Day 1535

Dash is back home again. After all he's been through this week, he's acting amazingly normal. Too normal perhaps. When the cancer center released him late this afternoon, the doctors gave us a predicable speech about things dogs should never do right after surgery. They shouldn't jump up on the kitchen counters. They shouldn't race around the back yard like a maniac. They shouldn't hop up on the bed or the furniture. They shouldn't shake their head violently like dogs typically do when they get wet. As you might expect, it didn't take Dash ten minutes to violate all these rules once we had returned home again. He's a Dalmatian, after all. I have to keep him on a leash, even in the back yard, for the next several days. Even restrained on a leash with his special new harness, it didn't take Dash two minutes to find a dead bird in our backyard.

One of the hardest things in the days ahead will be keeping Dash from scratching at his incision with his hind legs. The surgeon did such a good job of sewing him up again, that it's hard to tell that Dash has a long incision running the length of his neck. We can't use the cone of shame, or other common way of protecting the neck, because it would rub against the incision. He's not supposed to have anything touching his neck while the wound heals. Luckily, he's not one of those dogs that is obsessed with pulling his stitches out. If I watch him carefully, I think everything will be OK.

We should have the pathology report within the next five days, and that will determine what happens next. For now, it's just nice to have our little guy back home again. I won't be going out to the breakfast restaurant tomorrow morning. I won't be going anywhere actually. Janet and I will coordinate our schedules so that one of us is home at all times. This essentially means that I will be housebound for a while. It's not that big a deal. This is more or less how I live anyway.

I got a jury summons in the mail today. It's a nuisance getting selected for jury duty. I never get picked to sit on a panel, but I've got to go downtown and spend the day sitting in the jury pool room anyway. Lawyers just don't seem to want me on their juries. I would think that after years of sitting in the jury pool room reading old magazines, I would become exempt from jury duty at some point. That's not how the system works though. You never know. One of these days, some lawyer just might want an unpredictable, opinionated writer on their jury.

Tomorrow will be so busy that I probably won't even notice not leaving the house. There's still lots of work to do. The tree trimmers are coming tomorrow too. Ordinarily, something like this might upset the dogs, but Dot doesn't hear too well anymore and she'll probably sleep through the whole thing. Dash was never bothered by workmen in the yard anyway.

Dash should get a little better with each passing day. FedEx delivered a brand new supply of Hepatitis-C pills this morning. There's food in the refrigerator and plenty of work to keep me busy. Life is good.

Princess is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day