A Dog's Life

Every so often, I feel a need to tie this blog back to it's title, and so here is your update on the titular basset hound in the BVI. On Monday, we spent a lazy and satisfying afternoon on the porch with the dogs.

When HB went for a stroll through the garden, he took Roscoe with him

but poor Flash, who can't be trusted to wander around off leash without trying to dash through a privet and out of the garden, had to watch from behind bars.

I made it up to Flash later, though, by providing him with one of his favorite treats, a floor-dwelling human.

One happy basset.

Dog Grooming 101

There were a number of reasons that added up to the decision to try to groom Roscoe ourselves. It had been over four months since his last shave, and the hair was just getting to be too much. The Humane Society recently had to move out of their digs, so we weren't even sure we could take Roscoe to them to get groomed. And when, on his recent trip back to the States, HB found some pet-friendly clippers at Wal-mart for $30, we thought "what a deal", as a grooming at the Humane Society cost us $60.

We watched the introductory DVD that came with the clippers, and were astounded primarily with the gigantic muscular arms the woman in the video had. We also read the instructions about how to blend the short-haired areas with the longer-haired areas, and how to trim around the face and feet. Despite all our preparation, the first side didn't go so well.

HB and I both had difficulty controlling the nearness of the clipper blade to the skin, and, not wanting to hurt Roscoe, his fur ended up coming out a bit ... stripe-y. After the first half hour, or so, HB seemed to finally get the hang of it, and the second side came out much better ...

After a little over an hour, HB had finished the vast majority of the work, and I used the scissors to trim around his feet and get rid of much of the hair on his tail. It looks a little hacked, but I think I'm getting the technique down. Trust me, this is a huge improvement over previous attempts to trim his tail.

Ultimately, with his cooler, svelte, summer look, Roscoe is a pretty happy dog.

Dr. Laura

It's been two and a half weeks since we picked Roscoe & Flash up from the Humane Society. At the time, Roscoe was covered in ticks, and, we were informed, had worms -- here, give him this medicine the next couple of days and he'll be fine.

And for about a week, he was.

Last Sunday, he didn't eat. Or Monday, or Tuesday or ... well, on Thursday we got him to eat some dog food with some wet dog food on top, but we came home to find he's vomited it all up, all over the house. And the same on Friday. And on Saturday. So Saturday night I made him some white rice, and on Sunday we gave it to  him with some canned chicken. He ate it all, and managed to hold it down, and he's been doing good with the eating and not puking since then.

But all the not eating and the puking and -- well, there were some problems at the other end, too -- worried me, and rather than let another week go by, HB and I decided it was time for Roscoe to visit Dr. Laura.

Dr. Laura is one of two vets in the BVI, the other being employed by the veterinary division of the BVI government. Dr. Laura, though, is the only one that really maintains what might be called a private veterinary practice, and even that is awfully limited. See, her main clinic is in St. John, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she comes to Tortola to help care for the pets of the BVI. Tuesdays are for exams; Thursdays are for surgeries. So if your dog has a problem on Wednesday, you better hope it's not serious.

At any rate, Dr. Laura took a look at Roscoe. Ran some tests. Dr. Laura figured he probably was having a relapse of worms, which he was, but she's pretty thorough, and also found that Roscoe has canine tick fever. Thankfully, he's still in the early stages of tick fever, and can be treated with pills for a month.

I don't think Flash and Roscoe will be going back to the Humane Society.

But if you're in the BVI, and need a vet, go see Dr. Laura. She's in the bright pink building, just down the road from the West End ferry terminal.

Favorites

Happy to be back in the BVI. Happy to be back around my favorite creatures in the world. Hopefully, the same creatures are happy to be home again, after two weeks spent at the BVI Humane Society.

Roscoe apparently succumbed to some kind of wormy parasite while there, and it slowly recovering. Lots of sleep and good eats seem to be helping.

Both dogs received a thorough de-ticking on the porch before being allowed in the house. Roscoe seemed to relish having the 40 or so vampiric arachnids removed from him. Flash refused to sit still long enough for a thorough examination, but his naturally oily skin meant we only found about 20 on him.

Here's to many more tick-free mornings spent lounging in the sun on the porch.

Tick Update

I'm a little hesitant to write about this, as I'm afraid that I will jinx myself, but I am happy to announce that Roscoe and Flash have been tick-free for nearly three weeks now. It was a long fight that consumed almost all of May and June for us, but at last, I don't have to check the dogs and the floors for ticks every night.


I feel like in our battle against the vampiric arachnids, we tried everything we could think of. We bombed the house with these foggers, not once but twice. They were definitely effective at getting rid of live ticks in the house, and the fog on the floor ensured that we only found dead ticks around for at least a week afterward.

We gave the dogs flea & tick medicine that I had purchase at Petco in October. We checked them at least once a day for ticks. Finally we decided we had to shave Roscoe, but although the shave and tick dip gave us a respite, we started finding ticks on him again after about ten days. There were definitely fewer ticks than there had been before the shave, but four or five ticks a day is still unacceptable. 

Frustrated, we started using Revolution, which is a Frontline-like flea and tick medicine the BVI Humane Society sells. Four days later, with no diminution in the ticks, I did some more internet research, and found that most professional bug-zappers in the States use a commercial version of Preventic spray to control tick infestations in and around homes. Conveniently, Preventic also makes a flea and tick collar, and also happens to be the only brand of collar that the BVI Humane Society sells.

So we put the Preventic collar on, with little hope that it would make any difference: after all, very little else up to this point had, the foggers being the main exception. I found one tick on Roscoe the next day ... and we haven't found a tick on him since. In fact, we've only seen three ticks in the house in the last three weeks, all on the floor, attributable I believe to eggs that may still be viable and hiding out in crevices.

For anyone anywhere dealing with a tick problem, while I would recommend the Hartz Home Foggers, for real tick prevention on your dog and in your home, the Preventic collars are the way to go.

New Dog

After battling the tick infestation for a month, we decided we had to get rid of the source. So yesterday we took Roscoe to the BVI Humane Society and exchanged him for a new dog.

Our new dog looks like an island-dog version of Roscoe. Maybe they're long-lost cousins? Here's a picture of Roscoe for comparison:

After the close shave and tick dip, it really was difficult to identify Roscoe as the same dog we dropped off. But hopefully the new hairstyle will keep him cool through the summer, and more importantly, tick-free.

More Ticks

We thought we had the ticks under control. After I last posted about our infestation (about three weeks ago), I went to the supermarket after work and bought some Hartz Flea & Tick Home Foggers, and fogged the house that night. The foggers worked a treat; we found a few dead ticks in the following days, but after a while we stopped seeing them and everything seemed okay.

Since Friday, though, we've been finding five or six live ticks on the floor each day, and pulling three or so off Roscoe every day. Flash has been tick-free, although his crate had quite a few ticks in it on Saturday afternoon. While this round of "infestation" is nowhere near as bad as at the beginning of May, it's still quite frustrating to spend an hour each night scouring the house for ticks and picking them off the dog. The complete unreliability of our water during the Christmas and New Year's holidays was pretty bad, but of everything we've encountered in the BVI, I think dealing with these ticks over the last month has been the worst.

We're sure the rains during the middle of the month probably created a lovely outdoor environment for ticks, especially as the grass around the house grew 12 inches since the start of May. Now, every time Roscoe goes out for his walk, he likely drags several ticks back in the house with him. We've dosed him with tick-medicine multiple times, but it seems like we're probably going to have to shave him, apply some flea & tick dip, bomb the house again, and have the places we walk him treated by an exterminator in order to truly get this issue under control.

Infestation

Yesterday morning, I was petting Roscoe and encountered one of these:

Image Courtesy of: http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2008/clarin_bria/

A large, engorged deer tick attached to Roscoe's shoulder meant HB and I would be coming home and checking both dogs thoroughly for ticks, something we really hadn't had to do since the fall. This idea was only confirmed when I pulled a tick nymph off Flash about ten minutes later.

Once we got home yesterday night, we set about our business. You may imagine our shock when, upon examination of Roscoe, we found well over 20 ticks of various sizes embedded in his fur. Flash's short fur made him somewhat less desirable: we only found about 10 ticks on him.

We had planned on a 30-minute total once-over of both dogs, but ended up spending an hour taking ticks off the two dogs. After they were both cleaned up, we took a look at their crates, where we found literally hundreds of tiny ticks crawling all over their bedding and the bottoms of their crates. The bedding was discarded, the crates were bleached, and we cleaned the floors as well.

How we managed to get such an infestation of ticks I can only conjecture. I imagine Roscoe had one attached to him that we didn't notice, and it left its eggs to hatch in one of the crates, and the whole cycle just kept repeating itself. Still, two days ago, I had Roscoe's bedding out of his crate and there was nothing on it, so this explosion happened in just 48 hours.

Tonight, I'm picking up some tick bombs at the store and we'll be bombing the house, to ensure we don't have a repeat of last night's incident. The dogs will also be thoroughly checked for ticks again, since I found two more nymphs on Roscoe this morning.

So for those moving to the BVI, especially with animals, just a heads-up that the tick situation is far worse here than anywhere else we've ever lived. Flea & tick medicine like Frontline, along with tick collars, are strongly recommended.

Current likes

I was thinking this morning about the things I appreciate a little more now that I live in the BVI. 

1. Rain. I've always enjoyed a good, rainy day to curl up with a good book, drink some tea, and stay inside. Now, though, rain means water -- every time that it rains, our cistern gets replenished, and a full cistern is important when there is no municipal water for weeks on end.

 2. Brakes. They stop your car, which is quite useful, but in the BVI, brakes are even more important. They keep you from flying down a steep, windy hill at breakneck speeds and prevent you from hitting the bull in the road in front of you.
 

3. Sunrises. I used to love watching the sunrise when I was little, but sometime around 14, sleeping became much more important than sunrises. Now, at least two days a week, when I get up before 7:00, I get to see the sunrise over the harbor/Fahie Hill. I hadn't realized I much I'd missed it.

4. Dog Groomers. I'm not sure what the cause is -- the extra time spent outdoors, the humidity, some bizarre pollen or dust mite -- but the dogs get so much dirtier here. Roscoe, who used to go six to nine months without a bath, gets matted and coated in dirt in six weeks. And as far as I know, there aren't any dog groomers on Tortola.

What are you appreciating more in your life right now?

Tight Squeeze

I am matched in my fascination with the local livestock by Roscoe, who is simply beside himself every time a chicken or cow appears in the parking lot behind our building. He runs back and forth along the back porch, trying to decide where the best view is, before doing this:

We're waiting for the day that we come home and find him lying on the ground, desperate look in his eye, unable to get his head out from between the columns.

Salty Dog

Salty Dog can refer to a number of things -- an old sailor; a quality restaurant near Mote Marine Aquarium on Lido Key -- but in this case, I am using it quite literally to refer to a canine that is seasoned.

How does a canine get seasoned?

By swimming in the ocean of course!

On Sunday, we decided to take Roscoe to the beach for the first time in his life. We never had the opportunity in Florida because the closest dog-friendly beach was over 40 miles away, a distance we didn't want to try in the Land Cruiser. Here, though, the beaches are much closer, and are all dog-friendly.

We only took Roscoe because we were uncertain of the challenges dogs at the beach would pose, and we didn't want to have to try to corral two soggy, sandy fleabags if things went badly. Roscoe generally is more tractable off the leash than Flash as well, so we figured he's be easier to learn with.

The first fifteen minutes or so went pretty well. Roscoe trotted along the tideline, occasionally rushing at the incoming waves and "attacking" them by biting at them furiously.

Things went badly though, when a pack of three feral dogs appeared on the beach, and Roscoe rushed right at them, running flat out into their midst. The largest of the three, a dog about Roscoe's size, didn't appreciate this approach, and started a fight. HB broke it up, and thankfully, Roscoe came out unscathed, but we realized we still have a few kinks to work out before we start taking any dog(s) to the beach on a regular basis.

Still, I'm pretty sure Roscoe enjoyed himself.

Rainy Day

It's a little gloomy today. I would like to tell you about it my trip to the East End post office earlier this week (my one outing), as it was a lovely drive, but my pictures didn't turn out. Except for the 20 or so pictures I took of the herd of sheep in the post office parking lot, but I think you, my dear readers, have probably had enough of livestock for a little while.

Today, it has been raining off and on. Five minutes of sunshine followed by 20 minutes of rain. The view right now is a little grey.

September is the rainiest month in Tortola's year, although the rainy season lasts from September through November. I don't think it's coincidental that the rainy season coincides with hurricane season, but nearly all of the rain we've received so far this month has been independent of tropical cyclones.

Tortola averages about 6 inches of precipitation in September, and about 17 or 18 inches of precipitation from September to November, somewhat less than what we saw in the rainy season in Florida. Tortola receives more precipitation in the three months of September, October and November, than Denver, CO does the entire year.

Roscoe is wondering why I've spent so much time discussing the weather, and he's right, so I'll leave you for now, perhaps to post more later.

Amphibian Invasion

There is no accounting for taste. While I can stomach the majority of the decor in my new home, there are a few items and trends that I find a bit ... unpalatable. Today, I will be highlighting perhaps the most bizarre element, our resident frog.

The frog is a four-foot high statute, that ordinarily resides in the corner of the living room, but occasionally, likes to go exploring. In the photo above, he is taking the sun on the balcony, with his lily-pad umbrella protecting his sensitive, amphibian skin. The frog is joined from time to time by his amphibian pals:

From left to right, we have guitar newt, baby frog, and dancing newt. Their home is the wicker bookshelf in another corner of the living room. 

Suffice to say, what with his prowling nature, the frog has not made fast friends with the recently-introduced fauna. Flash and Roscoe generally give the frog a wide berth ... except when enticed with treats to pose:

I cannot fault the dogs their scorn of the frog. When I catch him watching me, I get a shiver down the spine myself.