was the biggest obstacle I had to overcome about feeding raw. I was convinced that my dogs were going to choke or get perforated intestines and die because of bones. I’m still a little iffy about rib bones, but the dogs have had no problem with the smaller bones at all. And we’ve always given large marrow bones to them as a treat. Even after they’ve cleaned them, they like to gnaw on those bones, which is great for their teeth.

Other benefits of raw food, just like I was promised: better breath, whiter teeth, stronger jaws, better weight management, less scratching, shiny coats, better sleep habits, smaller, healthier stools (I regret to say that The Compound Canines have been known, on occasion, to be poop eaters, but with raw diet, that has stopped!). Of course, the benefits I most hope for will only be evident over the long term. The dogs are completely off any dry food now, and getting all raw.

Behind the cut, I’m putting photos with more specific information about what’s working for us. If you can endure pictures of raw stuff, check it out. If you can’t, then all I can say is, yes, Tim does sleep in the buff, and no, I don’t have photos to prove it.

more about the Compound Canines’ raw diet here

The Unbearable Loudness of Greed

Tom and I knew how lucky we were when we found our house in Montrose. It was one of the craftsman bungalows built in the 1920s. The closets are too small, but we have a gem of a solidly built house with all kinds of little features that give it charm. It has a large apartment behind it that eventually became home to Tim, so it was the ideal property for us. We loved the street, which had very little traffic and was shaded by old trees. Even though losing my corporate income when I was laid off a year after we bought the house meant we couldn’t do all the things we wanted to restore it, for twelve years I’ve loved every single day we’ve lived here.

Our next-door neighbor’s house came to him through his family, so Ray’s been able to funnel his money into renovating and expanding his house. He’s fiercely devoted to maintaining the integrity and beauty of our street, and to that end he successfully fought several businesses and developers over the years. He was nervous when we bought our house–he’d been negotiating for it himself so that he could make sure the property was left intact.

A few years later, we shared his anxiety when someone bought an older house across the street. It had been turned into a duplex and wasn’t in very good shape, and rumor had it that the buyer was going to scrape the lot. Since less-than-likeminded people had been infiltrating the ‘hood and building crappy townhouses and condos, we were crushed when the first crews came in and took down some of the property’s gigantic old trees. We felt better when we found out that the man who’d bought the property was building a single-family home there; he spared what he could of the old tree growth. It was a happy day when Mike moved in to his new home. We couldn’t ask for a better neighbor. I don’t remember ever being annoyed by construction, because I knew that he valued our neighborhood and our street.

Just down the street, a house sat empty for the first ten years we lived here. Its owner had died of AIDS, and the fate of the house was tied up for years by a family dispute. Finally the day came that the house was bought, and it wasn’t long before our panicked questions were reassuringly answered when the new owner had the house painted and a few other improvements made. You don’t paint a house you’re going to destroy. Then he got married and a few of our neighbors were invited to his wedding, so it seemed like he was settling into the ‘hood.

A few months ago we heard a lot of strange noise coming from his back yard. Before we knew it, two trees so tall that they shaded half our block were gone. Then people started tearing down the house, brick by brick, board by board. As crushed as I was by the loss of the trees, which I’d been able to see from my back yard and my office, I was only a little concerned. There’d been no For Sale sign, and rumor had it that our neighbor had opted to build a new house rather than try to deal with the cost of upgrading the plumbing and wiring of the old house. I was saddened by the loss of another bungalow, but I understand that not everyone wants to deal with the disadvantages of an eighty-year-old house.

Finally I saw the neighbor on the sidewalk one day and got the bad news. Why build one home where you can build three? Why enjoy a beautiful lot with trees when you can pay for your new home by selling two overpriced units to other people who don’t respect the neighborhood?

Yet another hideous three-unit townhouse is going on a lot far too small for it, which means their only choice is to go vertical. The thing just keeps getting taller and taller, and now not only do we have no privacy behind our house (or in front of Tim’s), but we can’t even see the trees that are in other people’s yards. The new buyers will add their cars and noise to our street. They’ll drive up our already too-high property taxes. And no doubt when our neighbor and his wife decide to have kids, like so many other people who invaded our neighborhood as the century changed, they’ll complain because there are GAY people and GAY bars and a GAY PRIDE PARADE in Montrose.

I guess it’s my anger and disgust that make this construction noise seem so much more obtrusive than when Mike’s house was built. Every morning I’m awakened after too few hours of sleep by men yelling and tools falling and banging and hammering and drilling and equipment roaring. It goes on all day and destroys my concentration when I’m trying to write. I can’t park in front of my own house because they’ve taken up the entire block with their trucks and cars. Many times, I can’t back out of my driveway because they’ve blocked it. When I do get out, I can only go one way because the street is blocked, or I come home to find that I can’t get to my house without backing up and taking a different route.

I wonder if I’ll ever stop resenting them? I know I’ll never stop missing the shade of those trees and the music of the breeze in their leaves.