It wasn't what she ate

Callie is back home. The vet said what Callie had was not a classic bowel blockage, but a swollen lymph node in her stomach. Why the lymph node became inflamed, nobody seems to know. The vet said she had only seen two other cases in her career, both involving three- to four-month-old puppies. She said it shouldn't happen again.

Because the lymph node was swollen and Callie was in pain, the vet said, the dog had eaten some sand and little stones. Those showed up on the x-ray. The other dogs with the same condition had done the same thing.

The dog's pain got a lot worse when the swelling and the sand and stones all formed a blockage in her stomach. That's when she started moaning, groaning, and whimpering. Also, her bowels were full of air, so she was having cramps. The vet said this condition is much more painful, actually, than the standard intestinal obstruction.

Callie will be on antibiotics for a week and she'll have the stitches out in 10 days. She'll have to take 5 doses of antibiotics a day until then. But she should start eating normally in a day or two. She did a crotte this afternoon on the lawn out behind the vet's office, and everybody praised her lavishly.

The way it was supposed to be

Except for the occasional emergency, this is what life was supposed to become. It's the way I imagined it, the way I wanted it. We would retire from the work life and commuting hell in the big city (San Francisco, in our case) and go live the quiet life in the country. It was a choice. A plan.

Why France? Well, I lived here before, back in the 1970s and early 1980s. I "grew up" in France and lived through either my second childhood or my first retirement — I look at it both ways — in those years, before I went to Washington and then California to work for 20 years, to have a career.

I couldn't really imagine where in the American countryside two guys like us would settle and feel comfortable. I knew France would be fine for us. We would learn a lot, especially when it came to the language and the history. We might travel a little.

So what do you do with your time after you retire? That's the big question that faces you. You work on your house — cleaning, repainting, calling in contractors to do specialized tasks, and working out a list of priorities based on the amount of money you can or want to spend.

You garden. That's a seasonal task in the Loire Valley, there being five months out of the year when you can't really do much outside because of the rainy, cold weather.

But year-round, you shop and cook. Luckily, I love to plan meals, prepare fresh food, and cook. You try to stick to a healthy diet and not eat junk food. You go to outdoor markets and supermarkets and you compare not only prices but quality. You try to buy the best produce at the lowest price. You avoid prepared foods because you don't want to spend a fortune and you want to know exactly what there is in the food you eat.

You can spend a good part of the afternoon pitting the tiny
red plums you gathered for free in your neighbors' yard

You also look for specials on meats. You buy what you can when the price is low and put it into the freezer for later. You spend a lot of time learning how to prepare meats, and you spend a lot of time trimming, de-boning, cutting up, grinding, and cooking meats. You fall back on the French classics — boeuf bourguignon, boeuf aux carottes, coq au vin, lapin en gibelotte, blanquette de veau. You can't go wrong with the classics.

In the garden, you try to grow as much good food as you can. Tomatoes of course, eggplant/aubergines, cayenne and bell peppers, squash/courgettes, collard and mustard greens, okra, haricots verts/green beans, cucumbers, and pumpkins. Herbs. You take advantage of untended cherry trees out back and the generosity of friends and neighbors who have a surplus of plums and quinces. You pick apples in the yard and blackberries out on the edge of the road.

You make clafoutis, and if you can you make French-style tarts with apples, plums, pears, cherries, and blackberries. And you make jellies and jams and preserves. Even if you don't really eat that much jelly and jam, you make it anyway. You end up with a lifetime supply in the pantry. You try to give it away. You just hate to see the fruit go to waste.

You go and actually count the number of jars of jam and jelly you have in the pantry. There are about 30 of them, and some are quart jars. You think you ought to start selling the stuff at an outdoor market.

And then you make more preserves because
that's what you do with surplus fruit

And you blog. You write a blog. You read blogs. You leave comments and you spend a lot of time reading and writing e-mail messages. You read a lot of newspapers on the Internet, and you try to resist ranting too much about the current state of the world.

You only start the car and actually go somewhere a couple of times a week, especially since you get fresh bread delivered to your front door five days a week. That's the one thing you would have to go out for, or spend a lot of time making.

You get lots of visitors, especially from the U.S. You make some friends among the local people. But you don't seek out a busy social life, preferring to spend your time doing all the things you need to do to keep your life on track, as listed above. You never really have enough time, do you?

Voilà. A new life. Just as busy, but less stressful. That was the point, wasn't it?

Sick dog

I re-ordered these posts so that they would read
chronologically from top to bottom.

Not much of a post this morning because Callie is sick and we can't figure out what's wrong with her. We had a sleepless night. The poor dog cries and whines and groans, and seems to be hurting.

Yesterday we kept a friend's dog and Callie and the other dog rough-housed for hours. As soon as our friend came to get her dog yesterday evening, Callie started moaning and groaning and then threw up on the living room floor. Okay, so she over-ate during the day, I thought, showing the other dog that she was dominant and could eat all the kibble. She did eat a lot more than usual.

But her discomfort obviously didn't stop there. We thought maybe Callie had hurt herself — twisted her leg or pulled a muscle, for example — because she was walking a little funny and she had to be coaxed to climb the stairs. She also kept trying desperately to lick her rear end, and whining and moaning at the same time, so we decided to look there and see if we could see anything wrong.

About 11:00 last night, we found what we thought was a tick on the poor dog's anus. We took that off, and she settled down for maybe half an hour. But then she started exhibiting the same symptoms again. This went on all night, in fits and starts. It's still going on.

Callie and her dog buddy playing in the laundry room yesterday

This morning she went outdoors and peed, or at least squatted as if to pee, but she refused to go all the way out into the yard. I walked the whole perimeter hoping she might come with me, but she stayed close to the house and just watched me. She couldn't wait to get back inside, and when I let her in she just went and hid in a dark spot behind the water heater downstairs.

I just picked her up and carried her upstairs, and that obviously caused her some pain. And I just got her to drink a little bit of water. I think she's starting to shiver.

I also just called our vet's office and listened to a message that gave me the number to call for the vétérinaire de garde — the emergency vet service. I'm going to call and see if we can get an appointment, or at least some advice. She is still licking her back end compulsively, as if she has an irresistible itch or pain. And she's whimpering. I wish we knew what to do.

Callie update — surgery

I phoned the vet who's on call today — it turns out he's the one who took care of Collette between 2003 and 2006 — and he told me to bring Callie in immediately. I did. He took an x-ray and said he could see that Callie has swallowed something that has blocked up her digestive system. It could be a little rock, or a little green apple (the yard is full of them), or a cork or other piece of wood.

The upshot is that she is having emergency surgery this afternoon. The vet will call later to let us know how she comes through. And then, if all goes well, we'll be able to bring her home tomorrow during the day.

It's always something, isn't it? Keep your fingers crossed.