Sleepless Morning

I guess I went to sleep way too early last night, because I'm awake way too early this morning.  The house dogs, Seamus and Friday, needed to go out about three, and I wasn't able to get back to sleep.  That being the case, I may as well start my day.

Seamus went in for his toe surgery yesterday morning.  My friend Trish went into town with me to run errands and help kill the time before we could pick up the big guy.  We started our wait with breakfast at Sam's Sourdough Cafe, locally famous for their delicious sourdough pancakes.  As we were eating my phone went off.  It was Dr. May, informing me that he had found a second tumor on Seamus while prepping him for surgery.  I gave my consent for him to remove that tumor as well.  Of course that heightens our concern considerably.

The next stop was my favorite barber, and I think Trish was entertained by the lively banter of barbershop conversation.  Joe is an older man, and has been cutting hair and conducting lively side businesses for many years.  He knows everybody worth knowing in town, and some not worth knowing.  Just Haircuts in Fairbanks is the place to go for "guy gossip", and Joe is always entertaining.

We stopped at a couple of banks so Trish could take care of some business, went over to one of the local supermarkets where I bought supplies I need for my upcoming tour of duty at work, wandered through the aisles at Cold Spot Feeds,  and spent a surprising amount of time doing the same at Sportsman's Warehouse.  I must say that I am not particularly impressed with the junk that is sold as "sporting goods" nowadays.  Like fishing lures, the stuff is attractive to the eye, but designed to hook a fellows money rather than be of any practical use in the field.

In any event, we were running out of things to do, so headed back to the veterinary clinic to pick up my big, yellow buddy.  Dr. May couldn't offer a whole lot of information.  The two tumors are quite different in appearance, which is probably good news.  He is confident he got all of them, leaving nothing behind to grow and spread.  Beyond that, we can't really know what we are dealing with until we get a histology report from a lab, located in Tennessee.  It will take about a week to get the results.

Meanwhile, for at least a few days Seamus is a house dog.  He really has to wear the 'Elizabethan collar' rather than a stiff cervical collar to prevent him from chewing on his injuries.  Friday needs to be in the house because it's pretty darned cold outside.  Friday doesn't much care for Seamus' cone, so he's avoiding the larger dog and preferring to spend most of the time in his big, comfortable, safe crate. 

Seamus the "Cone Head".  I think his E collar bothers Friday and I more than it bothers him.

Meanwhile, 70 lb. Seamus is a grazer, so he's bumping and banging into everything with that E-collar.  Fortunately, he seems to be comfortable enough and he isn't bothering his wounds much at all. 

The temperature here at the house this morning is - 15 degrees F, which isn't particularly brutal.  It would probably be a nice day to go dog mushing but I'm not confident leaving the two house dogs unattended for that long of a time.  As it is, I'll need to leave them unsupervised for an hour or two while I try to clean up more snow from the driveway with the tractor.  The State finally got around to plowing Chena Hot Springs Road, so of course they threw a huge berm of snow over my driveway, making it difficult to get in and out.  That, combined with three or four more inches that fell after I finished snowplowing the other day makes it necessary to do some more work.