Sorta into winter now

How do we define the beginning of winter?

Officially, it's the Solstice, which is a month away yet.

We can say, day of first frost? That'd be late August.

Day of first snow? Nah, depending on precipitation seems too arbitrary.

Day of first skiing? Nope, that also depends on on precipitation.

How about, the day the swampy trails are frozen up and we can go walk them? YAAAAAAAY!

When the bit of Rosie Creek that runs behind our house is frozen, we can both get across to the trail system, and also be sure that the swampy parts are frozen, too! There is enough snow to ski on on the groomed trails on campus, but not enough to cushion our trails here in the 'hood. There is also not enough depth to set a snow hook, so mushers are still not on sleds. They have begun fall training with 4-wheelers though.

Hello, Cricket!

Thistle likes to eat grass! Unlike many dogs, she keeps it down and also seems to digest it just fine. I've never had to pull a dangly strand out of her butt. Ugh!

Oh, yes, another definition of winter: 10 a.m. looks like this!

It had been a rough prior two weeks for us. Thistle poked herself in the eye while out hiking, and it didn't seem to be improving after two days, so I took her to the vet to get it looked at. While there, I mentioned that her appetite had been a bit off. Not enough to make me panic, but enough to make me think it was worth probing, as I remembered Autumn's liver tumor. The vet said, well, the most conservative test we could do would be an X-ray to see what was going on inside. I said, that sounded fine.

The X-ray showed a small tumor on her spleen. Yes, the same kind we had been worried about with Autumn. The vet said that 2/3 of splenic tumors are cancerous and metastatic and spread quickly to the liver, but if we'd caught it early enough, we could just remove her spleen and that could be the end of it. So we scheduled for a sonogram the following week, on my primary vet's surgery day, so if we had indeed caught the tumor early enough we could do the surgery right away. I was to fast her that morning, so that her stomach would be empty, both for better visibility with the sonogram and of course for the potential surgery. But of course I spent the following week very sad and worried. She was acting totally normal, other than of course the very slight appetite loss. She was running and strong and active. I could not believe that she might possibly be brought down by some kind of cancer. It would be fast-acting, if it were so.

The day of the sonogram, I took off from work so after dropping her off in the morning I could hang out with Cricket with my heart in my throat. When the vet called that morning, she said that it did appear to be that we had gotten lucky. Her liver looked clean, and her stomach and intestines all looked clean. Everything looked good except for three golf ball-sized tumors on her spleen. So it appeared that removing her spleen would remove the cancer. So she removed Thistle's spleen.

Did you know that it's not uncommon to live without a spleen? Apparently, in humans, it's commonly removed after a car crash or other traumatic bodily injury; they'd sooner remove it than try to repair it. And I guess your liver takes over its functions of cleaning your blood. In dogs, it's very common for splenic tumors to show no symptoms at all, until one day they burst, the dog is in accute pain, and it's too late to remove the spleen as by then it'll have grown so huge that it'll contain just so high a proportion of the dog's blood that the dog would die of blood loss. What a traumatic thing to experience, to lose an apparently healthy dog so suddenly. I can't be sure that this is what we avoided, but it seems very likely! I am very grateful that I asked the vet to probe this, but as they say in dog manuals, whenever your dog's behavior changes, always investigate as it could mean something very serious.

However, I had not realized how urgent this slight appetite loss could have been! That eye poke may have saved Thistle's life!

That first night was hard. She paced around all night in a post-anasthesia fog. But after that, she settled down, although she was Not Amused by the donut.

Her appetite came back almost immediately!

Is... This... in compliance with your Activity Restrictions, Thistle Girl?

And then the biopsy results came back. The tumor is not the kind we had feared, but it was still a type of cancer. However, none of the other stuff (liver, bloodwork) showed signs of being of the scarier types. It's very possible that this cancer is now gone. Cross your fingers for Queen Thistle!

And also of course for dear Cricket, even though she's hardly had a health issue. She's always been healthy as corn, and I think she's only ever been to the vet for shots and other preventative stuff. I have never cried or fretted over Cricket and she has never caused me worry or anguish, but I hope she knows that she has as big a piece of my heart as all of her sisters have.