Mirfy's having trouble with one of his front legs, which is really tough on him. He puts so much weight on his front legs, putting as little as possible on his back legs. With a front leg lame, he's hobbling pretty drastically.

I'm pretty sure the dogs got into a fight the other day -- Mackenzie has a puncture wound on her muzzle, which I discovered yesterday. Mirfy front leg problem started the day before yesterday, so I'm thinking he might have strained it when making a sudden lunge for Mackenzie.

Anyway, this is something he really needs to get over as soon as possible. He's having trouble getting up and down the ramp and even just drinking water is hard. I tried putting the water bowl on the box I use to raise his food bowl to a comfortable level, but he didn't like it that way.

Right now he's dozing in the spot he last fell -- by the water bowl.

Good news from the vet

I took Mirfy for a follow-up exam of his lesion on Monday, and the vet was pretty sure it was going to heal eventually. I asked if the skin around the wound looked okay (I was there was dead skin) and he said it did.

Mirfy is happy to continue with his antibiotics, since he gets the pill in a piece of hot dog. I'm continuing with the salve, too, although I now have greasy spots on the study's carpeting (he likes to lie on that side). I'm not worried about the carpeting, though; it's pretty old.

His mobility continues its slow deterioration, though. Monday morning I discovered he'd had a bowel movement overnight while lying down, and hadn't moved since he'd had it. But then Tuesday he ran full tilt to bark at the mail carrier next door. Today he's gotten up and is moving around, but he's stumbling around and looking frail and weak. My husband thinks it's time to have "the talk." All I want is for him to see another autumn. He loves 50-degree weather so much. He might even chase a tennis ball again, like he did one day in March.

Mirfy vigil, with variations

I got to sleep in the living room again last night, because Mirfy didn't want to (or couldn't) get up to go outside for his last bathroom break. (I've done that a couple of other times since I last posted about it.) This time I found out that I would wake up if he got up, which I'd been wondering, because he did and I did. Partly because he now whimpers every time he gets up, which takes about ten minutes. And there are small thumping noises as he tries to get his front legs under him properly. Poor old guy.

Anyway, I don't know when I got to sleep, but I got up around 2:00 when Mirfy got up, and went outside. Then I slept in my bed until almost 6:00, when I had to take some naproxen for cramps. (They didn't get bad, so yay for that.)

But the worst part is that yesterday I found a bleeding wound near his shoulder. I have no idea how what caused it. I have a hard time believing that Mackenzie bit him; she's never even tried to nip at him, even when he nipped her. And I haven't observed any changes in their dynamics.

I couldn't get a good look at it last night, because of the matting, so I wasn't really prepared for the nickel-sized open wound that was revealed at the vet's this morning. It can't be stitched -- it's not a cut. Either a bite has torn a small amount of skin off, or a cyst has burst (could I have done that by brushing him?), or it's a ulcerated lesion due to skin cancer or some other skin disorder.

Not only can it not be stitched, the vet doesn't want it dressed or covered. It needs to dry up (and, I guess, form a scab, under which new skin can grow). I get to put a salve on it three times a day, plus he gets an antibiotic. So for the next week, I need to make sure it's not getting any worse, while not getting to impatient for it to get better quickly. And make sure it doesn't get dirty.

So, an uncovered open wound -- kind of sad and scary and just plain "ugh" all at the same time.

More movies: The Aviator, Howard Hughes, Kate Hepburn

We PPVed The Aviator the other day, which I liked. It's awfully sad, though, assuming the details about his disorder are accurate. The ending is really effective. I now have a favorite Leo Di Caprio movie, which just feels weird.

So then we rented Hell's Angels. We've only seen half of it, but I saw the most important part -- the zeppelin crash. Extraordinary. Audiences in 1930 must have gone nuts when they saw that.

Then I happened to have a day off when one of the movie channels was running a Kate Hepburn marathon, and saw just bits and pieces of most of them -- Suddenly, Last Summer, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Lion in Winter. But I watched all of the first one, after missing the first 20 minutes or so, a little-seen (and little-liked) 1946 noirish film called Undercurrent. I liked it quite a lot, even though Kate was not right for role in 1946 (would she ever have been?).

The film uses a recurring piano theme as a plot point, and it took me the rest of the day to figure out where I'd heard it -- Carlos Santana based his song "Love of My Life" on a Brahms passage, and that was the Brahms.