I do not exist

Ike is about 9 years and half years old. He has severe hip dysplasia and arthritis. We've been hit with a cold snap this week; it hasn't been above freezing in a week, today is the first day it got into the teens.

Ike has not been handling it well.



He likes to go outside, play with his ball some, then stumble off to do his business. That's his routine, and it can take five-ten minutes. But with the sever cold, his joints lock up after about a minute, and he just crumbles into a sad pile on the ground. If it's not too bad yet, he'll drag himself up the ramp with his front paws. (Obviously, I rescue him. I don't stand around and watch him reenact a K-9 Christina's World.)



He doesn't really understand why he can't go outside and play (such as he does.) It's heartbreaking. So, I've been planning on making him a coat, like the ones sheep wear. I got some nice quilted material at the thrift store for a quarter with cute little baby airplanes on it, and on a whim picked up some socks, because the cold was obviously hurting his paws too.

asia_sky helped me put the socks on (she also kindly supplied the photos.) And the results were promising; he played a little bit and peed for about 2 minutes before the socks fell off. So, I stopped by the pet store yesterday and got him some doggy boots. Well, they look more like mittens, really.



But they've been fantastic. He hardly notices the cold. I still haven't made him his coat, and the weather is starting to warm up slightly, but I was afraid he wasn't going to make it through this cold spell. Thanks to the boots, I'm no longer worried that I'll have to put down my dog at Christmas.

*edit* Thank you, Firefox 3 and Photobucket for making it so damned hard to copy links properly.

It started snowing Friday. It finally stopped today. There's between 1-2 feet on the ground in places.

The storm was almost completely windless. Most of the trees still have all their leaves as well. Those things combined to cause massive snow and ice build-up on trees, resulting in many downed trees and branches.

Here's what I saw when I got home this morning:
( Too much snow! )

Ike decided he had been cooped up enough, and it was playtime, bad joints be damned!
( But the pets seem to be enjoying themselves. )

He seems to actually like the snow! Silly cat. I spent 30 minutes shoveling, shaking snow off of branches (and all over me, of course) and trimming back branches as well. At least now we can get out without crawling. There's going to be a lot of clean up as the snow melts throughout the week, and my emergency quick-and-dirty weatherization of the house really needs to be properly finished.  By Friday, this snow should all be gone.

Just in time for the next storm to probably come along.