Sunday the 7th is spent cleaning up from our canoe trip and trying to figure out what is wrong with the dogs. Lynn, Lucy and Karen head down to a juried ‘Show of hands’ craft show in Halifax, while I search the internet trying to figure out what the dogs have picked up. They are both covered with little orange lumps and though Oscar and Oreo don’t seem to be affected by them, their owners and adoptive family members are keen to discover their identity. Eventually we get it narrowed down to some type of mite, probably a little mite called ‘chiggers’. However, we will try and get them into a vet on Monday. Our last night with the Neatby’s is a grand evening full of stories from their seafaring days, recounting our canoe trip and making tentative plans for a canoe trip on the Snake River in Yukon for next summer. Monday morning we are off to the vets after many heartfelt goodbyes to Lucy and her family. It has been a great twelve days, but it is time to give them back their house and for us to be moving on. A stop at the vets confirms our suspicions, and the dogs are given a topical thirty day treatment for mites, ticks and fleas and antibiotics for the staph infection caused by the chiggers infestation. We make it as far as Baddeck before calling it a day. Plans are made to visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site the next day. We also catch up with Fletcher and Joanne and arrange for a quick visit tomorrow before leaving for Newfoundland and Labrador.
