January 5, 2005 A Bit of a Snag So I was all ready to post an entry, thinking of what I would write about, when a friend of mine wrote to me, saying that spies.com is going to be going away very soon. I checked Ceej's blog, and it seems to be the case, though I haven't received any information about it from her directly, or from anyone else associated with spies. I've been extremely lucky to have had this space since Ceej found my journal on the dreaded Geocities in 1999 and offered me free space. I've used it for my journal, for a short-lived movie review site, and to hold a lot of my writings. I've always known that I'd have to find a domain of my own someday, barring more generosity from Ceej. So stay tuned for now...I'll let you know when things change, and how to update your links to reach me. I've wanted to get my own domain name for awhile anyway, so this might be the best time to go about doing just that. Those of you who have your own domains who'd be willing to share some information about moving domains and getting the best webspace would have my eternal gratitude. My dog Trooper goes in for minor surgery tomorrow morning. He has a cyst on his neck that makes him smell really bad, so that needs to be taken care of. It'll be a relief to have him back without the nasty odor. Unfortunately, that's not the only thing wrong with Trooper. When we took him in to the vet for the smell, the vet noticed a lump on his rear end. She took a needle biopsy, and it turned out to be cancerous. Even more unfortunately, it appeared that removing the tumor would create a good chance of his losing continence. This diagnosis was given around Thanksgiving. We were told to go to a surgical specialist in the area, after determining that Trooper was okay for surgery. Part of that determination required an ultrasound of his belly, to make sure the cancer hadn't spread. The good news was that the cancer hadn't spread anywhere else. The bad news was that after getting Trooper home from the ultrasound center, he appeared to have had some sort of incident that caused his back legs to cease working for awhile. He was also very disoriented and listless. Since then, we've been to the vet many times, and Trooper has been on the mend, though he's still weak in the back legs. He slips when using the stairs, and the kitchen floor is a little too slick for him most days. But all in all, he's been in good spirits and not in pain. So last week, I took Trooper for his surgical consult. The surgeon told me that she thought she could get the tumor out without causing the chance of incontinence, but after a second look, she told me there was more than a 50 percent chance of it happening. I went home with that information, and had a very long talk with Mom about it. Trooper is 14 years old. He's a big dog, and big dogs don't usually live much longer than 15 years or so. His eyesight isn't that great, and neither is his hearing. He hasn't been eating as much as he used to, and has dropped 20 lbs. in a matter of months. The surgeon told me that he would have a year after the surgery before the cancer came back (this type of cancer evidently always comes back), but he'd probably have about six months without the surgery, and most likely not experience any pain due to it. We decided that 6 months without pain, without an invasive procedure, and without the chance of him losing control of his bowels would be preferable to a year of the opposite. Pet owners have the responsibility of deciding what's best for their animals, and sometimes that responsibility means letting the pet die with dignity. I believe we're doing just that. Strangely enough, I'm not horribly depressed about this. I'm terribly sad for Trooper, knowing that he'll be leaving us sometime soon, but he's had a wonderful life with us, and he doesn't know that he's sick (he shows no signs of pain at all), and he's been much more loving, lately. He even likes to play occasionally, which is great for such a senior citizen! So he'll go in to fix his little problem tomorrow (they say it's a 20-minute procedure, and Trooper is an excellent candidate for surgery), and we'll deal with his big problem when it becomes a big problem. So wish my old dog some luck tomorrow sometime mid-morning.