Happy Birthday Anakin!

It's Anakin's birthday, and the poor baby has been going through a hard time lately. He had a surgery that's been difficult and we want him to know how much we love him!!!

Goodbye for now, we love you and will be checking in!

We're off across the ocean on our next great adventure! Email/internet will be tough for a bit, so I wanted to tell you all not to worry, we will be reading your blogs and keeping in touch as often as we can!

Also, Walter and I opened a big box of NEW BOOKS! My third novel, MILLION LITTLE MISTAKES will unbelievably be out Aug 1, and if any of you want to reserve a copy, just call your favorite bookstore or go to Amazon.com to preorder/buy a copy As always, your support makes me (and Walter!) incredibly grateful.

If you're able to tell a friend about Million Little Mistakes or even post a link to the book on your blog, it's always the BEST way to spread the word. A recommendation from a friend is better than anything else! These book sales will help pay for Walters ongoing treatments, which as you know are pricey, but worth it. (The vet says it will likely take a year or more, but if we're able to keep with the treatments, those nerves will keep growing in the right direction!)

MLM is a choose-your-own-adventure book for adults, just like the ones we had when we were kids with multiple endings. Only in this book, you win twenty-two million dollars in the lottery and you can spend it any way you want. You can buy a private island in the Caribbean, or an antebellum mansion in New Orleans, or an underwater hotel. You can take a luxury cruise around the world, bet on horses, give all the money to charity, and a whole bunch of other ideas that many of YOU gave me. You might remember me polling y'all for ideas! (Okay, the really crazy/naughty threads, like going to "Sex Island" and/or where you buy descend into a gluttonous pit of debauchery, those might have been more my ideas...)

The premise behind the book is that eternal question, can money buy us true happiness? Possible answer? Sometimes it can and sometimes it can't! (Does that antebellum mansion turn out to be haunted? Do pirates attempt to hijack your luxury cruise? Will a charitable organization just buy paperclips with your contribution? How will you know who loves you?)

Since I wrote Million Little Mistakes during Walter's accident, injury and treatment, there are a lot of animal thoughts/threads in the book and of course, one ending is creating the perfect animal sanctuary. My personal favorite. You also may notice a WHOLE lot of threads where strangers help each other, where uncommon grace and random acts of stunning kindness are common. What can I say? Writers write what they know, and you all have made those things a part of my daily experience.

We LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH.
xoxoxoxox
Wally and Heath

Milton

Walter is so glad to be home, even though we're only staying a short while. He made a new friend, a Pembroke Corgi named MILTON!! I know he's not a pug...but wow. Cute butt award!!

Meanwhile, even though Walter still rolls on his ankle and "knuckles" when he walks without his shoe, I am noticing a definite improvement in how often he walks "correctly" too. (Not on Dorsal side.) He will stand and eat food now with leg held the right way. Could he be feeling more? His leg is still very weak and we're working on new exercises to strengthen the upper "hock" part of his leg. We've also increased his glucosamine and chondrotin, which promote joint health. I'm using "vibration therapy" on his pads, where I massage them with a vibrating massage gizmo.I also massage his hindquarters and back, by the nerve roots.

I'm also looking into a possible nerve grafting procedure using the cutaneous saphenous nerve (Yes, I've learned a little bit about neural anatomy during this time!) Basically, it's where a neurosurgeon takes a part of another, healthy nerve and grafts it to the injured site. The nerves, which grow like coral, will branch out and hopefully reconnect.

one problem, the only surgeon who has done this procedure is in England. So, naturally, I'm going to England.

Home Again

So long since we last blogged! Lots has happened. Wally and I did the long drive back to MN and made it safely home, where it's cool and comfortable. Key West gets mighty hot! Walter has been keeping up with his therapy and the BIG news around here is he took another ten steps without his shoe on!

Another Star for Wallymon

Jeff Baenen's Associated Press photo of me and Walter the Pug won the MN Society of Professional Journalists "Page One" award for news portrait! We all know why this photo won...and it ain't the redhead. I remember when Jeff came to my house to take this shot. I told him to make a strange noise, so walter would look at him, and he made a high-pitched sound, like a tea kettle, causing me to smile and walter to tilt his head, "ba-roo?" Way to go Jeff!