So, not a great day...

 Came home from a meeting around 3 yesterday to the usual furry chaos at the front door.  Shoo'd the pair of them inside and went about a couple of chores.  A few minutes late Tyson came up to me looking worried, he was having trouble getting around the table.  At first I thought the silly boy had caught his legs in a cable but then I realised he wasn't using his front right leg and was dragging his back right...

He could barely walk without falling over.

I got him into the car, not easy with a large dog and rushed to the vet, stopping only to collect M.

The Vet saw us straight away and insisted we drive up to the local big animal hospital to get in front of their neurologist.  By this stage I'm a bit of a wreck, Tyson seemed fine apart from he couldn't use his front paw - looking for all the world like a stroke victim.

We managed to get through the rush hour traffic to the animal hospital and then we waited.  After about an hour a vet came to chat.  She was 90%+ sure that he'd had a  fibrocartilaginous embolism (FCE) which is not uncommon in labs of his age and usually caused by a combination of playfulness and typical lab stupidity.  Basically it's a small stroke in the spine.

 

So, she wanted to let us know that while it looked scary, because he was a young and healthy dog and only affected badly in one limb, some minor loss in his rear leg, it was something he will probably recover from.  Although it's a slow recovery as the spine recovers from the shock of the injury.  She was also keen to point out that canines generally deal with stroke related injury better than humans do too.

 

The downside is that we have a lot of work ahead of us with rehab for him, physio and generally making sure that the puppy doesn't try to play with him too much.

 

It's still not a great outcome and I'm waiting to speak to the neurologist at the hospital when she's finished rounds to see if we can bring him home.  Sucky sucky.

Apple - Stupid, Evil or Both

Had this sent to me today. 

Basically Apple have sent a cease and desist notice to a Developer Support Community to stop them from referring to their guide for places you can buy mobile apps as an "APP STORE GUIDE" because some fucking moron in the Trademark office let them Trade Mark "App Store" and their idiot lawyers are following up on it.

Apparently you have to refer to places where you can download mobile apps, as Mobile Application Download Services or some stuff.

On the heels of:

• Putting app functionality into the core OS and then BLOCKING those apps on the store
• Trying to charge a percentage of content prices as part of the App Store Terms and Conditions
• Rejecting apps because they include a feature which they then provide themselves

Seriously, this has gone far enough.

I think it's an Android phone for me next or, gasp, a Windows Phone.