playing catchup here. let me start with the boat show - tom and i spent the day at the convention center and just wandered around. lots of fun stuff to look at but nothing i'd call earth-shattering that i would be interested in spending money on - it was fun to be there nevertheless. when we got back to the boat, consuelo was acting strange, very tender, like she had injured her neck. in any case, we took her to shore at the police station and she was moving very gingerly and screamed every time we touched her. we went ahead and had our valentine sushi at pubbelly. it was a cold, windy day and we had planned to sit outside but they felt sorry for us and let us sit inside in a corner with consuelo. it was a very nice dinner. then we went home and i tried to get some robaxin into consuelo but she was totally uninterested in food which was extremely alarming. i just put her to bed and hoped for the best. the next morning, she was completely listless - did not eat or drink - and i REALLY started to worry. it was so bad with her that tom and i even had THE DISCUSSION. she looked so horribly frail :( luckily, mark and diana doyle had driven down to the miami boat show from stuart where SEMI-LOCAL is docked currently and diana came and got us after tom did a search for veterinary services and made the phone calls - i have to say, it was remarkable considering he was a basket case and could hardly talk! as it turned out, consuelo came away from the vet's with an opiate shot, oral anti-inflammatories and oral steroids. she had hurt her back or neck somehow and was in severe pain. it happened while we were at the boat show so we have no idea how it occurred. she rested and slept the rest of day and night and it was almost miraculous, how much better she was by the evening. we stayed one more day at the sunset lake anchorage just to give her time to recover more before leaving for fort lauderdale. the next evening, she was getting up on the couch again by herself. she was not supposed to jump, but anyone, who has ever had a beagle knows how stubborn they are. in the meantime, that evening, on her second to the last run to shore, the shifter on the dinghy outboard broke, locked in reverse - we had to row back to the boat! we thought we had a spare outboard in our old torqueedo which tom had checked last summer - it was working then. the battery was dead and then it wouldn't charge - seems the charger was malfunctioning - so we ended up rowing again late that night. the other thing we found while fishing out that old torqueedo from its hiding place was a water leak. i tell you - when things happen, they all happen at the same time!
it was a short run to fort lauderdale and we took a slip at the hall of fame marina because we had no outboard motor for the dinghy and TADHANA needed some serious cleaning. we were FILTHY and i am always unhappy when i feel dirty. i thought that the hall of fame marina was a dump. there was construction going on, too, and to get to anywhere good for the doggie to pee is very far. hall of fame has a north side and a south side and we were assigned the south side which, as we later found out when we walked around the place, was something like the servants' quarters. the north side was filled with mega yachts! on a good note though, it wasn't as expensive as i was expecting it to be - not cheap but not outrageous either. we used the time well - tom fixed our water leak and the dehumidifier dried up everything in that soggy compartment. i cleaned and cleaned - the story of my life. tons of laundry. i also worked - late into the night.
the next day, we moved on and ended up in lantana at one of the loggerhead marinas which are usually associated with private communities. it was a very pretty and pleasant place but the slip was enormous, much too big for us, the finger pier was too short and it took us a helluva long time to get tied up because the pilings were so far apart and just not easily accessible. getting on and off the boat was difficult and more so with consuelo, who had to be carried. oh, and the wifi didn't work and the staff was not really helpful. apparently, the marina office is at least a mile away and we were told that if we needed anything, someone would ride a golf cart over. but, once we got settled in and had things figured out, we were comfortable and it was a nice place to walk around.
the next morning was cold and windy. consuelo got up at 6:00 a.m. and i had to take her out. it was still dark. by the time we got back to the boat after her toilet, tom was already up and had turned on the heat. it was 46 degrees outside. but we got ourselves going as it was to be a long travel day to stuart where we will sit for a few days with mark and diana, do our provisioning with the help of their car, and have the outboard motor fixed. tom already called a place in stuart so that they could order the parts ahead of time. getting out of that enormous slip at loggerhead lantana was a great deal easier than getting in it! in fact, heading north on the ICW this time has been much easier than going south. a lot of that, i guess, has to do with no one moving around this time of year (or they are all going the opposite way), our past experience and sort of knowing what to expect, and the sun isn't in our eyes for a change.
in the meantime, consuelo is doing great - back to her old self again with the same healthy interest in food. she still tires easily though but she is 14 and i make sure that she gets plenty of rest. we are all just so lucky - i have no problems with letting her go when the time comes but i am VERY VERY glad that it is not yet THAT time.
on another note, another beagle, miss P, won best in show for the 2015 westminster dog show :)
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