camping hell
 
The show was fine, all the usual happy GFF elements...good music, great food, tons of wonderful art, people pulling out all the stops on retro-hippy fashion  (I swear, Girdwood has got to have the highest per capita number of white-people dreadlocks in the country!!!  )
Also, however...there was enormous quantities of dust, cottenwood fluff, mosquitos, and, for Alaska anyway, very hot temperatures. We took the dogs, but due to show rules they had to stay in our trailer except for potty breaks and early AM (pre-opening) walks. Luckily, we were able to park our trailer in a very shaded spot (there was no electric to run the AC), so they were ok...but I stressed out over the heat all weekend anyway . Either stress, or the dropped food they managed to scam off of the ground did a number on both of the dogs systems, so I had 2 dogs with bad diarrhea (in close, warm confines) by day 3 of the fair  SO not good.
So, we're home now, utterly exhausted and sore (tear-down took about 4 hours), slathered in cortisone cream for the bug bites, and aloe for the sun burn...the dog's tummies seem to be back to normal, and they are joyfully napping in their favorite spots...obviously very relieved to be home. Next year...Im looking into getting a hotel room, and the dogs can stay with my parents!!!!  |
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awww - that's too bad! 
Hopefully you did well at the fair, in spite of the trauma while being there. It does get hot (OK, from my MN viewpoint!) and the bugs are nasty, perhaps worse than here..... |
| so sorry you had a rough weekend - my guys do get the runs when they overheat, you may want to consider that the trailer without a/c running is too hot for them.
This is some info from one of my active dog lists: If a dog is experiencing heatstroke, you may observe excessive panting; hyperventilation; increased salivation; dry gums that become pale, grayish and tacky; rapid or erratic pulse; weakness; confusion; inattention; vomiting; diarrhea; and possible rectal bleeding. If the dog continues to overheat, breathing efforts become slowed or absent, and finally, seizures or coma can occur. |
kerry wrote: so sorry you had a rough weekend - my guys do get the runs when they overheat, you may want to consider that the trailer without a/c running is too hot for them.
This is some info from one of my active dog lists: If a dog is experiencing heatstroke, you may observe excessive panting; hyperventilation; increased salivation; dry gums that become pale, grayish and tacky; rapid or erratic pulse; weakness; confusion; inattention; vomiting; diarrhea; and possible rectal bleeding. If the dog continues to overheat, breathing efforts become slowed or absent, and finally, seizures or coma can occur. Yikes! Thankfully, none of those other symptoms were happening...just the runs The trailer actually didn't (in spite of my paranoia) get all that hot. It was completely shaded on all sides, and the heat was a relative thing...us Alaskans tend to be heat wimps...so Im talking 70F here. Of course...that means the dogs are probably as un-heat adapted as we are, so that may not matter...???
Im really not sure what was up...they seemed quite calm, and in fact slept most of the time (my husband got sent back to the camping area frequently to check on them) But there was a LOT of noise, (as in, for instance, a drumming circle going on in a neighboring camp site at one point!) including some fireworks (thankfully rather distant). My dogs are used to lots of chaos, and they normally take even the craziest circumstances in stride ...but then so do we, yet this weekend seemed to be rougher than usual on all of us  Longer, rougher shows are coming up as the summer progresses...so we obviously need to toughen back up!!!  |
While 70 is nothing to everyone else, I so remember what 70 felt like there. It was hot, so I imagine it was miserable at times in a camper w/o A/C ...then when it does cool down, if there's no wind, it ain't coming in the camper. My husband always laughed as I complained while he was in Iraq, but having no A/C when you're used to temps year round below 50... it made me swear never to buy a house w/o it again!  Ugh, I dreaded those days... Still glad to hear the time there went well! |
Sounds like it was a great festival except for the bugs etc. 
Tiggy gets the runs if she gets hot even from running around like a crazy dog, so maybe it was just the heat. But she also gets the runs sometimes if we stay somewhere where the water has more mineral content. Maybe the local water didnt work for them?? 
We take bottles of our own water now. |
| I do not think it helped you that the sun was on you at the end of the day. I too wish that we could take our doggys to the fair. It was only hot in the sun, in the shade it was great. Of course the ozone layer over Alaska is it thinest about now, and thiner than in most of the hemisphere. So the shade and inside has much more of tempature differance than being in the sun. Thus explaining how we can sleep at night, there can be a 10 to 20 degree differnce between day and night. It was 82 at my house when I got back from work at 5, it is was 65 at 8. It will be back up tomorrow. |
liz rodes wrote: I do not think it helped you that the sun was on you at the end of the day. I too wish that we could take our doggys to the fair.
It was only hot in the sun, in the shade it was great. Of course the ozone layer over Alaska is it thinest about now, and thiner than in most of the hemisphere. So the shade and inside has much more of tempature differance than being in the sun. Thus explaining how we can sleep at night, there can be a 10 to 20 degree differnce between day and night. It was 82 at my house when I got back from work at 5, it is was 65 at 8. It will be back up tomorrow.It was 90F on my front deck yesterday!!!!!!!
What the heck??????? 
DOOM |
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