Monday

Luci is a very social puppy.  Before my surgery, she wouldn't walk with anyone but me; now she has her own walking friends!  She's walked with Freda several mornings, giving me a little space to make up beds and take a bath without Luci's assistance.

Freda walks faster and further than I do, so Luci is in heaven.  All I have to say is "Freda's coming!" and she wags her whole self.

Tonight, we pick up the Leary family at the airport--all five of them including Tucker.  I just had a very strenuous PT session so I'm going to take a nap so I can stay up for the party.  This time the Learys are staying in a Riverwalk hotel so that the kids can have access to a pool and we'll all have more space to spread out. 

I took Luci to a dog groomer because she had beggar lice in her furry ears.  Because she grooms herself like a cat, she never needs shampooing but the trim neatened her up for meeting Tucker.  

The groomer has run her own shop for forty years, but arthritis in her hands and knees makes it impossible for her to groom more than four dogs a day.  She only does enough to pay the rent on the building and pays her house rent a month at a time.  

She's in a great deal of pain and waiting until her Medicare kicks in to get her knees done.  "I can't afford health insurance," she said.  She has no family--none!--and her only family, her own dog, is dying.  

Most of us have no idea how hard it must be to live alone, have no health care, and be in excruciating pain every day, counting the days until our 65th birthday.  

"I have to work and be with these dogs," she said.  "Because if I didn't, somebody like me would pass away."