Pawedness

Emily has now reached the "I'm bored, why can't I chase that pigeon stage"--and it's less than a week in. She is "toe-touching"--sporadically tapping the toe of her swollen shaved healing leg to the floor--which is a sign of progress, and the swelling is slowly shifting from her ankle (which looked tumorous last week) to her paw; the fluid is gradually being resorbed into the surrounding tissue. But of course, because the leg is still painful, she'd prefer not to lie on it. She's doing a lot of lying because, well...what else is a dog to do? And I realized something I'd never realized before: Emily routinely turns counter-clockwise when preparing to lie down. Unfortunately, turning counter-clockwise puts her gimpy-side-down.

So I'm watching Emily discover left from right each time she lies down. Right now she's cheating: she's lying in my lap, which she outgrew years ago.

The D-words

Over on www.madeleinerobins.com, I've got a post up about words people don't like to use. Not the ones you're thinking of--the f-word, the n-word, etc. I'm talking about the d-words...