Her registered name was DK's Amy Bell, but we mostly called her Amy.

When we first adopted her, Amy had recently retired from a short-but-successful racing career. She was a shy girl, and still had a lot to learn about life off the track. How do you climb stairs? How do you walk on leash? This stuffed toy: how does it work? What's this "rain" business, and where's the doorway to summer?

(Amy raced in Arizona, and loved hot, arid weather. In 100+ degree Yakima summer heat, sun blazing down, with all of us under shade and sipping cold drinks, Amy would be lying on the hot concrete, tongue lolling in contentment.)

( World's fastest, most loved couch potato )

I've had a couple people ask me for an update on the pets. bubblesutonium already covered some of this, but for those interested....

After Amy's diagnosis, we put her on a regimen of painkillers and anti-inflammatories to help manage the discomfort. So far they're working wonders. Amy will never have her old stamina back, and she still can't put weight on her bad leg, but she doesn't seem to be in serious pain.

There will come a point when all the painkillers in the world won't be enough, and that's when we'll have to let her go. We're holding that moment at bay for now. That's all we can ask.

It could be much, much worse. Vamp, one of the other greyhounds in Seattle, broke her leg badly at a greyhound event last Saturday. ("It was just dangling there, loose," said H, who was there at the time.) She made it to the hospital, but died on the operating table while the doctors tried to pin her leg back together. That same day another local greyhound, Jannie, had to be put to sleep after both her back legs suddenly became paralyzed. We've been counting our blessings.

---

Washington state's bar association takes almost three full months to grade their bar exams. That's because the exams are essay-based and all have to be hand-graded, a nightmare of a job. So bubblesutonium, along with many of her law school friends, has been waiting since February to hear how well she did.

By last week, H was so anxious that her vibrating was starting to register on the UW's seismographs.

Last Saturday she got the word: she passed.

So bubblesutonium, esq., is now officially licensed to practice in the state of Washington. She'll get sworn in later this week by one of her favorite judges.

FAQ: Why bother getting admitted to practice when you're going to tax school out of state? Do you have to be a member of the bar to go to tax school? A: bubblesutonium could go to tax school without passing the bar first. But it makes finding a job at the end a lot easier if you're already admitted to practice.

I never had any doubts she'd pass, but it's good to be over that hurdle. Watching her take a deep breath or two has been a revelation.

---

As for me? Not sure. I've been a hermit crab lately.

I'm still playing graduate student: traveling a bit, talking to professors a lot, not writing as much as I should. With luck, I'll have a conference paper submission and a conference poster done by the end of the month, and a dissertation proposal done not long after that.

Assuming I can get the funds together, I'm planning to sign up for the Issaquah Triathlon. My first triathlon. My goals are modest. Finish, don't be last, and don't drown in Lake Sammamish.

I'm also running an 8K in a couple weeks, the Beat the Bridge run. I'll talk about that in a separate post once I've got the logistics sorted out.

Otherwise, I'm keeping a low profile. There's some interesting stuff on the horizon, though. This summer and fall promise to be entertaining.

A couple of weeks ago, our dog Amy started limping.

Amy is ten years old, a respectable age for a greyhound, and she's an ex-racer with the ills of an older athlete: arthritis, stiffness, even a missing toe on one paw. So at first we didn't take this too seriously. Sometimes a morning limp disappears in the afternoon.

As the days went on, though, the limp got worse. She was keeping her weight off of the leg as much as she could. Climbing stairs and getting on and off the couch began to present real difficulties.

Yesterday I bit the bullet and took Amy in for some X-rays.

Just above her knee, it turns out, there's a shadow on the bone. That's a cancerous tumor. Her femur is turning from regular bone to a brittle, calcified mess that won't support her weight and is extraordinarily painful. The odds are very strong that the cancer has spread elsewhere in her body as well.

It's called an osteosarcoma, bone cancer to you and me. Unfortunately, it's one of the most common ways of losing a greyhound. It's much more common in the breed than it is in humans, or even in other large dogs.

There are treatment options, but they're all lousy. The best option would be to amputate the leg and start her on chemotherapy. It would keep her alive for a few more months, probably, but the odds that she'd survive another year even with the amputation are less than 50%. Thanks, but no thanks. She's had enough parts cut off.

So, we're trying to keep her comfortable. It's about all we can do. It won't be long.

I wasn't going to say anything about this for awhile, but a well-meaning tweet from H has been bringing in lots of sympathy and offers of help, for which we're very grateful.

Meanwhile, we're treasuring the moments we have with her. Her time is short, but she's still loving life--eating all her food, enjoying a lie-around in a meadow, and rooing happily at the door when she's ready for a walk. I think this morning she was quoting the character in the Monty Python sketch: "I'm not dead yet! I'm feeling better! I don't want to go on the cart!"

Possibly only morganminstrel will appreciate why this is cool:

I now possess sketches of both my dogs by Paul Chadwick of "Concrete" fame.

My life is a happy and fulfilling one.

I'd had vague thoughts about dinner followed by a trip somewhere outside to watch the sunset, but all that got derailed by a phone call. "I don't want you to worry," said bubblesutonium, "but we're going to be a little late. Amy got into a tussle with one of the other dogs."

It turned out to be just a small bite wound, worth only one stitch and some antibiotics. She'll be fine. Unfortunately, the emergency vet was completely overwhelmed. They ended up waiting nearly three hours before the vet could take the ten minutes to clean her up. Dinner turned into a quick pasta dish at about 9:30.

Oh well. One of life's little entertaining moments. All praise to bubblesutonium for having the patience to deal with the vet. I'd have been climbing the walls.

I don't often have a tear well up as I'm reading something, but this did it to me:

Laika: The First Dog in Space

Let's see: Cherry trees are blooming? Yep. We're past the equinox? Check. The M's home opener in Safeco Field is next week? Got it. UW is on spring break? Absolutely. Sun still up past 7 PM? Right. Mild and reasonably dry winter coming to an end? Seems like it.

OK, now please explain those big white fluffy foo-flakes that were falling all over me earlier tonight.

Weirdest winter ever.

In other news, I'd like to find the person who invented the Flexi Leash and horsewhip them with it. It's nearly impossible to keep a dog under control with one of those things. Unless the owner is paying very close attention and has a tight grip on the brake, that dog can run anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five feet away from their owner.

That, of course, leads to situations like tonight: A teenager is standing next to a car, talking to his Mom, loosely holding his 80-pound mixed-breed on a Flexi lead. The mixed-breed sees my two hounds and charges for my dogs, full-tilt, barking his head off aggressively. That overzealous mutt gets to the end of the sixteen-foot line with so much momentum that the dog literally pulls the inattentive teenager off his feet, dropping him almost head-first into the mud in the yard. The dog only backs off when I stand in front of my hounds and body-block him from getting any closer.

Every damn time a leashed dog has come close to taking a swipe at one of my dogs, they've had one of those Flexi leads. I really, really hate those things.

This rant brought to you by the Overprotective Dog Owners of America. Thank you, drive through.

That stray greyhound from last night has been reunited with her owner.

Apparently the owners were vacationing in the neighborhood and had their two greyhounds with them. Joy, the older hound, got loose. God alone knows how. The owners were afraid they'd never see her again. They thought she'd died.

Why?

Well, she's old. Really, really old. Over 13 years old, which is -- I dunno, mid 90s maybe? -- in human years.

That's why she was so skinny. Apparently the poor thing just doesn't want to eat any more. The owners apparently have another greyhound, robust and happy, and were very distraught at losing Joy. Our greyhound friend Leslie returned her happily. As a bonus, Leslie gave some tips on diet changes to help elderly greyhounds interested in eating again, so hopefully Joy's owners will be able to get a little weight back on her.

She has no rescue tags or ear tattoos because she wasn't a retired racer. Instead she's an American Kennel Club greyhound, the type you see in the dog shows. (Similar but different breeding line.) Her owners have had her from puppyhood.

A happy ending all around. Somebody's holiday will be a lot merrier. Especially the dog's.

After a lovely evening of wine, food, gifts, and "Thank God, we might get the sun back some day," bubblesutonium and I settled in for the proverbial long winter's nap.

We'd just about dozed off when there was a frantic pounding on the door and mashing of our doorbell.

Wait, wasn't the clatter supposed to come from the rooftop?

I opened the door on a very apologetic neighbor. "We've got a greyhound emergency," she said. I stifled the instinct to panic: mine were both behind me, long noses twitching in interest.

It turned out the neighbor's daughter, a sweet Dartmouth freshman, had been working at the local Italian restaurant when she'd spotted a stray greyhound in an arterial street, seconds away from being run over. (If this sounds familiar to anyone, well, it should. Same street. Same restaurant, in fact.) By the end of her shift, no one had claimed the dog, so she brought it home to ask her Mom for help. Mom, in turn, woke up the only greyhound people she knew: us.

Bubbles and I went out and looked at this dog. She was a sweet faced white-and-black dog, walking a little awkwardly, wearing a red coat, shivering with cold and fright.

Her tag was...strange. Retired racing greyhounds normally have two tags: a standard "I'm the owner" tag, and one from the rescue group that adopted out the hound. This one had just the "I'm the owner" tag. Except...the address on the tag was from San Juan Island.

For those not local: San Juan Island is about 60 miles north of Seattle just offshore of Vancouver Island, barely a couple miles away from the Canadian border. There are only two ways to get from there to Seattle: a two-hour ferry ride (followed by 90 minutes of freeway driving), or float plane. I've heard of escaping dogs doing some strange things, but neither seemed likely.

Nor did she have the ear tattoos that are standard on ex-racing dogs.

We didn't really start to panic until we took her coat off to give her a warmer fleece. All greyhounds are thin, but I'd never seen one like this: painfully, horribly thin, all of her ribs standing out stiff against the skin, her spine visible and outlined in every detail. She looked like she hadn't had an honest meal in two to three weeks. Her teeth made her look like a young dog, but her awkward hobble made her look like an ancient, arthritic crone.

We thought about keeping the dog overnight, but neither of us much liked the idea: our own hounds are a bit territorial, and we weren't convinced the cats were going to be too happy either. So we made some phone calls. Eventually one of our greyhound rescue friends agreed to meet us and take the dog for awhile.

Leslie knows us well and is long experienced with greyhound rescue. "This...is not the dog I was expecting," she said. "I was wondering why you two were so panicky about her." She immediately bundled the dog into her car and started getting her warmed up.

We went home and went back to bed.

Lots of questions. The owners are going to have some 'splainin' to do before they get their dog back. If they do.

[Edited, because erudite fire-based whining is still just whining.]

An unrelated follow-up:

The good news is that Cherry's fracture appears to have healed well. No further surgery is anticipated. Thank God.

The bad news is that he's got fairly bad skin problems from having been encased in a bandage for so very long. The vet re-wrapped him in a bandage (without the splint) on Friday and told us to in no uncertain terms to leave the waterproof covering of the bandage off, whenever we can, to let air circulate to the leg and help the skin to heal.

It took about 24 hours for him to soak the bandage enough that it needed to be replaced.

He's back at the vet one more time, his head in an E-collar (one of those cone-head things that dogs wear to avoid disturbing surgical stitches or skin). They're letting the leg dry thoroughly before they wrap it one more time. With luck and care we may be able to keep the bandage on for a few more days, at least long enough that his skin won't itch quite so much.

Tomorrow is a big day for our greyhound Cherry. He's getting his cast off.

We hope.

It's been 10 weeks since Cherry had emergency surgery to fix a badly broken leg. He's been laid up ever since, his right rear leg braced with fiberglass and bandages.

He'd been healing quite well--getting more energy, able to put quite a bit of weight on the leg--until about two to three weeks ago, right around the time the weather turned cold. Then suddenly he went back to walking three-legged, refusing to put any weight on his bad leg at all, and spending most of his time laid up in bed.

bubblesutonium and I think it's some combination of pressure sores (from the bandages being on for so long) and the cold weather causing the metal in his leg to become chilly and painful.

That's what we're praying for, anyway. The alternative is much, much worse. If something went wrong with the surgery, and Cherry didn't heal right, we're going to have to go through this all over again.

The idea of having another expensive round of surgery and another 2.5 months in a cast for our poor dog is enough to send your humble correspondent looking through the liquor cabinet for restoratives.

So why didn't we take him back to the vet and ask? We were strongly discouraged from taking Cherry back to the vet for anything less than a major trauma emergency until his 10-week healing period was up. The reason is that if the vet has to do anything with Cherry's bandages, they have to sedate the dog. Sedating a greyhound is a ticklish problem under the best of circumstances, so everyone involved would just as soon avoid it whenever they can, thanks ever so.

Anyway. Tomorrow is The Day. I'm taking Cherry into the vet in the morning for another round of X-Rays and to have his bandages removed. If all goes well, I'll bring him home tomorrow night and he can start relearning how to walk normally. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Meanwhile, while we were visiting over the Thanksgiving holiday, my beloved and overzealous mother knit a legwarmer for Cherry to wear on his bad leg once the cast comes off. Yes, a single legwarmer. Why? Well, see, Mom has an artificial knee. She had deep, personal sympathy for the dog. Here's a dog with virtually no body fat, with incredibly thin legs whose joints you can practically see through his skin, with enough metal in his leg to set off an airport screening detector from ten feet away. That metal gets cold. You think your joints ache in the morning....

At some point I'll see about getting a picture of Cherry with his legwarmer. It's quite the sight.

Wistful Cherry Photo by Sara Spears. Dialog by Cherry. Text by me.

His right leg is held together by a stainless steel plate and about eight or nine screws.

He's still on pain meds and a massive dose of antibiotics, and is not a little out of it.

He has to wear a fiberglass splint for over two months. That black thing on his leg is designed to help cover the bandages and keep them from getting wet.

He's walking mostly three-legged, dragging his bad leg behind him.

For what we're paying to have him fixed up, we could have bought a Macbook for each of us.

It's not at all clear when or if his bionic powers will kick in.

But when I got Cherry out of the Jeep this afternoon, he took one sniff of the familiar front lawn, and reared up on one good and one bad hind leg, bouncing in unabashed joy and glee.

Our dog is home.

The surgery went well.

Cherry's bone was more badly broken than was apparent from the X-ray. The doctor pieced together something like 6 or 7 bone fragments to rebuild the hock (lower leg). I gather this was not entirely unexpected. Shattered bone is common with this kind of injury.

So, he's now got a couple of screws and pins in him. Good thing he'll never have to go through an airport security line.

He seems to be coming out of the anesthesia without incident. (This was a major worry. Greyhounds are very sensitive to anesthesia drugs. It's not unprecedented for them to die on the operating table from an adverse reaction.) The hospital is planning to keep him over the weekend, so he'll be home on Monday.

It's all good news. We couldn't really ask for better. But the next few weeks are going to be difficult for everybody: he'll be on lots of pills for awhile, in a really awkward cast. Keeping him from going insane with boredom while he's laid up will be a major challenge. Unfortunately, a wheelchair and a camera with a long telephoto lens are not options here.

Still. I'm very pleased. And relieved. And weary. A stiff drink is looking better and better by the minute.

bubblesutonium has an update on our dog Cherry.

Short version: he's still at the hospital. The surgery was rescheduled for tomorrow. He's being kept as comfortable as possible. The doctors expect a full recovery...eventually.

For all of you who've sent good wishes and healing thoughts: thank you. Bless you. Each and every one of you. We read them all and we're profoundly grateful for them.

Our dog Cherry was chasing a tennis ball earlier today when his leg gave way with a sound like a popgun. He howled bloody murder, and by the time I got to him, his foot was twisted in a direction evolution had never intended.

He's in the hospital overnight with a broken leg. They'll need to operate in the morning.

By next week I might be able to make something dark and funny out of all of this, but just now, it ain't happening.

All good thoughts and prayers gratefully accepted.

I used the phrase "so fucking bored" in front of a friend today who gave me a slightly wide-eyed look in response and found a reason to depart the house quickly. Sorry about that. I'm working on it, I promise.

Meanwhile:

A cardiologist took thirty seconds today to poke at our elder greyhound Amy with a stethoscope. I could do an ultrasound, he said, but I'd be wasting your money. Your dog is fine.

He charged me $95.00 for this pronouncement, which I thought was a pretty good pay rate for thirty seconds of work. I have to admit, though: it was reassuring. Amy's regular vet had been concerned, and heart problems in an older greyhound are not to be ignored casually.

For his part, our younger greyhound Cherry took off running at a long gallop at the off-leash park the other day. I was so pleased: it was the first time he'd felt comfortable enough with us to go for a run.

"Wow, I've never seen a dog move that fast," said a guy standing near me. Probably true, but he was only in about second or third gear. Greyhounds at full speed have what's called a double-suspension gait, meaning that they literally bound with all four feet off the ground twice per stride. It's ferociously fast, but they rarely use it unless they're chasing down prey.

As for the cats, we like to joke that our elder cat Grover is trying to kill us. He likes to lie around in awkward places and trip us at inopportune moments. Normally we're pretty good about avoiding him. (Long practice helps.) Today, though, I tripped over him at the top of the stairs and saved myself from a headfirst plunge more by luck than by skill. I had to explain to him for the umpteenth time that he does not collect on the life insurance if we die by accident in the house.

Sandy, our younger cat, has appointed herself as Mistress of Pest Control. Spiders beware. She's got her eye on you.

I may have an Announcement to make in the next couple of days, depending on the results of an extended e-mail discussion I'm having with a few people. We shall see.

So, WoS, how's it feel to be done with the quarter?

Hasn't happened yet, unfortunately.

But you said...

No, no, I'm done with classes. This is finals week, which for me means handing in final papers, getting research wrapped up, and getting the grades sorted out.

You spent the weekend working, then.

Off and on. And grocery shopping. And cooking. And playing with the dogs. I even got some drinking with friends in at one point.

How's Cherry?

He's settling in nicely, although the poor guy has been having accidents in the house off and on for most of the last week. It's not his fault; he's on a med that gives him a very weak bladder. He finished the medication course on Saturday, thank God, so we should see marked improvement this week.

Every day Cherry behaves better. He's learning to walk on leash without pulling or tripping people. We're still working on getting him not to jump excitedly when we walk in the door. He passed his first obedience class with flying colors, even if he hasn't quite figured out the idea behind 'down' yet.

Did Cherry learn anything from his trip to the vet last week?

Not a damn thing. I've never been so closely supervised while cooking in my life. He looked positively affronted tonight when I took the leftover ground beef and put it back in the fridge instead of putting it in his food bowl.

There's a remarkable similarity between the puppy-dog eyes of a sad greyhound and the puppy-dog eyes of a pleading student, I've noticed.

And you still refuse requests when faced with those eyes?

Long practice.

Back home after a lovely long weekend, in which many sopapillas were sampled and much vitamin D absorbed. New Mexico has astonishing churches, wonderful art, and subtle and firey chilies. It's a beautiful place, the more so because every city and town is so obviously an oasis in the middle of an arid high desert.

The only real adventure of the weekend happened at home. bubblesutonium woke to an early morning phone call: Cherry the greyhound had counter-surfed his way into a bag of chocolate-covered raisins. Since both chocolate and raisins are toxic to dogs, this wasn't good news. Our dog-sitter rushed him over to the emergency vet, where they took great care of him. He's fine now.

Just now I must hurry outside and fire up a lawnmower before I head off to class. Apparently the three days we were gone were a month in Lawn Time, because the jungle in my front yard is going to require a machete if I don't do something about it quickly.

Wow, am I tired.

However, I might yet get this damned research poster done in time for the critique session tomorrow. Er, later today.

Meanwhile: Amy, our older greyhound, has been regarding the new arrival Cherry with an aloof, slightly disdainful air. She puts up with the big lunk well enough, but we wondered what she really thought of him.

Today I had to haul Cherry to the vet. (Nothing major--a skin irritation we're trying to clear up.) It was the first time since Cherry came home that we'd taken one of the dogs somewhere without the other one.

When I brought Cherry back home, Amy danced in glee and relief.

Apparently she has taken a shine to the doggie boy.

And with that happy thought, I'm going to fall over for a few hours.