Life is full of surprises. You dont get to say “i’ll never miss another day of work” because you dont know what injury, car accident, or illness is in your future thats going to make that statement a promise you cant keep. Situations arise that must be handled. You dont get to choose whether or not they exist or whether or not you have to handle them. You can only choose how to handle them.
I feel like i am living in a constant state of damage control. Thus is homesteading. Let me explain: the dogs stay outside on the land while i go to work. Well, if i just left them in a crate in the house while i was gone they wouldnt have any chance to encounter porcupines, rabid animals, coyotes, mountain lions, cactus, poisonous mushrooms, poison ivy, or broken bottles people toss out of car windows…they’d be “safe”. And they’d also have a drastically lower quality life. They are enjoying nature all day while im working to make the money to buy their dog food. Because one day ill be retired, and ill work 2 days a week, and i wont have to be gone all the time, but they wont be there for that. Their lifespans are shorter than the race to my retirement. So, they ought to be able to enjoy what there is to enjoy now. Similarly, i never know what is going to be busted or in catastrophe from day to day. There’s wild hogs, field mice, snakes, armadillos….theres a lot of things to do damage to stuff while they’re going about their regular animal business. In the city, i wouldnt have that problem. I also wouldnt have the yard to dig up, the well to drink from, or the fruit trees to cage…. You can live a “safe” life in which a lot of things arent dictated by wildlife, chance, or weather…but you’re gonna miss a lot of stuff worth seeing.
I wouldnt trade this life. My goal is not to make catastrophes stop happening. My goal is to get better at expecting them without letting that make me jaded. My goal is to get so good at dealing with whatever disaster stands up and walks to the forefront of the day that i just matter of factly lay out what has to be done and set about doing it. No yelling. No crying. No asking God “why?”. Just… “welp, that’s happening now. Alrighty, step 1 is get ready for work. Step 2 is call the vet and see what day they can fit us in. Step 3 is call work from the parking lot and tell them you’ll come in saturday to make the day up. Step 4 is drive back home. Step 5 is pick dog up. Step 6 is drive to the vet…..Step 7 is weigh options and handle the problem at hand. Step 8 is get McDonalds because it has been a long day and cooking is not on the menu. Step 9 is drive doped up dog home and carry her up the steps into the house.
I think ive come to a point in life where im pretty good at matter of factly dealing with the crisis at hand. I dont raise my voice. I dont curse the heavens. I just set about the series of steps that must be undertaken until i’ve solved the problem the best i can.
To close the year out, Cashew tore her ACL and has mild hip dysplasia in both legs. She’s on sedatives currently because im supposed to “keep her still” for a minimum of two weeks at which point we’ll assess whether she needs a $5000.00 surgery where they bring in outside specialists to put a metal plate in to stabilize her knee joint. Even if it heals….she is likely to tear it the rest of the way through at some point in her life, at which point the surgery will be inevitable. So, i should begin saving now. It was suggested to me that i should just keep her in the house from now on, to protect her knee. Well, that would be a great solution if she was a king charles cavalier spaniel. She’s an australian shepherd. She’s 5,000 cats on coke in a trampoline gym. She’s pop rocks meets battery acid. she is the embodiment of the word “go”. The day i expect her to “stop”, i might as well get the shovel out and dig her a hole. She needed a sedative to lie still for an x-ray. Like, they had to full on sedate her intravenously. She is my wild child. She’s energy in the wind. She is all muscle and movement. I hadnt planned on replacing her knee, but then, no one does plan on these things. They’re life’s little surprises. Surprise.
For now i will try to keep her off the leg, hope she can heal enough to give me a chance to save up for her next encounter with the x-ray machine… the vet said if it heals i should be looking at it tearing fully within the next two years after the partial tear. It would just buy us some time.
It seems like 2025 has been a particularly dastardly year for most of my coworkers this go round. One coworker’s wife fell and cracked her knee cap in half after just getting over shattering her elbow. Another coworker’s entire family got flu, rsv, and covid back to back, the son got his braces knocked off in football and the orthodontist wouldnt redo them in a timely manner…thus losing all the progress made over time, then he had a bone infection and ended up with a picc line in middler school, another coworker’s son broke his arm, another coworker had a major surgery, another coworker got her identity stolen and had to freeze her credit, everyone including me had car trouble/repairs, one coworker hit a deer and totaled her car, another coworker got bit by his dog while breaking up a fight over the smell of blood while cleaning a deer, another coworker went into labor early due to preeclampsia and had to be air lifted to hospital, we had the historic flood in july, and another coworker’s husband ended up not able to digest most foods and suffering an unusual autoimmune response…. I guess what im saying is: 2025 has been hard. I hope 2026 is better.
Cashew has been briefed on the plan. I will be carrying her up and down steps for 2 weeks and all pee breaks will be supervised on leash. She will be crated on “chill pills” while im at work, and the objective here is mainly to “rest”. It went over pretty well. She has no idea what i just said but enjoys my amusing chatter because it means im paying attention to her. Wish us luck. We’re going to try to start 2026 without a fully torn ACL. Cheers.