Saturation on the Algarve Coast and During a Wisconsin Flood

We are waterlogged. It has stopped raining for now, but Dane County where I live, has received epic amounts of rain over the past few weeks. Just before my husband and I left on a recent trip to Portugal, somewhere between 11 and 15 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Flash flood warnings bellowed across the television and streets looked like rivers with water a foot deep.

News video the next day showed cars abandoned in roads, rising lake water, and a flooded Costco. I pet my dog Chai as I a read report on Facebook of a friend who spent the night at work because she couldn’t get home. As I did, I felt my dog’s ears, wondering if they had always been so thick. I thought the flaps should feel thinner between my fingers.

Later as I checked her ears again, they had grown like the swollen ground. She didn’t seem to be bothered by them, and it was too late to call the vet. Hoping to help avoid a crisis one day before we left on vacation, I tried some home remedies, giving her Benadryl and squirting some ear drops in while coaxing her with peanut butter.

The next morning only one ear was still puffy. I called the vet and set up an appointment for mid-day. By then the other ear had started to shrink back to normal size, though not all the way. The vet said ear swelling was sometimes related to an ear hematoma where a dog’s ear flap fills with blood when a dog scratches or shakes their ear too hard. But she didn’t feel that was what Chai had since her ears weren’t…