But I haven’t had a lot to talk about for so long, and I finally have something to say. Rich and I are getting a puppy. We’re getting another English Retriever like Honey. If I haven’t said this on YouTube, Honey has a spot of cancer on her nose. The oncologist gave her a year with no treatment and 23 months with treatment. I’m not sure about you, but putting a dog through radiation sounds inhumane, and we chose not to proceed with treatment. We gave Honey a high dose of CBD oil for the first two months after we got the diagnosis and her nose bump is gone. The oncologist said that cancer takes the path of least resistance, meaning it shouldn’t go into her nose, but instead, should continue to expand upward until it gets to the point that the skin can’t stretch enough and breaks. The visual the vet oncologist’s words inspired, did not make us happy. I don’t know if the CBD oil helped or if the cancer found another way to grow, but so far, (and it’s been probably 3-4 months) we don’t see any signs of it getting worse. With that being said, the reason we’re getting a puppy, is we don’t want either of our dogs to be an “only child.”
Dogs like to form a pack, so if you have two dogs, they are their own pack. When one of those dogs leaves the pack, the other dog is lost without it’s other pack member, and often will die of heart break. If you don’t like dogs, you probably don’t believe this, but I’ve seen it myself. Our dogs have grieved deeply for their lost counterparts, and if they hadn’t had a younger dog to look out for, I don’t think our dogs would have survived. We’ve woken in the night to dogs howling like their hearts have broken and Rich and I both bursting into tears, hearing our dog in so much pain.
We don’t know how long Honey truly has, but we’ll be grateful for the time we have with her. Bella is 11, so we may lose her before Honey, and as much as you plan for every contingency, losing both dogs in the next couple of years, is a real possibility. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we have to.
We’re also going on vacation next week for 9 days. Driving through New York to Vermont, and then after 3-4 days there, onto York, Maine. We have a bucket list that we want to visit all 50 states, and even though Vermont is truly only one state away from us, we’ve never been there. Once we check Vermont off our list, we only have North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Alaska to go. It would be great if we could check the first four off in one trip, but I doubt that would be easy to accomplish. Alaska, we’ll cruise there once cruising is safe again, and then we’ll be done. It’s been fun seeing the whole country, and we made sure we didn’t count things like landing in an airport in a state…we truly had to visit that state. We’ve really enjoyed so many states and look forward to seeing the rest. Our biggest regret is not seeing the Grand Canyon, so we’ll probably make another trip there at some point.
As for crafting, I have been trying to organize my craft room and it’s been months of moving things around and not having anywhere to walk….It’s been so frustrating, and I can’t wait until I can finally look around and not be embarrassed by the mess. I’ve had to give up diamond painting for a while, as my elbows don’t want to play, and repetitive motions that diamond paintings require, make my elbows swell and ache. Such is the life of a crafty diva.
CraftingForAlmostEveryone.com 
I’m so sorry to hear about Honey. I had no idea! I would love to come see the lucky puppy once you’ve gotten it. Greg and I would love to see more of the U.S. He saw a lot of it when he was a kid (driving across the country in the family station wagon for 6 weeks), but I have not. We have decided that out of the country travel is not for us, so once we retire, we’d love to vacation in different states, especially out west, also National Parks. Have a wonderful time. I’ve never been to Vermont, but sure would love to see it.
LikeLike
Yes, it’s been a banner 12 months all the way around, from Cathy to Covid, to Honey… We should have Izzy by the end of July, so anytime after, would love to have you…maybe we can make paper purses together. I bought a lot of metal embellishments for them and way too many for me to use (as usual.)
Since we didn’t have kids, we travelled when we had vacation time at work, so have seen a lot of the US. I just found a website called RVshare,com, where you can rent drivable RVs and take the dogs, and they’re from individuals like renting houses through sites.. It’s a genius idea and not too expensive and I found an RV in Meadville on it, so they’re from almost anywhere. I think it would be a lot of fun to drive across the country in an RV, but don’t like riding, so with an RV, the dogs and I could sleep in the bed while Rich drives…fun for us and not so fun for him, haha…. I’m looking forward to getting away as this stretch has been the longest for us to go without a trip and I’m feeling stir-crazy. I’ll be in touch with you when we get home so we can make a play date and you can see the puppy. As for Honey, we’ve decided Honey will live as long as she can, and we think their 1 year estimate is a few years shorter than the reality….especially since the lump is almost gone.
LikeLike