The latest

Bob is off from school this week - Spring Break. The end of March is beautiful in Arizona. The desert flowers are blooming. We also have a couple of small tomatoes on our tomato plants on the patio.

We had some adventures in veterinary medicine yesterday. Q (our dog) decided to lunge after a rabbit while Jim was walking him. He lunged onto a cactus. It was a cactus that had small balls of spines like the "itchy balls" that stick to your clothes from birdox. These spines have small barbs to make sure they stick into you. Q got them on one paw, tried to get them off with his other paw - so they stuck in that paw. Then he tried to scrape them off with his snout - they stuck in his chin. Then he licked his chin - they stuck in his tongue. Then he rubbed his chin on his chest - so some stuck in his chest. Jim wears gloves when he walks Q (so he doesn't have to put on sunscreen just to walk the dog). He tried to get them off Q, but they went through his gloves and stuck him too. Q couldn't walk anywhere, and Jim couldn't carry him because of all the spines. Luckily Jim had his cellphone with him. Bob was, of course, wearing nothing but a pull-up. I grabbed some pliers and carried Bob wearing nothing but a pull-up. I pulled out the biggest ones in his paws. At one point, when I pulled one out of one paw, Q nailed me with another paw. a couple of the balls of spines stuck into my hand. I screamed "ouch" and Bob got upset and started crying saying "broken". (Bob was on my lap at the time) He was upset mommy had a boo-boo. I pulled them out of my hand and pulled a few more of them out of Q. Then Q had enough out of him to walk home. We spent over forty-five minutes pulling them out of Q with the pliers. I was almost late for work. He gave Q a bath afterwards as he had blood everywhere on him, and soap and water would help prevent infection. Q is like a cat in the bathtub. He hates water. Jim pulled out more spines in the bathtub. I pulled a couple more out this morning as well. I think they are finally all out of him. He is walking with a little bit of a limp still - but there are no spines that I can see in the paw he is limping on. But, that is one of his paws that had a lot of spines in it and it did bleed a lot. I am sure it is sore. One of my co-workers said to put mecuricom on it because it works out any spines left behind. I stopped and got some on the way home from work and painted all of Q's paws with it.
Another day, another adventure.