Another late post because of yet another dog emergency . . . this time involving poor Anna the poodle, who is now at the vet's office getting a big leg laceration stitched up. Given the season, my first fear was that she'd been grazed by a stray bullet, but the vet thinks it might be a bad wild-animal scratch. What it looks like to me is a barbed-wire tear, but we don't have any such thing on our property, and Anna isn't a wanderer. Ah well. I always wanted vet bills for Christmas, and now I have them.

I am, however, relieved about the bullet decision. The idea of stray bullets flying through my backyard does not make me happy.