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Phouka is sleeping beside my desk chair. This is the longest she’s been in the new office at any given time. Maybe she’s finally getting used to the new landscape. When she first started coming up here, her tail would uncurl, (a sign of an unhappy or over heated pug) and she’d be very tentative about walking around. For those who don’t know, Phouka went completely blind before the edition was put on the house, so she is totally unfamiliar with the new office. She would stand in the middle of the floor with her unhappy tail, and wait to be rescued. But today, after I carried her up the scary stairs, she settled into one of the dog beds, then began to wonder the office, as she usually does. But, her tail was up in a happy curl, and she bulldozed her way into and through obstacles. There was nothing tentative to how my very solidly built little dog moved around the room. It was more the way she barrels through the main part of the house. Now she’s asleep beside my chair, and it is the first time she’s gone to snoring sleep beside me in the new office. I’m glad she’s finally settling in, because on Thursday she goes in for an operation. There’s a mole on her tummy, that we were worried about, and of course, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s the lump on her leg that is something to worry about. We knew that was there, but the first time the doctors looked at it, they weren’t worried, now they are. They’re removing both the mole and lump this week. Phouka is twelve this year, and pugs can have breathing problems anyway, so I’m a little nervous about her going in under anethsia. All right, a lot nervous. It probably has something to do with Pugsley, my first pug, dieing during a routine operation. She was only eight. What killed her though was an undiscovered heart malfunction that she’d had since birth. That is why all of our dogs get a full heart work up as puppies, just in case. Sasquatch actually did have a heart murmur as a puppy, but it healed itself, as small ones sometimes do, on people as well as animals.

So, I’m sitting here with my dog beside me, a little anxious. She’s got her head resting on the leg of my chair, and though I’ve done eight pages, and would love another cup of tea, I’m reluctant to get up. I don’t want to disturb her the very first time she has settled into my office as if it were the old office, and she was at home again. She’s snoring away, as a well bred pug will do, and I really, really want her to be around as long as Jimmy was. He made it to seventeen. That would be like five more years. That would be cool. The only real downside to dogs is that they don’t last long enough.