weliveinaflat - 22/31 - We live in a flat

Author: weliveinaflat Page 22 of 31

The stomach of a dog often knows when something bad is inside it, and dogs are designed with a defense mechanism where they throw up repeatedly until the stomach is FOR SURE empty. So if Fido eats some yuck from the back yard, he’ll vomit 15 times over 3-4 hours until only white foam or little puddles of yellow bile are coming up, then he’ll gack a few more times, empty, just to make for SURE sure all the bad stuff is gone. – leospetcare.com

We fasted the dog overnight, so that we don’t overburden her poor little tummy on top of the GI upset (oh my, fancy schmancy vet acronym! :P). She stared at us eating dinner, poked her nose up from under the table, decided it was hopeless and then flopped on the floor to chew on her bones.

Yup, so she was more than ready to break her fast yesterday morning. And because I actually made the effort to boil chicken early in the morning. Tada!~ This deserves a post of its own. (I don’t even boil chicken for myself when I am sick… – -)

Please get out of my kitchen, of course!

Boiled chicken with barley is temporary bland patient food which she obviously finds delish. You would think barley is bland. I expected her to finish the chicken but leave much of the barley behind. She slurped it all up. I had the already cooked barley boiling in there with the chicken to soften it up some more so maybe it soaked up some of the chicken taste. Perhaps.

I try to boil barley every weekend. It’s an old belief that barley water is “cooling” and good for you when you are feeling “heaty“. The left over barley ends up in the dog and my tummy. It’s real filling and has many health benefits including helping to control one’s blood sugar level, reduce blood pressure and cholesterol and promote digestive tract health.

For dogs, any benefits it seems is more debatable since dogs don’t need grain. But it did not do the dog any observable harm so I add a bit of it into her regular kibble and canned food mixture now and then.

Anyway, there was no further vomiting episode after breakfast. Dinner was more of the same, except that I threw in some canned tuna in water too. And then it will be back to the regular processed food diet tomorrow so that Donna gets all the necessary nutrients that my amateur cooking and diet planning skills cannot achieve! :P

What does the sky look like?

By weliveinaflat

On June 7, 2013

In Photography

There’s a rainbow in the sky! Out came the iPhones and it was not just mine.

There is always something very compelling about the sky that makes me fill up the majority of the shot with it. The sky is the sky and yet it is so changeable. At times mild, at times dangerous. The sky is all wild nature, albeit sometimes tainted by man-made smog.

The strange thing about nature phoneography, at least for me, is how I am so tempted to make nature to be so much more than what it really is in real life.

The rainbow doesn’t look obvious enough. Let’s use the vibrant filter in camera+, let’s up the contrast in Snapseed, etc etc. And yet, I wanted the clouds to retain their soft colours and fluffy nature. So yes, I did continue to edit using Photoshop so that the editing was more specific to certain areas of the image only when it came to the clouds.

Quite some time back, I was awestruck by how the cross-winds sent the raindrops aflutter at more than twenty storeys high. Usually one sees the rain streak down in obvious pinstripes according to the direction of the prevailing wind. But that day, the rain drops flew like confetti in the air in all sorts of directions. Their frenzied activity caught in the light and I was mesmerised. What happen in nature in motion does not translate very well when one is using one’s phone to point and shoot.

That light-hearted flutter of tiny drops in the light gets lost. And so I try to achieve a sharper image with the clarity filter in Camera+, up the contrast, applied a gentle emo filter so that the tiny droplets show up against the darkened colours. It is of course a futile exercise.

What one ends up with… kind of like a stylised, sharp image of a moody scene peppered by dandruff for rain. I like it though. It looks like a town where Batman may visit :P

And then I wonder, what if I had taken my camera camera, not my handphone camera, and set it to achieve a longer exposure. Would that have captured the flying rain? Do I even know what I am talking about? :P

But still at least one image within this entry I would like, to be simple, basic, unedited and still interesting. And so, this is the one I have for you. The anvil-shaped cumulo nimbus in its gentle luminescent glory.

Which appeals to you more? Nature untouched or Nature made hyper-real?

Phoneography Monday: Nature
App used: Gorillacam, Camera+, Snapseed

Forbidden… but allowed on a case-by-case basis

By weliveinaflat

On June 6, 2013

In Training

She vexed me today. We came home to find the dog was doing a little interior rearrangement of her own. A vase of roses toppled, the water spilled on the floor and laid stagnant about and under the TV console. That must have surprised and made her nervous. As I scolded and cleaned, I could find traces of saliva dripped in various corners of the living room and corridor.

“Bad girl. Bad. Bad.” went my almost monotone voice. I don’t scream at her but the human still needed to let out some frustration. And since I was cleaning anyway, my frustration went ahead to wipe the white TV console more thoroughly than normal and of course the floor behind and under it. “Bad. Bad.”

I was at the doctor this morning and tired. So I left her alone after I cleaned up to get my own rest. Perhaps an hour later, I heard strange noises that I thought could be her woofing a little in her sleep. Came out of the room to find her in the toilet puking on the newspapers and pee pad.

The two thoughts – worry and “thank god this dog is smart enough to go do it in the toilet” – occurred simultaneously.

“Good. Good girl!” I petted her gently and clapped, half hoping to lighten the mood so she doesn’t feel so awful and half hoping the praise will cement in her brain that ALL future episodes of puking should happen here. “Good job. Good girl.”

That was before I saw the two more puddles of vomit on her bed and another before her bed. She probably did not have the time to head for the toilet so she threw up all her breakfast, and guess what, bits of dried flowers and rose leaf there. I had mistaken her food tasting and self-intoxication session for interior redesign. = =!!!

She was to vomit 8 times in total. The last time, she set on the pee pad and she struggled a bit, her muzzle pinched looking before she threw up mostly white phlegm-looking liquid. Then it was almost as if she was exhausted, she shook off my petting hand and walked away from me to settled down on her own on the floor.

Her bed, grossly soaked and packed with soggy kibble, canned food, barley and the incriminating dried floral arrangement, was packed and dumped in the garbage. So now my sick dog is one bed short. THIS is the reason my friends why a dog should have at least TWO cheap beds and not one ridiculously over-priced bed from the pet shop. I feel so affirmed. Haha! :P

It started to thunder and rain. So today, for the comfort and ease of my poor sick dog, the forbidden study is not forbidden. (I hold my breath that she does not puke again in the study!)

The scenario is pretty similar to the last time she tried to intoxicate herself with a hydrangea leaf, except that that was one quarter of an extremely toxic leaf. So now on top of instituting the forbidden balcony, Mr P will have to consider more carefully when he buys flowers for his wife in future.

But no, that is not why she is behind bars in this picture. Haha :P

LIFE… as it happened.

Theoretically, Donna should be a forbidden subject since mongrels are not HDB-approved by default. You could seek approval but it is subject to approval on a case-by-case basis. And in the case where the dog is not approved, you need to rehome the dog. – –

On the micro-level, our household operates with similar methodology. Donna knows what’s forbidden about the house – the sofa, the kitchen, the rooms – unless we explicitly lets her on or in them. Barricades, like the child gate we’ve installed, are so effective in communicating boundaries.

I like to think our household governance is more compassionate than…. bureaucracy. Most people would have that preference.

Humans are not so easily deterred by rules and regulations. Our eyes seek out the holes and the cracks that sneaks us a peek into what lies behind the barricade. Sure we read the sign-posted “No Entry” disclaimers. But even before the developer was ready to hand over the keys, some more enterprising future neighbours of ours had already sneaked into the development to take pictures and videos of the corridors and the unlocked units.

The Sign Says… doesn’t mean people and dogs will follow.

Interesting isn’t it, how things forbidden present the most desirable adventures to humans and dogs alike.

That’s the answer to why that dog was behind bars in the forbidden kitchen in the first picture. She sneaked in, but unlike our human neighbours, she couldn’t sneak out again. :P

Reference
– when to take a vomiting dog to a vet
– ASPCA dog care – vomiting

My camera roll is full of junk

By weliveinaflat

On June 5, 2013

In Photography

It’s time to delete,
there’s no more space.
Gorillacam, Snapseed
refusing to save.

“We’re on strike!”
The apps are crashing.
The signs are clear,
Phone’s just not memory-sing.

It’s time to go,
free the parking lot,
please Batman and Robin,
this is not your slot.

So they raced past strange signboards,

Their capes uplifting.
Not sure ’bout their morals,
they almost went drifting.

A barking dog set them

scooting away,
ducking in the shadows
where gruesome holds sway.

“My wings’ getting tight,”
Batman stops in mid-flight,
“Rest I must.”
Robin dumbstruck by the fuss.

Batman hangs on a fence,
enjoys the cool breeze.
Security must be tight here.
Batman is pleased.

Because of the way it sounds in Chinese, a bat can be a sign of fortune to come. ; )

And yes, great excuse to purge the phone so that Donna pictures can erm… continue to be edited for future posts :P

This helped a lot in helping me to get rid of undeletable previously-synched photo albums in the iPhone that iTunes refused to let me remove. More than 12000mb saved!

lisamhos

Re: How to delete Photo Library from iPhone

Jul 9, 2012 11:04 AM (in response to davacoco)

I had this exact issue just now. I researched and compiled all of the answers. Surprisingly it worked.

1) On my PC desktop, I right clicked and created a new folder. I named it “Empty folder”.

2) I plugged in my phone to computer, opened iTunes.

3) Clicked on my phone on the left

4) Clicked on “photos” on the top

5) Clicked the box “Sync Photos with”

6) Choose the dropdown and “choose folder”

7) Click “desktop” option

8) Click on the folder that you created and named whatever you named it.

9) Click “apply/sync”

In doing so, it deleted the “Photo Library” with the little sunflower as well as a “My Photos” album it had also created, but it left all of my other photos that I wanted to keep.

I’m shocked that this actually worked.

Hope this helps you.

Forget the silver lining…

By weliveinaflat

On June 3, 2013

In Photography

… rainbow sighting from the balcony today!

A tiny rainbow has lost itself in our horizon today. Oh joy!

I was a sickly thing over the weekend. Yes, again. Hence this blog seems to have come to a bit of a standstill. : (

More activity when I recover. Thank you for the patience and love : ) while I slowly creep back into the zone. The viewfinder definitely helps with focusing! And also losing the big picture when one’s zoomed in too much! But yes, I’m blathering~

In which the dog amuses herself…

By weliveinaflat

On May 30, 2013

In Behaviour

What do you mean you’d rather sit there and drink coffee?

Well then, I SHALL amuse myself!

… amuse myself…amuse myself…amuse myself…amuse myself……amuse myself…

… there… I’m AMUSED.

It took me a while to clue into what she was doing sticking her nose into her toy bin, so the pictures started mid-way of her spreading her toys on the floor.

We didn’t measure when we bought the bin. So when we got home and compared, we worried that the bin was perhaps too high for her to comfortably get at her toys in the bin. Obviously a groundless worry.

She probably wanted to share her toys and play with me, except that I really needed to have my breakfast caffeine yesterday morning before I do anything else, heh~ :P Don’t worry, she got her fun after that :P

By the way, I discovered snoopygrams today.

Give yourselves a pat on the back people! :D

Kibble hunting in the flat

By weliveinaflat

On May 29, 2013

In Behaviour

Donna does not like kibble. She doesn’t. Period.

To demonstrate, I thought I will take pictures of my left hand offering kibble to her and she will show a disgusted face, sort of like this one when she refused to touch the toy car the other day.

See that’s what she does, sniff… telepathically send the “you want me to eat that??? Ur-g-hh” message as she pointedly looks away.

So here goes my left hand with the kibble… and of course she is going to sniff and raise her eyebrow at me…

… wait…”Crunch crunch”… wait a second… did she just eat the kibble?

She just ate the kibble! *I refused to take a picture of my stunned face.*

In the last couple of months, we’ve bought Canidae Grain-free Pure Sky, TOTW Pacific Stream and Wellness Core Reduced Fat Formula kibble for her. All of which she looked at with snorts of disdain. And just now she took a Fromm Dog Pork and Applesauce kibble without batting an eyelid! Are you joking me?

So I thought let’s test again.

… stupid dog ate the kibble.

I suppose I should be happy we finally found kibble that she actually liked enough to eat on its own without us having to top it with wet food, milk, yoghurt or tuna etc, etc.

So now you just have to be satisfied with not seeing her highness’ icy disdain which I had originally planned as a prelude to telling you the other silly game we play to get her to eat kibble on her own = =!

Sigh. Foiled by my dog.

Anyway back to the story of making it fun for Donna to eat kibble. I wrote this a month ago when Donna was still refusing to eat kibble, probably should have published it sooner, rather than later. (This is so not enjoyable, since there doesn’t seem to be a point to it now, is there?)

So anyway, about a month or more ago we started playing the kibble hunting game with Donna. It started because after a walk, Donna appeared too tired or lazy to want to get her food out of her Kong Genius Leo by herself. Or sometimes it rained too heavily in the morning and we opted to go for a quick loo break rather than a morning walk. We needed to find some way to run off that excess energy so that she does not get bored and then destructive if we had to leave her alone at home.

We already knew that Donna gets excited chasing after the kibble that fall out of her Kong Genius Leo. So on those mornings when she was too lazy to jump around with her Kong, I sat in the middle of the living room with a ration of her kibble and threw it one by one and she ran after them. It totally worked. It was quite amazing actually, I could understand chasing after food that you like, but chasing after food that you don’t? I can’t explain it but it worked with her. So good!

You decide how far, how fast and the direction you throw the kibble. And that determined the distance and speed the dog covers during this short exercise. Generally, start slow and build up. After the 5th kibble, Donna typically starts running up to the kibble and crunching it. Yes, the dog did not eat kibble then. She did not seem to use her sense of smell as much as her ears to hear the kibble skipping across the tiles and her eyes to see where the kibble lands before running to lap it up. The more praise and the faster the kibble gets thrown, the more excited she gets, bounding to the left and right after kibble, her tail waving in the air.

But I am careful not to get her too excited because she chases the next kibble even when she hasn’t finished crunching the previous kibble and that could possibly lead to her choking on half-crunched kibble bits while bounding around in excitement.

After a while, she would slow down, possibly panting as she walked calmly to the thrown kibble. That will be my cue for dumping the remaining kibble into her bowl topped up with a scoop of wet food so she would finish it.

Simple game, totally FREE, and gets her up on her feet and having fun. Not bad for breakfast interaction with the dog before we needed to get out of the house.

The downside? You find some gritty kibble crumbs underfoot but nothing sweeping the floor can’t solve.

Morning Light

By weliveinaflat

On May 28, 2013

In Photography

I love early mornings when the sun casts shadows on the glowing concrete.

See the dog…

… and know the humans are never far away.

How much is that doggy in the background?

By weliveinaflat

On May 27, 2013

In Photography

It’s kind of hard to relegate Donna to the background when I’m supposed to be holding onto the leash, so we’re depending on some multiple-exposure app goodness here! Hah!

I guess the Japanese doll graphic is copyrighted to the tissue box manufacturer whose product I took a photo of. It was handy since I was busy blowing my nose off from the influenza. :P

Another one, this time comprising photos of the dog at different distances away from me in the living room. Can you spot the one in the background?

iPhoneography Challenge (Abstraction)
It seems we can choose from the list of themes provided this week. I was keen to further explore multiple exposures, so I chose to do Abstraction. Although I’m not sure if this really fits. :/ Heh~
Apps used: Pudding Camera, Blendcam, Gorillacam, Snapseed