The Good, The Bad, and--

Good: Happy and Active: If possible, he's been even more playful than 2 days ago. Friday night, Saturday, yesterday, and today, he's rarin' to go. I'm beginning to realize how sick he still was between the Episode in August and the Near Catastrophe two weeks ago (already!). Yesterday, actually, I couldn't keep him off the agility equipment in the yard! He was jumping jumps and taking Aframes and doing the weaves *really* fast (which has been an ongoing challenge for us) without me asking--he's begging me to stop doing it with all those other annoying creatures that share our house and do agility with HIM because he's a Studly Agility Dog. (Bad acronym, but what can you do?)

We all attended a couple of workshops on Saturday, mostly making me work my body and brain for a change, but Remington got to be a clicker-training Demo Dog. The instructor needed a dog who was already trained to touch his nose to a target. I volunteered immediately because Rem used to be really good at it, but then realized that I hadn't practiced that in so long with Mr. Remington that he might be rusty. I need not have feared--anything involving a clicker and food becomes indelibly engraved on his brain. The target came out, and he went right for it.

So we got to demonstrate how bad timing on the trainer's part (clicking late instead of when the dog's nose touches the target) and screw up your dog in fewer than a dozen clicks. It's pretty interesting to see.

Not as good: Blood counts: Rem's white blood cell counts are still low, 12 days after the first dose of chemo. This means we still can't do the second chemical still (was supposed to be a week after the first). On the up side, the vet says that this means the chemo is being very effective in his body.

He's also down to 51 pounds. That's probably because he's been on rice and cottage cheese for almost 2 weeks, transitioning over the last week to canned canine cancer diet, and he hasn't gotten quite enough calories based on my guesses for rice/cc portions. On the up side of *that*, vet said he looks hale & hearty and asked whether he had gained weight! So I was right, this *is* a good weight for him.

I've started a separate page of links and static info on the cancer.

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