Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Sam visited the specialist on Monday and got his belly shaved for an ultrasound, which thankfully didn’t show anything alarming. Because he’s not losing weight, she wanted to try Sam on a new food with lots of fiber before getting more aggressive with a biopsy. We’ll transition him off his old food and onto the new over the course of a few days, but so far he seems to like the new food just fine.
I don’t think this Wookiee we ordered from chewy.com is authentic. Still, I think we’ll keep him, he’s adorable and much less likely to rip your arms off.
Sam sees the specialist tomorrow afternoon and needs to fast before the visit, so we can’t feed him until afterwards. It’s going to be a long morning.
The past couple of days Ellie has only wanted to go on 45 minute walks, still amazing for her age, but not quite the adventurous 60 to 90 minute walks of previous days. One thing I’ve noticed as she’s aged, in addition to the stiff legs and shortness of breath, is that at an intersection she tries to take the diagonal across instead of crossing each street in turn. She I suppose intrinsically understands the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and at her age wants and needs to minimize effort, but it always makes me think of the famous theorem that bears Pythagoras’ name. It made a big impression on my young self when I first learned of it and I realized the world of mathematics, and our world it describes, is both profound and beautiful.
Despite this I make Ellie take the long way round, crossing each street one at a time instead of taking the diagonal, as we live in the world of the automobile and it is their rules that govern our walks. She doesn’t understand, but then neither do I.
Sam finished a round of antibiotics but is still showing no signs of improvement. He’s due to see a specialist on Monday as whatever is bothering him is a bit unusual and not responding to the normal treatments. On the plus side, while it takes multiple feedings to get him to eat all his food, he is digesting it well enough that he hasn’t lost any weight, and isn’t in any pain other than the discomfort in his GI tract. He is as snuggly as ever, our little medical mystery, but I’m not in the mood for mysteries.
Emma wasn’t buying it.
Templeton died just over ten years ago on December 8, 2007. This little fellow changed my life. I took this picture while he was recuperating from surgery in January 2006.
These pictures may look the same but the top one is from Saturday, the bottom Sunday. We’ve had a spate of sunny and cold weather and Ellie was up for unusually long walks both days, slightly over an hour and a half on Saturday and slightly under on Sunday. She wanted to go past Irvington School on the way home, normally we don’t go that far south and east, she likes it because people walk their dogs in the grass field and I like it because I can photograph her beside the dragon statue. She wanted to go Friday as well, trying several times to get me to go past, but school was in session.
This pup is the best.
Exactly one year ago we were supposed to get a little bit of snow, a rarity for us, so I stayed home from work so I could take the pup out in whatever we got. We’d get quite a bit of snow a month later, not like the dusting here, but of course I had no way of knowing that. A biting wind made our outing less enjoyable than it might have been but I was still thankful for the chance to take Ellie out in the snow. Today was also a bit of a rarity weather-wise, cold but sunny, as it has been all week. No pictures from today, I had a meet-and-greet with a potential employer and was tied up all morning so we had to forego the long walks that have been a staple of our mornings since I got laid off a month ago.
Boolie 