Albert's foot

Our sweet dog, Albert, got a cheat grass seed (some people call them foxtails) embedded in his paw, which then formed an abscess and turned pretty nasty.  This is the second time that has happened this summer . . . grrr!  We've been trying to check his paws regularly but I guess we missed that one.  The vet said that they've seen a really high number of cases of cheat grass in dogs' paws this summer, and we've been out walking a ton, so he probably picked it up on a walk.  Poor Albert has stitches in his paw right now from the surgery to remove the darn thing.  We're trying to keep him from licking and biting at his stitches.  A sock seems to work for awhile, but he can get it off pretty easily if he tries.

So, we ended up buying one of those cone collars for him, which he absolutely hates.  And I don't blame him.  We're trying not to use it much, unless we absolutely need to.  TongJie had to try it out, so Jeff helped him put the silly thing around his waist like a skirt.  TongJie thought it was the best!

TongJie is now big enough to climb up onto the couch and onto chairs by himself.  He's also smart, and he knows how to scoot a chair over to whatever he wants to reach, and then climb up onto the chair.  Needless to say, our days of carelessly leaving things laying around on the table and countertops are over!  TongJie has been climbing up on the couch and pretending to sleep.

And pretending to sleep on the floor, too.

In the above picture is TongJie's blanket that we sent to him in a care package last February while we were waiting to travel to China.  Actually, there are two (almost) identical blankets.  We mailed one in the care package, and we brought the other one with us when we went to China.  We didn't know if the care package would even make it to his orphanage, so it was really neat when we visited the orphanage and the director returned the blanket to us.  So now TongJie has two blankets, each with a tag with his Chinese name.  Here is the blanket we kept to bring with us to China:

And here is the blanket we sent to China, along with the photo album that was also returned to us.  I took this photo back in February, before we boxed up the care package to mail to TongJie's orphanage.

That seems like such a long time ago now.  It's hard to believe that just a few months ago, we hadn't even met our son yet!