“You’re just lazy.”
“You have a bad attitude.”
“You can always make time for adventure.”
There is truth in these statements. If my priority was to get out into the world I would be there, but I’m not quite there just yet. Back in February, Maggie, the mud doggo, developed a little sinus issue right around the time a foster dog appeared in the mud kingdom. Her under-bitten lower canines have always penetrated somewhat into the roof of her mouth, but an abscess had formed and burst through her gums and potentially into her sinus cavity. She needed pretty serious surgery and every dental veterinarian that could do the job was booked solid for weeks. I went onto three waiting lists and took the mud doggo home.
Six weeks of carefully extracting pus, dead tissue, and debris manually with medical student practice surgical tools I bought off the internet, daily sterile saline lavages of the void in her face, and the slow burning up of all of the patience of the mud doggo led to no actual need for major surgery when one of the vets finally called us in for an open surgical slot. They shortened her canines and sent us on our merry way, after my loopy dog wobblily marched around the entire office to say goodbye to all of the staff.
We briefly made it out to our old stomping grounds, the George Washington National Forest for one weekend back in May. Shortly after that I cracked a tooth. The actual injury wasn’t too bad, but the treatment plan stretched out into months. I had to have my wisdom teeth drilled out of my jaw just to get at the cracked tooth. Then my cracked tooth wasn’t cracked anywhere that could be seen, so I’m just left waiting for a few months to see where it will settle in my jaw. Not being in too much pain, we finally made it back out to my exercise loop across the road from the Elizabeth Furnace campground in the GWNF.
I averaged only a little more than 2 miles per hour with my dogs for about 3.2 miles. I got tired of keeping the mud puppo on a leash and realized that I could control the mud doggo if nothing else. So I tied the two of them together. This worked out actually better than I could have hoped. I was able to move significantly faster this way.
We briefly stopped in the town of Strasburg just to check out some of the local businesses. The Great Strasburg emporium is huge, by the way (much bigger than their storefront on the street implies). Pretzels from Bretzel’s aren’t bad with German mustard either.
My family also came to visit me for a week and we went down to Bethany Beach. Had an easy beach week mostly centered around my niece and nephew. I perhaps ate too much food. But hey, beach naptime.
A few more weeks and I’ll be ready to get out there again. I even went to the gym last week. All I really want to do is sit in the hot tub for half an hour or until I can eat with both sides of my mouth again! August, perhaps, for more trip reports.
David
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