Dear friends,

Guess what?  Your thoughts and good wishes and prayers WORKED!!!! Finally, after over a month of being so sick!

My blood tests were so good today that they made my Mom cry.  My BUN test is down to 84, and my creatinine is down to 6.2 and neither of those tests are great yet, but they are sure a lot better than the last ones I told you about.  I am eating lots of different things every day now and I am playing with Canuke and bossing around Hebert and Emmett and I am keeping all those boys in line, all the time now.  And the deer don't dare come into my yard anymore, and even the airplanes fly further away from the house now because I have my good loud bark back!

I have lots of you to thank - Anna and Natascha and Nicky (who want me to go riding in their pink Cadillac when I am all better), and my Auntie Jean who fixed my bad knee a couple of years ago, and Nancy and all her Cairns, and Beth and Joey and Zeke and Kai (who admire me for holding out for the roasted chicken), and Joanne in Peoria, and Pam and Mike and Cairns Winston and Lotte, and Ja and her gang, and Claire in Canada, and Alan and Donna and Bernie, and Jodi in Florida, and Suzanne and Janie (who has bad kidneys like me), and Dale and Jan and Sadie, and Grandma Mitchell, and my Mom's sisters (Kristin and Becky and Corrie), and Elaine and Trish and Shar in Australia, and Terri and her Cairn gang, and Mona and Lynelle and Beaux, and all the Nurses at Knollwood and Michelle and Chani, too, and Donna and Soji, and Bailey and his family, and the many many Knollwood clients who have been asking about me every day.

All your cards and letters and e-mails really made me feel better, and the prayers and good thoughts did, too.  Thank you, Bailey, for the gift of the Lakota sage anklet and the prayer stick from the Sundancer healing ceremony.  That is very powerful medicine, as are everyone's prayers and good thoughts.  Maybe more powerful than all the pills and shots I have been getting.  I am only a dog and I don't know everything about these things, but it seems to me that all the medicines in the world can't replace good friends like I have, all hoping for my recovery.

I am going to take a little break from writing for the rest of the month because it feels SO GOOD to be able to rootle around in the yard and lay in the sun and bark at anything that moves again. And, it is hard work keeping my yard safe.  Those chipmunks and deer and foxes and other animals sure got used to only a big slow-moving Bullmastiff like Canuke watching them, the whole time I was sick.   But I can sure chase them now!

I will be back next month and we will talk about foods that taste good when you are sick, and I will have information for you about plastic surgery and Botox, too.  (Yes, some people get plastic surgery for their dogs, if you can believe it!).

Your friend,
LIZZIE