Rocky Comes Clean

I’ve written about Rocky the Girl-Dog (her full name, used so that people can understand she’s a girl although (a) she doesn’t look like one and (b) her name is Rocky) several times before. This time the good dog has gotten herself in bad trouble. She has been losing her balance lately, is barely able to navigate around, especially given her right back knee doesn’t have any ligaments connecting the lower leg to the upper. On several occasions she’s fallen over and we’ve wound up consulting several vets ranging from our buddy Tom in Georgia to her “regular” doc in California, we’ve hade had her back leg xrayed (which only told us what we knew already…she has a bad knee) and has been quite lethargic. Today seemed so difficult for her we finally tracked down the right vet here in Austin (Dr. Ron Streid, who advertises himself charmingly enough as “the high-tech redneck”) and arranged an afternoon appointment….all very stressful. Turns out she is badly anemic, so the doctor took a wheelbarrow-full of money and some blood and promises some results by tomorrow AM. This probably will result in us being “stuck” another day in Austin, and, while it isn’t the way I’d prefer to spend Cinquo de Mayo, this still ain’t a bad place to spend time.

In between doctor visits, taking her outside, picking her up, setting her down and letting her set her own “business” schedule, as it were, we ourselves had other business to conduct. Specifically we needed to visit several houses we own here in Austin and, while we were at it, visit the property management company who manages and rents them on our behalf. The visit with the company went well, we saw and took pictures of two of our three houses, and we came away feeling that our investments here in Austin are in prety good hands. In fact, as I write this, Irene is “next door” (across the kitchen table) searching out houses for sale in the area. She’s found one nice house that’s only twice as much as its comparables (because it is on Lake Travis). Currently she is looking in a probably-too-expensive area called Westlake Hills and every minute or two I get to “ooh” and “aahhh” over yet another overpriced place. I’m holding on to my pocketbook for the moment.