saturday, emerald kennels and TBM

this morning we woke up about 6:30, and stayed in bed talking until almost 8. finally got up and headed to the bank, returned yojimbo to the video store, and got two chais. we stopped at TBM for bit to bide our time, then got on the highway for wisconsin. an hour later we arrived at emerald kennels, the home of the new dogs of 'greyhounds only', the adoption group with whom we work.

seth was pleased to see all the other dogs visiting, and had a good time. the sun was out, it was in the 40's. about 20 dogs were loose in the 'yard' of the kennel, which is about two acres, fenced. once seth was comfortable, we let him off the leash to run, and he did great, for a bit. once he was really ready to run, he was leading he pack in a wide loop from the back of the yard towards all the people at the front, when a lone dog came across the pack at full speed, traveling perpendicular to the pack. this dog slammed into seth and sent him flying, end over end. he started screaming in pain as all the people ran towards the pile of dogs, with me in the lead. as is the nature of greyhounds in race mode, the other dogs we lunging at seth as he lay on the ground. a couple of us waded in and pulled them all away and started to check seth over. we got him to stop screaming, and i could see blood in his mouth, inside his muzzle. his rear legs appeared to hurt him a lot; i was pretty sure he had broken something. i talked to him and petted him while the medic woman looked his legs over, but nothing was obviously broken. after a few minutes, i decided to let him up, and he pulled himself to his feet, walking with a pretty good limp in his right rear leg, but smiling sheepishly. we walked around on leash, went out to walk the grounds outside the dog fence, and came back in. he was still limping, but appeared okay. after some more visiting, we decided it was probably time to go. it had been an hour and a half of dogtime for seth.

back in the car, back across 50 and down 41. we stopped for subway, and stopped at the chalet to try to get a couple plants for the shop. we ended up getting a dog bed, a squeak toy, and some seeds instead.

back to the shop, di spent the afternoon drawing some 'ex libris' plates while i went through boxes of books, shelving and trashing, filing, archiving. at 4pm we went home.

pizza in front of the blue planet DVD.

i got into the shower and had seth get in the tub to wash the mud off him. he hates this, but was a good sport.

now i'm typing in front of the fire as i try to finish up before we turn off the lights for earth hour.

g'night.