Toby is weird. If you met him, you would understand. Most dogs are weird, then there is Toby. For example, his new favorite toy is a small, rubber, blue basketball the size of a golf ball he found up at Erika’s parents’ house. He won’t let go of the thing except to drop it so we can play fetch. As I’ve said before, Toby doesn’t typically play fetch. With this ball, however, he will play for a really long time. I have absolutely no idea what it is about this thing, but he is enamored with it. I need to go find a hundred more of them just in case he loses it.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently signed some new pet-friendly legislation. The new laws include a 3 hour limit on the time you can tether a dog that is unattended. It is also now a crime to leave dogs unattended in hot/cold cars without proper ventilation, food or water - one that is punishable up to 6 months in jail. Finally, stiffer penalties for those involved in animal fighting.
Suffice to say, these are all excellent steps forward for pets and the pet friendly community.
We go up to Los Angeles frequently to visit family for the weekend. When we go, we typically bring Toby, Little Wing and Ozzi. When you take a dog somewhere, you don’t really need to bring much stuff: leash, food, and maybe a bed. Toby is very easy to travel with since he has been doing this almost monthly San Diego to Los Angeles trip his entire life. He likes the car, is fairly good at just sitting in the back seat but often times wants to sit on our laps up front (and at 30 pounds and constantly moving around, it isn’t the most comfortable situation). In general though, we don’t have to think much about making a trip with Toby.
The birds, on the other hand, are like traveling with infants. The reason being is that when you have birds, you have to recreate living conditions that aren’t found in everyone’s house. A dog you just need a roof and you’re set. For the birds, it’s like we are moving everything out of the house and into the car. For traveling, we have crates for them to be in for the drive (dog/cat crates with comfy perches inside) because they can’t just sit in the back seat. In someone else’s house, we have perches/stands for them to hang out on since they get really heavy holding them all the time. They also need a place to eat, so the perches have bowls that attach to them. When it comes time to eat, we have to make sure to bring along their food because most people don’t have nuts, Harrison’s, or Pretty Bird pellets. Finally, we need to bring along their sleeping cages (dog kennels with comfy perches) whenever we stay the night.
Once you put all this stuff into a smaller car, with the animals and two people, it gets crowded quite quickly. We are going to need a bigger car to hold all this stuff soon.
I absolutely love when these two play together - it never gets old. Here they are on the bed playing like they always do. Toby has never touched Ozzi, but Ozzi does sometimes grab on to Toby’s fur and goes for a little ride.
We spent a nice weekend away from San Diego and the pets but missed them the entire time. Even though they take up quite a bit of time every day, we both missed getting to interact with them. It was only 3 days, but we’re glad we are back with the fids.
While we were away, it seems everything went quite smoothly. Loki, Mila and Lola all seemed to have done just fine at home. Lola’s tank was crystal clear thanks to the new filter system (and ammonia levels even went down on their own!) and Mila was able to stay out of trouble for a change. Little Wing and Ozzi did great while boarding, neither of them plucked or lost weight. Toby came home exhausted as usual after having to put up with Pita’s non-stop attempts at playing all day long. He and Pita even got a bath together which hopefully made grooming day a little less stressful for Toby since they were there together.
I just took some video of Little Wing walking around on the floor being a Velociraptor that I will get posted here shortly.
This weekend is going to be a long weekend for all the fids. Erika and I are going to be gone for 3 days, Friday to Sunday. This is where we rely on friends and family to help take care of our flock/herd/massive family. Toby goes to stay with grandma, grandpa (my parents) and Pita. Ozzi and Little Wing are being boarded. Lola, Loki and Mila will be staying at home and being checked on by a friend. The only one I’m nervous about is Lola - last time we went out for a few days, a friend (different than the one helping this time) didn’t even read the instructions we left for how to take care of her. As a result, her bacteria infection got significantly worse. However, this time we have a much better aquarium with an awesome filter now so hopefully there should be no problems.
After researching turtle aquarium setups yesterday, I found some really great ideas to try and put together for Lola. On my lunch I was at the PetCo in Mira Mesa checking out water plants and rocks and also under gravel filters for the turtle aquarium setup I found earlier. However, I didn’t realize under gravel filters required a pump, I assumed you could connect it straight to the main cannister filter I have. Maybe you can, but I wasn’t sure and decided not to get anything quite yet. Well, I did get her a half log thing so she could swim under and play around in for now. When I got back to work I looked at the setup info again, did more research on under gravel filters, and I think I am going to go with getting some large black river rock with no under gravel filter instead of a thick layer of small rocks and the filter.
After work I went on over to PetCo in Carmel Mountain to buy the rocks and plants, but it was flooded and thus closed. I’m guessing one of their tanks broke and was the cause of it all. So, her new tank setup is on hold until I get back over to PetCo either on lunch or after work again today. If Carmel Mountain is open, then I’ll head on over to that one since Toby loves going to PetCo and smelling every single item they have.
When we first got Lola, we did notice a little spot on the top of her shell. Being the first turtle we have had, we weren’t exactly sure what it was. We decided to give it a little time to see if it would clear up - we figured she may not have had the best environment before we got her and a new, clean home would help things. However, after a few weeks it seemed to be getting a little worse so off to the vet we went. Apparantly it is an “opportunistic bacteria” that is just starting to get into her shell. Since it is early and not much damage has happened, we will be doing some betadine soak treatments every day for a while.
One reason for this not getting any better is the fact we have a smaller sized aquarium (we knew this when we got it, but planned on only having it temporarily) and a filter that just plain sucks. So, today I spent a lot of the day doing some heavy research on turtle shell diseases, better care tips, and most importantly better turtle tank setup ideas.
I have been keeping turtles for over 40 years, and have never found an easier system to maintain, or one that produced water of this high quality in relatively small tanks.
This sold me on this setup. After reading through it a couple more times to make sure I understand his process and the items he chose, I was convinced even more. So over the next week or so I am going to be getting Lola a new 40 gallon tank, filter, and then trying to create an environment similar to the one pictured in the example. Besides not having to change the water daily and only replacing the entire thing semi-annually, it looks a whole lot nicer than her current setup. I spend at least 30 - 60 minutes every day dealing with her tank and I still love having a turtle - can’t wait to cut that down to almost nothing and seeing how much fun it will be!
