I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last wrote in this blog. Time has flown by and getting to do all the things I need to do has been tough. Things around the house, travel I need to do to make

videos, videos to edit and post, and then self maintenance and dog training. We got a lot of lawn and garden work done over Labor Day weekend. And then went for a four-day vacation to the Cherokee National Forest. We camped at 3 different places and explored a whole bunch of free and very cheap campgrounds.  More on those video in the next blog.  Really, it will be this week.   It’s a pretty long drive to get way over there in Tennessee through the great Smoky Mountains National Park, but it’s really worth it for all the stuff that’s there. I think Tennessee and Kentucky are going to be my go-to places when I have time to do a full half day of travel and a few days to explore.

But when I got back from my vacation I walked into the house to a small flood on the kitchen floor. My water filter set up under the kitchen sink had sprung a number of leaks in the housing. It was spraying out in a very fine mist as though the housing had suddenly become porous. But the water had run out from under the sink, along the floor and over my cheap laminate flooring, and then down the crack at the door into the basement. The very large puddle in my basement must have kept the 2 dehumidifiers down there working very hard. In any case I turned it off and cleaned up the water and set the air conditioner on high to try to dry it out. After about an hour I realized we were getting warmer in the house instead of colder. The air conditioner had apparently caught fire. It was a simple electrical short fire that fried the motor. But the age and size of the AC unit and furnace made the whole HVAC system due for a change out. So after negotiating with the better choice of HVAC systems people in this area, we came to agreement on a $9000 new AC system and furnace. Though I feel like I’m still bleeding, I really feel good about the company in all the things they’ve done to make sure this is a great set up and that it all works to my satisfaction. They are the only company in this area that has 24 hour 7 days a week service. Everybody else if you call them on Friday, they might get to you by Wednesday.

In researching how something like that can happen with my water filtration housings (and reading the manual on the water filter system) it says that the maximum water pressure the system can handle is 70 pounds per square inch. I had never thought my water pressure was very high because my shower head puts out a gentle drizzle. Much of the houses put together with plastic pex plumbing connections. I believe they are supposed to handle a maximum pressure of around 90 pounds per square inch of water. When my neighbor, who’s the plumber for the local school district, came over and tested my water pressure it was at 115 psi. There is a pressure regulator on the incoming water line. However obviously it was either broken or had been adjusted to the highest pressure. In any case my neighbor and I installed a new pressure regulator and I replaced the broken components of the water filter. So life is good again in the plumbing department.  Again, my life has been justified in my telling my children they should be plumbers most of their teenage lives. Nobody needs a 24 hour lawyer.

In case you weren’t aware, bad things always come in threes. So I suspected something else was going to happen and of course it had to be Akela. So a few nights later Akela was acting very distressed. Running around the house, getting up and down on the bed and the couch, coming over to me and standing up on me, and really acting very overly hyper. He acted like he couldn’t lie down, couldn’t walk around, couldn’t get comfortable unless he was lying on his back and I was rubbing his tummy. He had some interesting stomach sounds I was somewhat concerned that it might be torsion or bloat. My nieces dog had recently had a bout of bloat that spontaneously resolved, but they still did surgery to tie up her stomach so it wouldn’t happen again at the nice price of $1700. So I met the vet at the office 20 minutes before they opened and we had a thorough exam. Unfortunately, Akela seemed absolutely fine at this point. However he had somehow developed an extremely prominent limp. So since I was sleep deprived and still worried about him, we did full x-rays with sedation and determined that he might have Panosteitis (inflammation of the Bone) or bone cancer. The most likely diagnosis being the Pano. Pano is something that dogs from 5 months to 2 years just get. It usually resolves in 3 to 5 weeks and has no lasting effects. In serious cases on x-ray it looks like the bone is honeycombed. They believe it’s an issue with over calcification during bone growth.  It used to just be considered growing pains, but that doesn’t pay the vets bills. So since these days people will pay $2-$3000 for miracle cures on their dogs, a vet will do all sorts of diagnostics to make sure it isn’t one of a couple of rare ailments that might require much more expensive treatments.  I guess I’m too much of an old farmer.  I just don’t believe you spend  thousands on an animal that is worth hundreds and who most likely will  be gone in a few years.  I believe in starting over again and enjoying the best part of any new pet.  But on the scientific side, it’s amazing how the body can screw something up like building a bone, and then realize it and fix itself. Anyways the poor little puppy is running around on 3 legs this week. And that gives me a little time to do this blog, because I don’t have to take him for a long walk. Though truthfully he thinks otherwise.

I’m going to end this here because it seems like there’s plenty for this week. I’ll fill in some details on the videos later this week and publish the next post next weekend. I have to get on the ball with these posts. While with 6000 subscribers now on my YouTube channel I’m actually getting a monthly check that pays for about half  of my gas for these trips. But this blog actually pays better with the minimal advertisements that are scattered around the blog.

So thanks for coming by and reading this. Subscribe here and you’ll know what I post so you don’t have to keep coming back if there’s no notification. If you haven’t looked around at all the other pages, there is a lot of information about us, and where we go, where we’ve been, and gear I use, and a lot of Aliner specifications. So feel free to poke around there’s no charge.

Hope to see on the road, Rick and Akela