July

We found a new Thai restaurant in town, Linnie's Thai Cuisine. It's not too far from home; in fact, we'd driven past it numerous times last year when we were going to the hospital every day for Earl's radiation treatments. Our first visit was with our friend, Mary Doran. Since then, Earl and I have been there two more times.

We were planning on going over to the coast at the end of the month, but those plans fell through. However, if we'd gone, we would have put the dogs either in doggy day care or boarded them over on the coast since we would have been gone all day visiting with family. In preparation for that, we took both dogs to the vet to have Bordetella shots for kennel cough. Gracie also had to have her first annual booster shot and Blaze had to have his stitches taken out from his neutering and umbilical hernia repair.

As the vet was examining Gracie, she noticed that she has luxating patellas, so she referred us to a veterinary surgical specialist. The specialist took x-rays and found that she also has hip displasia.  Both cases are mild and do not require surgery at this time.  We have noticed that when she gets up from a laying down position, she will raise herself up with her front end first and then get her back legs under her.  She also does the "bunny hop" gait described in the hip displasia article.  Other than that, she really shows no signs that anything is wrong.  Hopefully, it won't progress to the stage where she will require surgery.

We've started taking Blaze to doggy day care for half a day three times a week.  It became clear when we took him in to have him neutered (the first time he'd been away from us since we got him), that he was way too attached to us.  Our breeder suggested that we find a friend or neighbor who was willing to take care of him once in awhile, or even walk him.  However, since there really isn't anyone in this neighborhood who we'd feel comfortable asking to do that, we looked around for other solutions and came up with doggy day care.  We found a really great place, and Blaze has been going there for a couple of weeks now.  We've already noticed a huge improvement in how he interacts with other dogs and other people, plus he's not as hyper and "nippy" around the house.  It's really done him a world of good...plus, he has lots of fun playing with the other dogs.

Earl's birthday was on the 19th and we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory to celebrate. 

The previous owner of our house had left a white free-standing cabinet in the kitchen when he moved out.  We moved it into the office to use for storage, but really didn't like the way the office looked, so we bought a long, low bookcase to use as a credenza behind the table...it looks really nice and actually makes the office look larger.