From last week on Saturday when we observed Madelyne’s birthday. Still have this old denim shirt from our Knoxville days but the sentiment remains forever for me. Happy seventeenth, Mads!

Mads just got back from a 3-day retreat with her Year 11 arts classmates. Bundenon is well south of Sydney, even farther than Berry where Susan & I went during Australia Day in 2016. They stayed nearby the home of a renowned artist, Arthur Boyd, in Australia for 2 nights.  Look up “Bundenon Trust” on the Internet and you’ll see their program for artists. She brought back some nice drawings from her experience!

Sometimes something simple is the best gift possible.  On Susan’s birthday we made a visit to the vet hospital. Susan gave gifts of pumpkin bread to the staff and we got some smiles out of Ziva so that’s progress. Just a day or two more and we can bring her home to continue her recovery in friendly surroundings. 

November 19/20 was one of our worst days for The Smiths in Oz. At about 10:30pm I let the dog Ziva out for a final potty break prior to turning in. Within seconds, I heard her crying in pain and when I turned the flashlight on her she was desperately trying to move but both her back legs were trailing lifelessly behind her. She was effectively paralyzed.  What the heck?  I rousted Susan from sleep and thus began a nightmare evening where I tried to carry this HEAVY dog back up the hill, up the steps, and back into the house. Susan called our vet and discovered where we should take her. We got her into the back seat and she was terrified and trembling. For all I knew, she’d been bitten by a snake but instant paralysis didn’t seem to fit with that. Susan and I were both beside ourselves. It was really like a second daughter had suffered a terrible injury. We got to the vet clinic and Susan hollered for help; we couldn’t carry that heavy dog any further.  The docs began by first checking to see if she had been poisoned, and then would do testing for snake bite. But first they had to cool her down. Ziva had worked herself up into a 40 degree C temperature so they used ice packs to cool her down to avoid brain damage.

Then they sent us home, promising to stabilize and watch over her until the 6am shift checked in. We got a few hours of sleep before they called us to say a conclusion hadn’t been reached but they were still working on it and would call us about the next steps to be taken (surgery.). Not what I’d call a restful night. In fact, the entire next day was unsettling as we basically went into a waiting mode while they continued to work on her. By the afternoon the specialist arrived and they did a CT scan on her.  The surgeon called Susan to report that the dog’s disc “shot out of place like a cannonball” and injured the spinal cord. But it wasn’t severed, thank God. The surgeon said he’d never seen such a thing in a dog only 2.5 years old. But the procedure had a high success rate, with 70-80% recovery odds. That was the first good news we’d had all day.  So now the surgery is done, the dog is recovering, and the Smiths are collapsing into bed to find some peace and get some needed rest.

Not a particularly sunny day for us.  But we did everything we could and are hopeful that our dog Ziva will regain the use of her legs and start down the rehab path toward returning to her old self.

Well, everything’s ready for yet another Spring Cycle!  Not doing the 105 km ride this year. Settling for a simpler 50 km ride. The forecast is for warm weather so it should be a good ride over the Sudney Harbour Bridge again. This is the only time when they shut the bridge down so only cyclists can ride into the city!

Nice to see our friend Brooke from Tennessee again tonight. Ziva was kept away from the gathering and was NOT pleased. So we let her back into the living room and she promptly inserted herself back into the group. Golden retrievers cannot be denied!

Never before have I done something like this. 5+ hours of cycling, 64.6 miles!  And although many riders finished ahead of me, there were still a fair amount of riders behind me as well!    

 Wow, what an adventure!  To be honest, the real challenge was bike handling skills, not endurance. Multiple stops for red lights, traffic merges, narrow bridges with posts at entrances, trying not to hit other riders…that kind of stuff. I didn’t start feeling the fatigue until roughly 70km into the ride. Found some riders that were going my pace and shadowed them. Cloudy with some wind all morning, but I’d prefer that to hot sunshine so conditions were nice for this ride.  Stated 6:30, was done before noon.  But now I’m taking a few days off to give my body a little rest!

Yep, so sweet and innocent looking!  She’s a whole lot bigger now, one year after this photo was taken but now is unquestionably a member of The Smiths in Oz!

They’re here!  A little bit of Pennsylvania came home with me last night and Susan had a great dinner to welcome them  to Manly.

We had Brooke and Gus, and the Kilpatricks (Jode, Sharon, Maddie, Riley, and Ava).  What a Monday night!  This morning I’m playing tour guide, showing them the northern beaches area.  After a trip to Queensland, they’ll head back here and I’ll hop on the plane with them for the trip back to the USA!  Nice to have family with us again, if only for a day!