Tag Archives: Max

Hawthorne Park

May 1, 2013 Maurice Leave a comment

I don’t want to be maudlin here, but I’ve really missed Max. I’ve been poking around the blog lately, and realized we visited an awful lot of parks around Surrey. So over the last few days, I’ve been going for long walks in the parks that Max and I spent so much time in. On Sunday, Pam and I checked out Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest, a relatively flat park where we used to jog a lot.

Yesterday, while Pam worked, I visited Tynehead fish hatchery, a park that has lots of squirrels. They are bold little guys, crisscrossing the paths. I kinda chuckled, thinking Max would of been chasing them into the trees in a hurry!

And today I went for a walk around Hawthorne park, in North Surrey. Max used to really love this park. It has big ponds full of ducks, and he’d give them a good chase! He’d go charging down to the water, and slam on the brakes just before the water, trying not to get his feet wet. Funny guy…

Well today I saw a duck I’ve never seen before! It’s apparently called a Muscovy duck, and it’s a strange looking bird. It’s not native to Canada, so I have no idea how or why it’s here. I’ve put in a short movie here, so you can see how it moves – almost like a turkey, really, it’s head bobbling back and forth.

Hope you all are well and enjoying spring in your neck of the woods.

All About Max

April showers

April 19, 2013 Maurice Leave a comment

We’ve had some crazy weather lately. Typical for Vancouver mind you – lots of sunshine, and lots of rain. We’ve been cutting the grass weekly since February mind you, so the spring has been pretty mild. Our tulips have sprung up and have given us a pretty good show. It’s funny, I dug up all the tulips last year, and mixed all the colors together. Then I randomly grabbed bulbs and replanted them. And it didn’t work out too well! Somehow, all the orange ones got back together!

I’m a little surprised with the Akebono cherry tree we planted a couple years ago. It was pretty showy last year, with lots of pink blossoms. But this year, it just seems to be going straight to green leaves, skipping the blossom stage all together. I guess I need to give it better fertilizer.

We had planted about fifty daffodils, but only about a dozen came up. I’m thinking the squirrels must have had a feed on them. It’s a mystery to me, that’s for sure. Our garden should be chock FULL of daffodils – we have purchased well over two hundred bulbs since we’ve moved in here, and yet only a dozen bloomed. I better call Sherlock Holmes!

Here’s a picture of Max, relaxing on the rug in the family room. He’s getting old, kinda wobbly on his feet. He’s had more bad days than good lately. He’s very unsteady on his feet, and can barely walk up and down the stairs. Mike calls him a cat – always asleep! Once a month or so he’ll toss a ball, but when we throw it to him again, he sits down. A long walk for him is three houses down the block!

Hope everyone is doing great…

Health Issues, Something About Us

Happy (belated) New Year!

January 4, 2013 Maurice 1 Comment

After a difficult three-stage series of flights home from Aruba, we arrived in Seattle to no snow! I think this is the first time in six trips that we’ve done that. Seems every year, we’d take a trip around Christmas, and come home to snow. Not so this year. We grabbed the car, crossed the border and picked up Max, the wonder dog. Usually he’s a bit annoyed with us, and gives a good barking to, to let us know. This year, he was pretty eager to see us, and gave us only a bark or two of greeting while the gate was closed, and then came running over. It was a nice reunion.

Christmas was quiet, as Pam worked the 24th, 25th, and 26th. While there, she picked up the new strain of flu going around, that the head of the BC Centre for Disease Control says makes “You feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.” And trust me, she is not kidding. A couple days after Pam picked it up, I got nailed, and we’ve been struggling to just sit up since!

For basically a week, we struggled to do anything other than lay down and sleep, getting up to be sick, or let Max out. Today is the first day I’ve been able to actually sit up for longer than twenty minutes without getting dizzy and nauseous. Another couple of days, and we should be back to normal, whatever that might be for us!

Hope you all are having a healthier start to the New Year! Best wishes to you all!

(I’ve got a couple other things to post about our trip to Aruba, so hopefully I’ll get to them sooner, rather than later.)

Something About Us

Akebono Cherry Tree

April 13, 2011 Maurice 1 Comment

This year we purchased an Akebono Cherry tree from the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival committee. They try to get Vancouverites to plant cherry trees each spring. Vancouver has a long history of cherry trees, and there is a yearly festival. About 85 years ago, a Japanese immigrant donated two hundred trees to beautify Vancouver. Nowadays, streets are lined with the beautiful blossoms. It’s a stunningly gorgeous way to enter spring!

We decided to plant this tree in memory of Vern, Pam’s father, who recently passed away. He was cremated, and didn’t want a burial plot, but we felt that we wanted to do something to honor his memory. The tree is about six or seven feet tall right now, but it grows quite quickly. We’re hopeful it will flourish here, and give us much joy for years to come.

We took a few other pictures around the garden. Many years ago, when we lived in Vancouver, our next door neighbour had grape hyacinths growing. Some dropped over his retaining wall onto our property. Slowly, I transplanted them, stretching them out until they encircled our our whole yard, across the front yard, down both sides, and along both sides of the walkway, and along the front of the house! All from an original three or four bulbs. When we moved out here to Surrey, I took a handful of the bulbs with me. Slowly I’ve been transplanting them here too. Now they run all the way across the front of the house, and all along the back garden. This year I’ve started ringing our trees, and side gardens.

I dig the tulips each fall, and reposition them, and they’ve doubled, tripled, quadrupled in numbers over the years. This year, we have seven or eight batches of them! I tell you, bulbs are the best bang for the buck!

The dog planter is one that Pam really loves. He’s a little metal guy, about a fourteen inches long. We plant him with pansies or other flowering plants. He’s just been re-done yesterday, so he’s not very full yet. But he’ll look great in a couple weeks.

All About Max, Grand Cayman

Spring in Vancouver

April 6, 2011 Maurice 1 Comment

This time of year is so lovely in our neck of the woods. The cherry trees are blooming, the daffodils are everywhere, the tulips are getting ready to bloom… it’s just a great time of year. We’ve been planting some new bulbs, and weeding out the winter sludge. The grape hyacinths have really come along, and they fill the border all along our garden with a profusion of purple!

Max and I took Pam to her appointment and we went for a short walk through Green Timbers Park. It’s about $4.50 to park at the hospital, so that’s why we head over to a park for a short walk while she gets radiated. Today, I managed to get him to sit still and I snapped a few pictures of him sitting among the daffodils. Nice picture I think.

I’ve included a short movie taken the other day at the Serpentine dog off leash park. A lot of the grey Hydro boxes have been painted with a mural on them, with scenes of flowers, woods, and trees. I think they are terrific really. So lo and behold, they’ve painted the garbage bin outside the dog park! We both thought it was cute enough to take a movie of it so you can see it in the full 360 degrees.

All About Max

Max and the Vet

March 16, 2011 Pam Leave a comment

Yesterday we took Max to the vet as he was limping and lifting his front right leg and not wanting to weight bear. It was difficult to watch him like that. We took him to Scottsdale Veterinary Hospital where his vet Dr Lewellyn looked at him. He advised we get an Xray to make sure he had not Fractured anything, and also a blood panel as he was also running a temperature. His temp was 40.5 which is high. His resps were high too. He was off his food yesterday.

Xrays did not show any fractures, but we could all see how swollen he was around the “wrist area” of the leg on a dog, he was very tender and would not let the vet touch it, so we had to muzzle him as he was giving a warning , but good boy, didn’t bite. He was in pretty bad pain though, so I’m glad we did take him in to get assessed. It cost us 510 bucks, which was painful to part with, but he’s our boy and so we did it.

For that we got:

The bill is as follows:

1 geriatric panel (blood) 119.90

1 blood collection and prep 23.85

1 office visit 59.00

1 Nail trim w exam 13.21

1 Xray – 2 views 141.67

.70 Metacam injection 13.04

1 Metacam Oral suspension 51.76

14 tramadol 100 mgm capsule 33.76

=====

456.76

HST 54.74

Total this invoice ======

510.93

Today we had to take Max back to get his temp checked. It had gone down to 39.2 but because his White blood count and other lab values were high, the vet advised he be on antibiotics. I asked her if they had any “donated” antibiotics that they could give us, so we would not have to incur more expense and they did, so we are grateful for that.no charge today.

Today he’s at least weight bearing on that foot, limping but will walk. Yesterday he wouldn’t, and so there is some improvement. I put ice packs on his leg yesterday x 2 and he tolerated them because he was so zonked from the tramadol.. 🙂 today he’s more perky so it’s a challenge. But.. I will perservere, as he needs it to help reduce the swelling. We have been bringing his food down to the family room because we don’t want him going up and down the stairs ++ to irritate the joint. Things are looking up. He’s still in pain, but not so terribly like he was. 🙂

…Pam…

All About Max, Surrey Parks

Bear stranded!

March 15, 2011 Maurice 3 Comments

We were out taking Max for a walk – in Bear Creek Park too – when we came across a terrible sight. We were walking along the salmon stream, which was quite high from the spring run off. Max suddenly barked, and ran back and forth across an open area by the stream.

We thought he must be chasing a squirrel, but no, he’d actually cornered a bear! I think he must have been fishing for salmon, but the river was moving so fast, he seemed paralyzed with fear!