Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So obviously I'm a week late on the Christmas wishes, but today I finally got our Christmas letter and card converted into a digital format! This version might not be as personal as the one via US mail, but it's clearly superior because of the additional pictures and links. :) Enjoy!

December 18, 2013 

Merry Christmas, dear family and friends! 

We hope everyone is having a joyous holiday season that is full of merriment and void of stress. It's been a very blessed and often busy year at the Luce household, and it's so hard to believe that 2013 is already over. As you may have guessed from the pictures, we had a significant loss in our family this year as our dear dog Hope passed away. After a cancer diagnosis in June and many subsequent trips to K-State for chemotherapy, we let our sweet girl go on August 10. She was a fighter until the very end and never ceased to amaze us. We miss her loveable weirdness so much, but we know it was the right time—just before her 13th (or 14th or 15th) birthday. 

Fresco seemed sad at first but has adjusted very well to being an incredibly spoiled only dog.

We might start fostering again in the near future, but right now he has play dates and outings all over the city! In fact, today he's having a great time playing with our friends' dog Willy as I provide fill-in childcare for their toddler! 

This is one of the huge blessings of not having a regular job—getting to help out friends and family members in need whenever possible. I still volunteer once a month at the food pantry, but I stepped down from coordinating back in April to devote more time to my family and to the volunteer team I lead at church. I still spend 1-2 days in Topeka with my mom, continue to do portrait sessions for friends and had a wonderful trip to California wine country in April with a bunch of ladies I adore. Mom and I visited Eric and his girlfriend Jiffy in Los Angeles in July, and I walked the 60 mile 3-Day for the Cure for the 7th time in October—this time in Tampa. A few weeks later Chad and I went on vacation with my mom to New York City, where we saw a Broadway play and took in lots of the sites. We even met up with Eric and Jiffy there for a couple of days!

Chad also got to go on his annual pilgrimage to Florida this month to play golf with his friend Dante and a couple of other friends. He continues to golf every chance he gets—when he's not working or volunteering at church or watching sports or doing yard work! He just finished his 10th year at Westar and finished his term on the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce board. He's taking a few days off over the holidays and might even get to play a round of golf if the weather stays like it is today! The other thing on his “honey-do” list is to plan our next vacation—a big trip for our 20th anniversary in June! 

We are so incredibly blessed to have each other, such terrific families and so many dear friends—not a day goes by that we don't thank God for all He has given us. We were reminded what a gift each moment is in October when our friend Tiffany was killed in a car accident, just 18 months after she and our dear friend Mike were married. Life is so precious, and we pray that you and your loved ones treat each day as the wonderful blessing that it is. May you all find joy in the precious gift of Christmas as well. Much love, Kim (and Chad)  

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. --Isaiah 7:14

A Celebration of Hope

Today we would have celebrated our sweet Hope's 13th birthday--which is actually the 8th anniversary of the day we brought her home to live with us. As most of our friends and family know by now, she unfortunately passed away almost two weeks ago on August 10.

Obviously, Hope didn't live but a couple of days after my last post. We thought we would have a little more time with her, but that Friday night (which happened to be my birthday) it became clear that we had to let her go. Even though it had been just two days since we'd started to taper off the steroid she was taking, her tumor had started growing more rapidly. In the 2+ hours we were gone having my birthday dinner, the tumor growth in her nose was so significant it was alarming. With many tears and lots of heartache, we made the decision to have her put down the next morning, in the hope that we were sparing her a lot of pain and misery.

Hope was such a terrific dog whose love for life and sheer determination were unparalleled. She displayed that determination until her last breath. We miss her terribly, but we are so thankful that we were blessed enough to be her parents for almost 8 amazing years.

Reprieve

As I'm writing this post, this is the face that's staring up at me. She's still here and she's still hungry. :)

We honestly thought that last night I'd be writing her "obituary" on my blog. As of last weekend, Hope's energy level and mobility had continued to decline and her nasal congestion had continued to be an issue. She spent every waking hour standing next to us panting, so we began to worry that she was really in pain. Her appetite was as strong as ever, but since eating seemed to be the only thing that made her happy anymore, we were starting to question whether she was enjoying the rest of her life at all. After a particularly bad day on Sunday, Chad and I reluctantly and tearfully made the decision to have her put down. We scheduled the appointment for Wednesday, since that would give us a couple of days to come to grips with the decision and Chad would be able to take the whole day off. You'd think we'd be more prepared for this, but it was just such a hard decision because we weren't 100% sure we were doing the right thing. People just keep telling us we'll know when it's the right time to put her down, but we just didn't know. We found it impossible to look into these beautiful, pleading eyes and tell her that we were removing her from our family in a couple of days.

Now this might sound weird to some people, but for the next two days we prayed about the decision--just that God would give us wisdom and peace about the right thing. I contend that He answered those prayers, because we never had peace about putting her down. Instead we kept worrying that we would be taking her from this earth before she was ready, and in the next couple of days she confirmed that our feelings were valid. Hope had two of the best days she'd had all week, seeming more relaxed, comfortable and more interested in people and dogs outside--all with nearly zero mucus, which hadn't happened in weeks. She even did all of her normal tricks on command for Chad Tuesday evening! We knew she wasn't ready, so Wednesday morning we cancelled her euthanasia appointment just an hour before we were scheduled to go.

When Hope woke up later in the morning yesterday, she was struggling. She was tripping more often, refusing to even walk out the front door for a short walk down the driveway, sleeping very fitfully, eating and drinking frantically, and following me panting whenever I wasn't laying down in bed. She seemed so unsettled and uncomfortable that I worried that we'd now made the wrong decision in cancelling her appointment. I called Chad and he came home, agreeing that she'd really taken a nosedive from the day before. He called the vet and got us an appointment for the end of the day, but he didn't stop researching what other issues besides pain might be causing Hope's excessive panting and what seemed like anxiety. Chad's research gave us a tiny glimmer of hope that some of our dear girl's issues were related to medication side effects, but we were still preparing ourselves for the worst. 

So we went to see Dr. Coles yesterday afternoon with every intention of having Hope put down. We brought a bed for her to lay on and stopped for a Burger King hamburger and cone on the way there. Thankfully though, Dr. Coles didn't think Hope was ready to go either. He agreed with the opinion Chad formed from all of his research--Hope's obsessive panting and eating/drinking/peeing/pooping are more likely due to the Prednisone than the cancer. He sent us home with instructions on how to taper off the steroid and increase her iron consumption to help with her anemia (which likely IS from the cancer). Dr. Coles was hopeful that getting rid of the side effects of this drug will improve Hope's quality of life, and we are too!

Since we know that taking her off of this drug may also cause her cancer to start growing even more quickly, we are trying to prepare ourselves for that as well. If Hope doesn't pass away on her own in the next couple of weeks, we will very likely be faced with the same agonizing decision that we were faced with this week. Hopefully though, when that time comes we'll have more peace about letting her go.

Ups and Downs

I honestly meant to provide an update on Hope a lot sooner, but the last couple of weeks have been so full of ups and downs I didn't know where to start. Just when I thought I had something of interest to report, the next day would be the complete opposite. Hope's symptoms have just been ebbing and flowing like nobody's business.

Let me first just say that I am SO thankful that she's still with us. Three weeks ago today when she got her chemo treatment, I really didn't think there was any way she'd last this long. I don't know why I'm ever surprised by her though--it's like she gets tougher with age and adversity. With that said, this last chemo we tried really took a toll on her. She's dropped tons of weight despite her ridiculously good appetite, and the first week after her treatment her red and white blood counts dropped significantly. She was lethargic and clearly didn't feel well, and her mucus-y nose only mildly improved. Even worse, her cancerous lymph node didn't respond positively at all. Unfortunately it continues to grow, which is why we decided to forgo another chemo treatment today.

Stopping the current regimen wasn't a difficult decision since it doesn't seem to be working and was clearly making Hope less comfortable. However, since there's a third chemo that the oncologists at K-State want to try that they think has some significant potential, the decision to quit treatment is a little more difficult. In fact, I'm still not 100% sure that stopping treatment altogether is the right thing. On days like today, when Hope only wanted to walk about half a block and slept most of the morning, continuing chemo seems like a cruel thing to do to her. However, on days when she has more energy and spends the whole day scouring the kitchen floor for crumbs, it seems like she would do just fine trying another chemo drug that might alleviate her symptoms. It's just so hard to read a dog who eats like there's no tomorrow, even when she's dying of cancer. This video was actually taken on July 17--exactly one week after her last chemo treatment when she was still feeling kind of crappy.



Not only do I think her problem solving skills are quite impressive, I'm also super impressed that she still has the ability to sniff out bits of food while dealing with tumors up her nose! Hope is nothing if not determined! :)  

Hanging In There

A couple of days ago, we made our fourth trip to K-State with our sweet Hope. She's had lots of ups and downs in the last few weeks, but today's been a pretty good day and she's definitely hanging in there. When she was first diagnosed just over three weeks ago, we really weren't sure that she'd make it this far, so we are incredibly thankful.

Three weeks ago Hope started the normal chemo/steroid combination for mast cell tumors, and just like with her first cancer in 2007, her cancer seemed to respond initially. Although we can't see her tumor(s), her snottiness and sneeziness definitely subsided a little, and her lymph node seemed to shrink slightly as well. Unfortunately, as soon as we started weaning her off of the steroid (which the doctors do because of the side effects), Hope's symptoms returned--just like they did in 2007. While I was in California last week visiting my brother with my mom, Hope's nose started bleeding again off and on. By Wednesday, her bloody, mucousy nose had gotten so bad that Chad and I had a serious conversation about having her put down that afternoon. However, when we got to K-State, Dr. Burr was confident that Hope still had some fight left, just based on her appetite, activity level and general attitude. She suggested we start a new chemo drug, and thankfully this one only has to be given once every three weeks instead of every week. It will be such a relief not to have to drive to Manhattan next Wednesday!

The good news is that Hope's icky nose secretions have subsided a little once again, so we are hopeful that this chemo will keep her discomfort at bay a little while longer. It's just so hard to know if we're doing the right thing for our little girl. People keep telling us that we'll know when it's the right time to let her go, but when you own the toughest dog in the world, it's nearly impossible for us to know if she's really in pain! We just keep praying that she will clearly display some signs that she is done fighting when that time comes. Until then, we'll continue with weekly bloodwork, lots of drugs, and potty breaks every couple of hours! Our little Hope is worth it. :)

Losing Hope

Chad and I are so sad that the time has come to write this blog post, but we knew these events would be upon us sooner or later and we've been trying to prepare ourselves for many months. It's heartbreaking to think about, but the reality is that we are losing our tough, weird and absolutely precious girl Hope.

The crazy thing is, despite the fact that Hope has surpassed the average age of a Coonhound and  is also deaf and arthritic, she's still usually very happy and active. Her appetite is incredibly good--she's obsessed with food every waking moment of the day. Her favorite pastimes are searching the yard for mushrooms and perusing the floor for spills. This adorably sweet face stares up at me hoping for treats anytime I'm sitting in the kitchen--even when I'm not eating. She loves to go for walks, loves to meet new people and generally seems to love life. That's why it's so difficult to accept that she's once again battling cancer.

Hope's symptoms started just over a month ago, when we started noticing she was abnormally sneezy and snotty. She would occasionally wake us up in the middle of the night with some massive snoring, so we asked our vet about it at her annual checkup a few weeks later. He suggested that it might be allergies and prescribed more Benedryl, but he also tried to prepare us for the possibility that Hope might have a nasal tumor. Just a couple of weeks later, Hope starting having a massive amount of mucus come out of one nostril. I called the vet, who prescribed an antibiotic without even seeing her, but within a few days the mucus had become increasingly bloody. This was obviously quite messy and quite alarming, so last Monday we took her in for an x-ray and culture. When our vet saw Hope's sinus cavity on the x-ray, he was shocked at the amount of destruction of the soft tissue and cartilage on her leaky side. He thought the only options were a massive infection or cancer, and when the cytology came back with no bacterial or fungal infection, we knew cancer was the only option left.

Although we'd obviously had a great experience with Hope's surgeon in Overland Park, we weren't huge fans of the oncologist there, so today we took Hope to the College of Veterinary Medicine at K-State. We saw one of the oncology residents, Dr. Burr, who was absolutely wonderful. She was so amazingly patient with our plethora of questions and was so thorough in explaining everything. After leaving Hope there for a couple of hours for bloodwork and a biopsy of her lymph node, we found out from Dr. Burr that her tumor was not as expected. Instead of finding cells that confirmed a carcinoma in her sinuses, she actually found mast cells in the lymph node--meaning that she has a mast cell tumor (the same kind of tumors she's had in the past) somewhere that has metastasized.

I say a tumor "somewhere" and not in her sinuses because Dr. Burr indicated that a mast cell tumor in the nose is extremely rare--she's only seen one once in the 5 years she's been in oncology. So either Hope has a very rare sinonasal mast cell tumor, or she has a mast cell tumor somewhere else in her head and another cancerous tumor in her nose, which seems even more unlikely--at least to us. Dr. Burr wanted to do a CT scan and then biopsy the tumor(s) once they figured out exactly where they are, but we think it was more out of curiosity from a clinical standpoint, since Hope is such an unusual case. We declined that option--to us it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Ultimately, Hope has an inoperable tumor up her nose, and even though different drugs might work better on carcinoma, we know there's a mast cell tumor somewhere--and that should respond to a chemo/steroid combo.

So today our sweet little girl started chemo. We'll take her to Manhattan for chemo once a week for the next three weeks, and then every other week for four treatments after that. Thankfully, dogs don't have a lot of side effects from this chemo, and hopefully it will improve her quality of life as well as extend it. We just want our little weirdo to feel good as long as possible!

As I was looking back at some of the posts from 2007 when Hope had her first mast cell tumor, I realize even more how incredibly blessed we've been that this sweet and miraculous girl has been a part of our family. She's been enjoying life for six years since that first diagnosis--which seemed liked a death sentence at the time. She has provided us with thousands of hours of love and laughter, and we couldn't be more thankful for the time we've had with her and any additional time the chemo can provide.

Sissy

Just a couple of hours ago we had a special birthday celebration for our sweet, adorable and weird girl Hope, who's also often known as "Sissy" in the Luce household. I guess I'm using the term "celebration" rather loosely, considering we really only walked into the bedroom (where she'd pulled all the covers back on our bed) and fed her a special gigantic biscuit I made her earlier this evening. We sang her happy birthday as well, but since she can hear virtually nothing these days, she just looked sheepish and confused as to what was going on. Hopefully she knows it's her special day though, since she got a new pink glow-in-the-dark leash this morning along with the batch of pumpkin biscuits. As you can see below, she enjoyed her huge biscuit and her brother enjoyed his too.




I don't think I've ever mentioned here that we often call her Sissy, but I think Chad actually started calling her that in the first year we had her. Although I hated the nickname initially (I have no idea why), somehow after Steeler died I warmed up to it. I guess because once she and Celtic only had each other, it just seemed completely appropriate. We used the nickname only occasionally at first, but as the years have gone on I think we now call her Sissy more than we call her Hope, which doesn't really bother her since she can't hear us anyway!

Speaking of years gone by, today isn't truly her birthday, but it's the day we celebrate because it's the anniversary of the day we brought her home and started fostering her. I just can't believe it was only 6 years ago today! I think I probably said this on her birthday last year, but I feel like she's always been a part of our family. I can obviously look back at pictures of the boys and see that we once had no Hope, but it just seems like so many lifetimes ago.

Since we don't really know Hope's true birthday, we also don't really know how old she actually is, but today we're celebrating her 11th trip around the sun. She could be as old as 13, which you would never know except for her grey muzzle, cloudy eyes, terrible teeth and hearing loss. Seriously though, her agility and enthusiasm are still that of a puppy! She goes from dead asleep to 100 miles an hour in about 2 seconds, and she barrels all over the house and yard like a maniac when she's not snoozing. She loves her naps, but she also loves making a dramatic entrance to let you know she's inside!



How sweet is that happy face? We just love our little Sissy so much and are so thankful that's she's celebrating yet another birthday with us!

Happy Hope

Most of my friends probably already know this from Facebook, but we got great news this morning from our veterinarian! He called to let us know that he'd received the pathology report and that the strange growth he removed from Hope's mouth was benign. Hooray! It was nothing at all to worry about--just some inflamed tissue. This was actually sort of ironic, since when the vet first told us about the growth Chad expressed his hope that it was just an injury from poking herself in the mouth. Since she's constantly eating things that aren't food, it's not a huge shock that she probably injured herself while doing so at some point!

Hope won't get her stitches out until next week, but really that will just be a formality--she feels good and hasn't even seemed to notice the incision on her chest. As always, she's tough as nails!

Unhappy Hope

Today our dear little girl Hope took another step in her quest to regain her title of The Most Expensive Dog in the World. She went to the vet to have her teeth cleaned and have a humongous growth removed off her chest, and before she was done she'd had a second growth removed from her mouth and a couple of teeth extracted as well. Poor girl! Since about 4:00 when I brought her home she's been wandering around the house whimpering, staggering, dozing, getting up, drooling blood and then wandering around whimpering a little more. I feel so bad for her since she's clearly uncomfortable--who wouldn't be with all those stitches in her chest and in two places in her mouth too!

The crazy thing is, several years ago, Celtic had a fatty (non-cancerous) tumor removed from the exact same place on his sternum. If they weren't such hairy little children they'd have matching scars! Thankfully, just like Celtic's tumor of 2007, Hope's sternum growth was nothing more than a lipoma--it had just gotten so huge and unsightly we decided to have it taken off since she needed her teeth cleaned anyway. You can see it pretty well in our Christmas picture video, and it had definitely grown quite a bit in the four short months since then. I'm glad we got it taken off, but her resulting incision is obviously pretty big and icky!

The growth that our vet found in her mouth while cleaning her teeth was apparently way smaller, but unfortunately he wasn't sure exactly what it was, so he sent it off to the lab for analysis. We're hopeful that in a few days we'll find out that it's nothing to worry about, and hopefully by then she'll be a little more comfortable than she is now. Although we can't see the stitches, her mouth is pretty icky too. Thankfully there's been a reduction in bloody slobber since this picture was taken a few hours ago!

Hopefully Hope will have a good night's rest that will help speed her healing! She's definitely sleepy enough for it!

The Whites

Now that Celtic Watch 2011 has ended so happily, I can actually get back to blogging about our regular mundane life. Namely, I can blog about our laundry--in particular, the whites. Exciting, I know. This is what happens in our house when you sort the laundry on the closet floor but haven't had the chance to actually put said laundry into the washer.


The laundry becomes Hope's dog bed, despite the fact that there are three other dog beds within a 20 foot radius. This just in: Hope is weird.

There's one other thing that happens in our house when you leave the dirty whites unattended.

Celtic turns dirty socks into coveted toys, carrying them all over the house, hiding them from Fresco and Hope, and treating them like little stuffed animals. It's weird too, but so darn adorable. Clearly he's feeling way better.

Since I like to try and give my pups equal face time on the blog, I have to share an equally adorable picture of our baby Fresco, even though it has nothing to do with the laundry. This totally looks staged, I know, but the other day when we had all these extra blankets in the bedroom from my night on the floor with Celtic, I was using one on the bed and Fresco was laying next to me. When I got up and threw the blanket off myself, Fresco somehow ended up like this.


Seriously, could he be any cuter? He laid there wrapped up in the blanket until Chad pulled it off his face. He's such an agreeable little munchkin!

The Birthday Weirdo

I felt like a horrible doggy parent this morning when I woke up and realized that Hope's observed birthday (aka the anniversary of the day we brought her home) was yesterday and I'd totally forgotten. It was just such a busy weekend we hadn't even thought of doing anything special for our crazy/sweet little girl!
Hope has now been with us for exactly five years, but sometimes it's really hard to even remember our family before this bizarre yet beautiful girl was a part of it. It's even harder to believe that three of those five years she's basically been living on borrowed time, since she's had surgery three times in the last three years for cancer. Hope is nothing if not tough as nails, and is most certainly the toughest dog in the Luce household! When I told my brother earlier today that we were celebrating her 10th birthday (although she could be anywhere from 9-12 he was quite surprised, because in most ways she definitely doesn't seem like an older dog. She still runs and jumps with great exuberance and reckless abandon.

With that said, in one other way Hope has definitely started to show her age. About six months ago we started noticing that she was getting harder to wake up in the morning and after naps. We eventually realized that her hearing was beginning to go, and in the few months since she's gone almost completely deaf. At this point she will only respond to a loud whistle, a clap or one of the other dogs barking. We're trying to incorporate sign language as much as possible to communicate with her, but let's just say that deafness has made this weird dog even weirder!

Speaking of her weirdness, this really has nothing to do with her deafness and more to do with her pica, but this morning I had to grab the camera to capture a quick video in honor of her birthday. She's been on a mushroom kick lately, and early in the mornings when there's a bunch of new mushrooms popping up she loves to snack on them. You have to run out into the yard to stop her from snarfing them all up, since of course she can't hear you when to tell her to stop (we're working a lot on the sign for "no"). This morning I didn't have the heart to run out and scold her, because she was just so cute and looked like she was having so much fun mushroom hunting! Let's hope we don't have any barfing later because of it!

Pumpkin Pics

Tonight our good friends Pat and Kristin hosted a lovely little pumpkin carving party, and I kind of dig my creation of the evening. I had a bit of a hard time deciding what to make, but my decision was helped along a little by our little pica dog Hope. Tonight as we left for our walk, she walked out the front door and took one sniff of my pumpkin on the front porch and tried to pick it up by the stem. I guess she thought she was going to take it somewhere to eat it? Regardless, she couldn't lift it and it rolled down off the steps, so it had a big bruise on one side.

So even though the bruise was on the flat, discolored, bumpy side of the pumpkin, I decided to use that ugly side as inspiration for my carving. It seemed like the perfect canvas for this masterpiece!


Behold the sickly, barfing jack-o-lantern! After adding Beth's suggested low ears, I unwittingly created kind of a likeness of Sloth.

After getting a few pictures of my barfing Sloth I took a few shots of the other cool pumpkins I bought out at Schaake's over the weekend. I love their stuff! Check out the awesome warty one, especially!

Surgery Success

I just got back from KC with our little munchkin Hope, who had her stitches taken out and visited Dr. Layton for a follow up. Dr. Layton was very pleased at how the incision has healed--have I mentioned that she is an AMAZING surgeon? She also finally received the results of the pathology report from Hope's surgery. The good news is that all of the margins around the tumor were clear of any cancer. They were all very small margins (1.5-2 cm), but they were clear margins none the less! Because of the location of the tumor, this is the best we can ask for!

We also found out that Hope's third tumor was a grade 2, which is not the least aggressive grade of tumor, but it's not the most aggressive grade either. I'm just so thankful that it wasn't a grade 3!! Now we can put this surgery behind us and go on with life for now, of course being continually vigilant about always checking for that next tumor. Hopefully this time we can make it more than 17 months before we find another one!

Thank you to everyone who called, emailed and prayed for us and for Hope during the last few weeks. Thankfully, she is a tough little girl and is definitely a survivor!!

Home With Hope

If you're my Facebook friend you might already know this, but we just got home with our sweet little conehead. She's a little unhappy about wearing her cone and is having a hard time getting comfortable, but overall she seems way more alert than after her first two surgeries!

It's been a very long day, as this morning I took our furry, four-legged daughter to KC at 6:45 a.m. Just before 9 a.m. they had called to say they were already putting her under anesthesia. At about 10:15 Dr. Layton called to say that the surgery had gone as planned and Hope was doing well. Dr. Layton felt good about the amount of tissue she took around the tumor and didn't think Hope's backside would really look that strange once she healed up. Hopefully the lab results next week will be good enough that we can put this whole round of cancer behind us!

The Sweet Girl's Surgery

Today we went to KC to visit Dr. Layton, who checked out our little munchkin and took a sample of her tumor to confirm that it was, in fact, a mast cell tumor like her others. The good news is that Dr. Layton has time tomorrow to do Hope's surgery, so I'll be taking Hope back to the hospital at about 6:45 a.m. Dr. Layton was encouraged by the tumor's small size, and she is hopeful that she can get a couple of centimeters around the tumor without damaging any of Hope's "girl parts." (Seriously, what is it with my family and gynecological cancers!!:) She thought she may have to leave those parts even more deformed than they already are, but that's a small price to pay if it buys our pup another healthy year and hopefully more!

I feel so bad that Hope has to go through this all over again. The funny thing is, she doesn't seem to have ANY bad feelings towards the hospital or the staff who has hacked up her backside on two previous occasions. The staff kept commenting about how sweet she was and how she didn't know a stranger. She was so happy to see everyone and she never complained when they took the sample or took her blood. They even commented on how smart she was because she remembered exactly which exam room she was in! Maybe our sweet girl is secretly a genius even though we tease her about being a special needs dog!

If not special needs, it's definitely true that she's special.

How cute is she?

Sad Irony

Life is so ironic sometimes. For some reason, it seems to be especially ironic when it comes to our sweet little girl Hope. You might remember that early in 2008 I discovered Hope's second tumor by complete accident when going to visit her surgeon, who was actually supposed to be examining Celtic. Though not quite as timely, last night we discovered yet another tumor on our little girl's backside. On Saturday I was honoring our special puppy for being a cancer survivor on her birthday, and just 6 days later we're trying to face the fact that she has cancer yet again.

While we're obviously extremely upset with this discovery, we're trying not to panic yet. We've already made the appointment to see Dr. Layton at VSEC, and we're hopeful that she can perform a miracle like she did with Hope's first two "inoperable" tumors. Thankfully, this tumor isn't nearly as big, and its location doesn't seem quite as "delicate" as the first two. We're anxious to see the doctor and hear her prognosis.

Part of me actually isn't surprised about this, as much as I had hoped that Hope would stay cancer-free. First of all, Dr. Layton told us that Hope would probably get another tumor. Since the risk of mast cell tumors increase with their frequency, and since surgery wasn't able to get large margins around her previous tumors, Hope is very high-risk. It wasn't just because of that though. It was because everything else in our life has been going so well lately. We've been blessed with so much and everything has been falling into place so perfectly, something in our life was just bound to go awry.

I don't want to imply that I think Hope's cancer is some sort of punishment by some mysterious higher power. Quite the contrary, actually. I think when things go perfectly and wonderfully it's easy for us to live our lives as though we don't need God. Trials just teach us that we do.

So after a period of peace, we're in the midst of a trial, and you can bet that we'll be relying on God during these next few weeks as Hope's cancer battle continues.

Barking Birthday Girl

I mentioned the other day that the Bark for Life event in Eudora was tailor-made for our cancer survivor Hope. What I forgot to mention (and honestly forgot all about until we were actually at the event) is that today was the fourth anniversary of the day we brought her home, which means that it's the day we celebrate her birthday!! How sweet is that! We're celebrating Hope's 9th today, even though we really have no idea how old she is. Some days she seems like a 9 year old, and some days she acts like she's two!

The event tonight was small but cute. There were probably 40 or so dogs there, with a few booths and a food vendor and a few dog activities. We walked the track in the park a few times and socialized with the other doggies, but mostly we just stood around and talked to my friend JoAnna, who I hadn't seen forever. JoAnna was kind enough to take a good family picture of us to celebrate the occasion.

Hopefully our middle munchkin enjoyed her birthday evening out with the family and had fun meeting a few doggy friends. I know she definitely enjoyed the special treat of cheese curls that Chad gave her from his dinner. It certainly doesn't seem like an adequate gift for the very special girl who has been bringing us so much joy for the last four years. We are so very thankful for her!!

Bark For Life

Normally I would forget to blog about an exciting upcoming event until the day before or something, thereby failing to inform or encourage my local friends to join us or participate. Tonight as I was writing out our registration check for an upcoming American Cancer Society event, I realized I should blog about it now so that I can easily pass along the info to my friends!

This particular event, which happens to be the first of its kind in Kansas, feels like it was tailor made for Hope and me. It's called Bark for Life and is a Relay for Life for dogs! I mean seriously, could it be more perfect for me? Dogs and cancer fundraising all together--how sweet is that!!

So next Saturday night, Chad and I and the three dogs will trek to Eudora, where we'll participate in the dog-centered cancer walk, where our wonderful little cancer-survivor will be honored along with other dogs and people who have battled cancer. I hope you'll consider joining us!!

For more information on the event, check out the Lawrence Journal-World article here, where you can also find out how to register. Come Bark for Life with us! :)

Out of Sorts

As I mentioned a few posts ago, we got our upstairs carpets cleaned on our workiversary last week. Prior to the cleaning, Chad moved almost every piece of furniture from the living room into our eat-in kitchen, so our tiny little dining area looked like this.


Every other room in the house looked pretty much the same, as we were determined to get the maximum amount of carpet cleanage for our money. The change of scenery turned out to be a pretty big deal to our little weird one, who tends to be a crazy creature of habit who just doesn't adjust well to change. Oh yeah--and she's incredibly spoiled. She just couldn't stand it that she wasn't allowed to sleep on our bed all day long like she does every other day of the week.

So most of the day the dogs had to hang out with us outside (their life is so rough), but the second we walked in the door, Hope was ready to be in with us.


Once the cleaners were gone, we blocked off the kitchen area with various pieces of furniture so that the dogs could come inside without being free to tromp all over the wet carpet. Even though one of the pieces of furniture was a loveseat, and therefore just as soft and comfy as our bed she sleeps on every day, Hope just couldn't seem to relax enough to take a nap in this unusual location.


She would lay there for a few minutes, but then jump up and start pacing around the kitchen, trying to find a break in the barricade where she could sneak through to get to the bedroom. Eventually, she got her chance. I stepped out onto the patio for a moment, and when I turned back around to come in Hope was making a break for it--jumping over the back of the loveseat and sprinting down the hall to the bedroom.

When I went to the bedroom to retrieve her, it was obvious she knew she'd made a serious error in judgment, since when she got there, the bed was also covered in furniture. The sheepish look on her face completely cracked me up!


We headed back to the kitchen, where Hope finally gave in and laid down on the dog bed we'd placed there for them. She was so tired from missing her normal all day nap, but she still refused to let herself sleep while out of her normal routine.



After dozing off repeatedly, Hope finally gave in and collapsed, exhausted. Our workiversary was apparently very hard work for her as well!

Bowl Breakage

If you've ever come over to our house, you know how excited our dogs get when we have visitors. They pretty much spaz out and lose all control for like five minutes before regaining their composure. There's a similar scene when Chad and I come home from work in the evenings, except that the excitement then is due to the fact that it's dinnertime. Our girl Hope especially loses her mind when it's time to eat, bawling and bouncing around like a puppy. Unfortunately, last week her bounciness led to some mild destruction in our kitchen. As she was waiting for me to fill her food bowl, she bounced up excitedly and landed with a foot right smack in her water bowl. Not only did water go everywhere, but the ceramic bowl itself went flying off its stand and crashing to the floor into pieces.

I spent several minutes cleaning up water and shards of the bowl all over the kitchen, but of course as soon as Hope came back inside after dinner she went straight to the site of the accident and started sniffing around. As I was carefully disposing of (I thought) all the pieces, I hear her crunching something in her teeth behind me! I yelled at her to drop it, but I couldn't ever find it if she did. Her and her darn pica made a bad situation even worse! Thankfully, she hasn't shown any ill effects from eating a chunk of pottery!

This probably wouldn't be a blogworthy event at all except that the dogs' water bowl was a piece of ceramic pottery that I painted at Sunfire Ceramics many years ago. We've established that I have no artistic ability whatsoever, but this bowl was actually something I was kind of proud of! It had served its purpose so well for many years and I was so sad to see it go! I had no pictures of it in its life, so I thought I'd share a picture of my bowl in death.

Goodbye my lovely bowl! I'm sorry you met such a tragic demise!