Photos, Info on Lyme Disease, and More

This is a photo of my dachshund Blackjack which many of you have seen before but I wanted to post it again (I think it's on Alaina's website) because it's just too funny. I was looking for a recent photo of him and I just can't seem to find any ones I saved on my computer. So, here's this one.
LYME DISEASE
I also wanted to use this photo to set up for my soapbox: I wanted to tell everyone to make sure they get their dog checked and vaccinated for lyme disease. It's become increasingly bad in our area over the past 2-3 years, moving up from more southern areas. Just in our small town there have been 60+ cases this year. I didn't think anything of this because I have never found a tick on Blackjack, even though we live in the woods. I had found many on my other dog, but they don't seem to like the taste of Blackjack. Well, he went for a check-up at the vet and they asked if I wanted the lyme disease test done while they were doing the heartworm. I told them no, I didn't think it was necessary. They told me it was no extra cost, so I figured I might as well. Then I almost fell over a few minutes later when they told me it was positive!!!!! I didn't know what that meant, since I didn't know much about lyme diease in humans or in animals. I didn't know if it would kill him, or if he could spread it to us, or what. The vet told me that about 80% of animals never show any symptoms, but some show arthritic symptoms. A small percent can have serious problems like with their kidneys. Pets can also be infected with the disease for a long time before showing symptoms, or their owners finding out they are positive. The vet also told me that the deer ticks that spread it are so tiny we probably wouldn't have seen it. I rountinely do tick checks on him, but the vet said these ticks would be about the size of a pin head so they are very easy to miss. Since he tested positive, he had to take antibiotics for a month, get a shot plus a booster shot a few weeks later. He will continue to test positive for several months, but hopefully some point in the future he will test negative and be fine. So... after this experience I wanted to tell everyone to make sure they get their pets checked out, even if you think your pet didn't have any ticks on him/her.

These two photos were taken in June at the Lehigh Valley Zoo, formerly Trexler Game Preserve. We went into the lorikeet pen and I had such a blast. I got a small cup of nectar (for an outrageous extra fee) to feed them. It was so neat being covered in the birds, and being groomed by them. Once they came, they didn't want to get off me. Amazingly, I didn't get a drop of poop on me despite the number of birds and how often they were pooping (they have this crazy projectile poop).
Here's a cute family photo of us at a picnic in July.
Oops, for some reason a duplicate picture got on here...
Another silly picture of the dog by our pond in the backyard. The stupid dog thinks he can catch these fish and frogs, but he hates water so he gets as close as he can without touching it or falling in. He seems to think that he is a mountain goat, climbing and perching on these rocks.
This is the incriminating family photo I spoke of earlier! This is Dave's 16 year old brother Andy. Wait until all his friends find out this picture is posted on the internet....! He was being goofy on the 4th of July and decided to climb into Alaina's giraffe boat after she got out. He thought the water was too cold so he was trying to keep warmer by staying in the boat.