This morning, my sister and I took Tripper in to have his surgery. After he was prepped, they took several x-rays of his knees and decided that the damage was too bad to operate. The veterinarian called it one of the worst cases he has ever seen.

So he's back with us tonight, with a giant bag full of pills and meds disguised as beefy-flavored dog treats. We'll attempt to help him manage pain and try to repair as much of his damaged cartilage as we can with these medications.

We're unsure what the future holds. In my heart, I think I knew that this was going to happen, even before we got here. I had a feeling it was worse than everyone expected, but I was still holding on to the hope that this would be the miracle fix that would reverse his lameness.

I feel sad for his unknown future.

They say it takes four years for a Labrador Retriever to settle down and really become the dog that was the reason you bought a Lab in the first place--the dog that lets your kids climb all over him, tug on his ears and lift his sloppy lips to look at his teeth. The dog that lazily follows you into the kitchen and sits in your working path, or trails you out to the garden and finds a cool spot in the soil, or rests his chin on the tray of the highchair waiting for a juicy morsel to be passed to his drooling lips. Tripper is five, but I'm thankful that we enjoyed many of these "good years" already.

We're not giving up. But we're not in as good a place as we'd hoped.

I was going to share a recipe today, but it seems kind of silly to tack that on to this post.

Moving on tomorrow......

xo.
m.