Fall has come and not yet (!) gone

I love this time of year. It's still dark when I get up, the air is cool and crisp, and the trees just look gorgeous. And when the sun decides to shine, it's hard not to love it outside. 

Last week Jan was in Seattle, so Pepper and I went on our evening walks a little earlier. And we were rewarded: This beautiful sunset was taken last Thursday.

Rough week...

About two weeks ago we noticed a little bump under Pepper's right eye. Nothing bad, really, and since we had just returned from the dog park - and he had done some wrestling with Greta there - I figured maybe she got him a little too hard and it is just a small wound that will get better on its own. It didn't.

So after a week I took him to the vet who said it could either be a benign histiocytoma or a cancerous mast cell tumor, and as it was so close to the eye he could not take a good sample to make that judgement call right there. So he decided to take it off and send it to biopsy. Which meant a long week for us. We finally got the result today - it was benign. Thank goodness! 

Here are some pictures of Pepper with his "cone of shame" (I can't tell you just how many times I have heard that this week...).

Here he is on Monday evening right after surgery. Still a bit drowsy and definitely uncomfortable. We left his harness on so that we could tie the cone to it to ensure that there is no way he can strip it off over night.

 

We first tried to get him into his kennel over night (and I slept in the same room just in case he got stuck with that huge cone). He couldn't get comfortable and after a good hour of him whining and looking pretty miserable, we cleared out one of our rooms completely and moved him and his bed in there. I stayed with him until about midnight (and actually got a few moments of sleep), then took him out for a brief walk + bathroom break. He wasn't quite sure how to manage to eliminate with that cone on. Poor bugger. 

The second night was also pretty rough. He slept until about 2 when the combination of being in pain, being uncomfortable, not having run for two days and being alone in a room that he usually does not sleep in was too much. I then decided to at least take off the harness (and connect the cone to one of his old collars), and that made a huge difference already. I took him for a walk/run (in the middle of the night!), and that *definitely* made a difference. So while I did not get a lot of sleep the first two nights, it has paid off. He has been just wonderful ever since. I've said it before and I'll say it again: What a great dog he is!