Oh My Dog!

Emmett looks out the right-side car window

Lucas looks out the left side!

“My dog, she looks at me sometimes with that look, and I think maybe deep down inside she must know exactly how I feel. But then maybe she just wants the food off my plate.”
– Unknown

Lucas uses his bed as a pillow

Lucas had surgery to remove what the vet thought was a hemangioma (a small, benign growth) on Thursday. The pathology came back as an angiokeratoma, which I guess is a little rarer, but still benign, thank goodness. The spot was on his chest, in between his arms. It’s not a spot he can lick, so he’s free from wearing the cone this time around, but he’s unable to play or run for 10 days. Yeesh! We’ll see how that goes… for him and for us!

Also, the boys hate (HATE) fireworks. With each pop, their hackles go up as they jump around, woofing in circles, dashing from one end of the house to another. So while we hoped you all would have a very happy, very enjoyable Fourth, we planned to hide in our house, shades draw, with TV turned way up to hopefully drown out the horror that is this holiday! However, turned out we didn’t need to panic because it poured buckets the whole day and through the night. While we secretly celebrated the fact that there would be no fireworks, little did we know that our town postponed all festivities until last night! So around 9:30 PM on a Sunday night, the fireworks started. Poor Lucas: his nostrils flared, his hackles rose, he barked his little head off. Luckily for all our sanity, the madness was over by 10:45, so we were able to calm him down and get to bed!

All in all, this has been a rough few days for Lucas. He goes to have his stitches checked on Thursday, but then he gets to go visit Otto for a full day of fun (assuming the stitches are able to come out, of course)!

I love magazines. I subscribe to a few and devour the rest on the newsstands each month. Every time I’m at the bookstore, I look for new issues of Modern Dog and The Bark, my two favorite dog magazines. Both summer issues are on newsstands now, and before you drop almost $5 a piece, here are a few quick details about what you’ll find in the current issues:

Modern Dog has a lot of great summer fun ideas and product reviews. In addition, there’s a really fascinating article about Picasso’s dogs. My favorite article in the Summer 2009 issue, though, was “We’ll Always Have Utah” about a trip to the Best Friend’s animal sanctuary. So good! There were also a few good summery recipes – like banana popsicles – and more about people foods that are healthy for dogs.

The Bark also had an article about Picasso and dogs, though it was much shorter than the one in Modern Dog. The mag also had a section of home cooked meals. My favorite article in the issue was “Two for the Road” about a seeing eye dog helping his person run in marathons! Very inspiring!

Both magazines also had tips to save money at the vet and a plethora of product reviews.

Overall, while both were entertaining as usual, unfortunately they had almost identical tips and tricks and even topics this time around. And at nearly $5 each, I would say pick one or the other for summer!

“Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.”
- Harry S. Truman