The invalid resting on the dogs’ couch. The dark spots on top of and below his ‘cast’ are not blood, they are dirt. I was not planning to perform any additional medical aid at the time I took this photograph: the wary expression is the result of a certain commotion on the other end of the couch. He barely gets settled into his nap when Annie bounces along for another bout of kissy/bitey-face. Now that he has received full validation for the near-fatal injury he sustained in the squirrel wars, he props his damaged limb just so on the edge of the couch and snarls at her harshly for coming near it. Until, of course, the game heats up and requires his full attention.

  A rare contemplative moment from the other end of the couch. She received a new purple collar (planned purchase) to match her new purple leash (unplanned purchase) when Cheryl and Annie went to our Saturday morning obedience lessons and discovered neither one of us had brought a string. (The other half of the class forgot to come, so we did relatively well.) We are also taking an evening class called ‘Control Unleashed’. Our first night we spent exploring ways to help our reactive dogs settle down and relax. Annie took issue with Belu because he was ‘looking’ at her and launched an assault. Fortunately Belu (who must out-weigh her by 20 pounds) was relaxing and Cheryl had a firm grip on the leash.

Today is Sunday after Friday of the Rains. Nancy and the dogs have gone to Vicksburg to our CSA to pick up the weeks vegetables. Tomorrow is writers group. I should clean the carpets again next week. I have a book called ‘the missing manual’ for Photoshop Elements which I should read because I have asked my partner the same question way too many times. I am surprisingly awkward and self-defeating in the trial-and-error approach to PE and none of it seems even remotely intuitive. I do occasionally make wonderful discoveries, but I never seem to really just say, ‘what the hell…?’ and launch off on my own. Ironically, for a writer and a reader, it becomes clearer an clearer to me as I get older that I do not learn by reading. But I have the book and I have the program and I need to produce the photographs, so perhaps I should try my first solo flight.

Oh,yes, speaking of first flights: Annie killed a baby robin yesterday. It did cause me to question the universe, in all of its glory. I am not quite sure how cheeping loudly and hopping around in circles when a big, black Thing approaches you becomes a life-saving technique. And in this case, it failed miserably. Adventures like these are entirely natural, if a little hard on my heart.

Anyway. What do you think of this? It’s not done the way it should be done (because apparently I discovered an easier way to do something which, according to the manual, should be harder for me to do (????) but anyway: photography into graphic arts.

 The original photograph was over-exposed and the cat was old and tired of self-grooming, so he looked a little tacky. And I have 500,000 photographs of him sitting on the tool box in the window behind my left shoulder. I like the fact that it looks like a drawing. Nancy is not a fan of photoshopped prints.

Also a flawed photograph (the dog is never in much better focus than he is here) but again, I kind of like the drawn look of it.

Or not. This is not complex work. It’s possible I allowed my friend to appeal to my ego rather than to my common sense when I agreed to participate in her show.

And now I have a year to come up with something amazing.

Our Beloved Golden Hound is sporting a leg cast these days.

About a week ago he jumped to nail a taunting squirrel, came down on top of a trellis, got his foot caught, knocked the trellis over and screamed loud enough to call the people across the street over to find out who was killing our dog. We managed to free him (it took about five of us) from the killer trellis, and he trotted away (notice the absence of the verb ‘to limp’) a free dog.

We examined his wound. He had a scratch. We treated it with antibiotic cream and let him go.

We high-fived each other on our extraordinary luck at getting such a wonderful ending to what started as such a horrific story.

Riley grew a scab on his scratch. We covered it with triple antibiotic ointment and sighed with relief.

A week later Riley had a naked patch of leg about three inches long and an inch wide, in the center of which was a weal of what my mother would call ‘proud flesh’.

I should insert the recurring paragraph that begins, “I was raised by a cat…” right about here. When a cat sports a visible wound which it licks repeatedly, favors when it remembers to do so and growls with its co-cat comes near it, there is about a 50-50 chance your cat is already half-dead. In fact, if you even suspect there is something wrong with your cat, grab your credit card and you and the cat should RUN to the nearest vet. 

I thought, “Absess. Blood poisoning. His leg is broken and he has been gamely walking on the splinters all of this time.” I described his injury to a dog person.

She said, “He’s obsessing’.” She referred to something she called ‘the cone of shame’.

I went home and looked at Riley’s leg. It looked like…well, it looked like a dog-leg that had been licked obsessively, but I thought, “There’s a reason why he’s doing that…”

I told Nancy I would take him to the vet the next day.

She called her daughter, who is Murphy’s person. Murphy was the shared dog who convinced me my life was incomplete without a full-time dog.

Ranee said, “he’s obsessing. Is it hot?”

It’s the same temperature as his other leg.

“Does he limp?”

“Not unless he remembers to.”

“It’s not broken, Cheryl,” Ranee said over the phone, because in order to stop sharing her dog, she moved to Florida where I can’t get to her. “Wrap it up so he can’t get to it and keep it wrapped for a few days.”

Soooo… *smirk, smirk* It turns out there IS a use for Cheryl’s ability to bandage a pin prick in such a way that the person needs crutches to haul around the bandaging. It’s to keep the dog from repeatedly pulling the bandaging off. We have it down to a science, now: hydrogen peroxide wash, triple antibiotic cream, waterproof gauze, the plastic tape the doctor sent home to keep my eye patch on when I had my cataract removed. I threatened to tape his leg to his body and make him hop on three legs for a week, just as a prelude to what would happen if he kept screwing with it, but Nancy felt I was being too harsh.

When he’s not sitting between my knees muttering, “I’m sorry, Cheryl, I’m really sorry,” he avoids me.

“You are NOT a cat,” I have lectured him more than once.

He seems not quite sure what to do with that information.