My Christmas Present

When I was a little girl my grandmother liked to find ways to keep me busy. At this time of year she would hand me the Sears Roebuck catalog and a pen and tell me to circle what I wanted Santa to bring me. This was an all day or even two day project as I got busy circling almost every item in the catalog.

When I was a bit older my Mom would ask me and my siblings to make a list for her. She usually gave us something from our list.

Most years Rob asks me what I want for Christmas and I sometimes have a hard time coming up with an answer.

This year, it seems that I won't have to think up anything, my dogs have taken care of that for me. Fudge is still wearing a cone to protect his eye, but the eye is looking much better today. He gets warm compresses on his eye several times a day and loves that treatment. He still gets eyedrops three times a day and I still give him a pain pill at night to help him, and everyone else, sleep.

Sebastian's hip was responding well to the antibiotics, the swelling was almost gone. Then he finished the antibiotics a couple days ago and yesterday I noticed that the area was starting to swell again. Last night he started licking his hip and wouldn't stop. I took a look at it and it was very swollen and red and angry looking. I put a cone on him to keep him from licking and sprayed the area with a steroid spray to help with the itching. He spent the evening glaring at me.

This morning when we checked it, it looked really bad, so we put him in the car and went to visit Dr B.  The doctor said the infection was still active and we'd have to do another course of antibiotics. Then he applied a little pressure to the area and it erupted with nasty looking stuff that resembled cottage cheese. The doctor seemed pleased and said that made it much easier to diagnose. It seems that Sebastian has a sebaceous cyst and after a few days on antibiotics to calm it, we'll have it removed. That should take care of the problem. We scheduled his surgery for next Tuesday.

Yes, that's two dogs in cones at the same time. Try that sometime, it makes life exciting. So this year my gift will be a group of healthy dogs. I'll settle for that.