Stanley had a small mark on the side of his back leg that he kept licking for about a week. The situation wasn't getting any better so on my day off last week I took him to the vet to see what the problem was. A half hour and a hefty vet bill later, I find out that it has not been getting better because Stanley keeps licking it to infect the wound further. So the vet tells me that Stan has to wear an Elizabethan Collar (a.k.a. dog cone) for ten days. Yeah, ten days.

Stanley didn't have it on for more than ten minutes until he started moping around the house, refusing to try to go up the stairs and what I believe was an intention attempt to run into every wall he could so Christi and I would feel bad for him. Needless to say, whatever he was doing was working. I ran down to Richard's (what I've started calling Dick's Sporting Goods) and bought some pre wrap and athletic tape. If there's anything I've learned from my days running cross country, it was knowing how to tape myself up.

When I got home, I wrapped Stan up so he looked "cooler" and thought it would be the end of the saga. Even with the cone removed and him looking sharp, he began to refuse to sit or lay down with the tape on his leg. He just wandered the house in circles. After trying this experiment a handful of times over the next few days, we found out that Stan doesn't like to be altered in any way. Now we just leave the cone and tape off and watch him so he doesn't infect his leg any further. An expensive lesson was just taught to us by our dog.

Thanks Stanley.

Finally ... I had some time to cut some pictures that Christi took a little while back and upload them to my site. If you click on the image above, or here, you can view the new gallery. When looking at the split image above, there's a reason it took so long to get the pictures up. I wanted to wait until we finished painting the molding. Our entire house had original dark wood trip and molding throughout, until we moved in. We've removed every instance of it (except for the stairs) and painted everything white. It took a lot of time and a lot of coats of paint, but it looks better than we thought it would.

The biggest change came in the dining room. We painted over everything besides the ceiling and floor, and purchased a dining room table and chairs that we're actually using now.