Pepper has been doing great. Maybe not quite as much energy as she used to have, but she is almost 12 years old. I honestly didn’t think that after she injured her knee that she would be able to chase after her ball like she used. It may have taken awhile, but she did heal and her knee got strong enough for her to run around almost as well as she used.

Stairs have started to be a bit of an issue for her. I’m not sure if it’s because of her age or because of her injury. Probably a combination of both. That hasn’t stopped her from running full blast up the deck stairs when coming in from inside. It’s been making me nervous because she does have a tendency to slip on those stairs.

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Last February or March while waiting to figure out what, if anything, needed to be done about Pepper’s back leg, I noticed a lump that was next to her right front leg kind of right above what you could call her armpit. At first I thought it might be some sort of goose egg from all the slipping she was doing trying to run up the deck stairs in the middle of winter, but it never really went away.

At one of the trips to the vet I asked about it and was told that it was probably just a fatty tumor and that it was most likely nothing to worry about, but the vet did measure it and said to keep my eye on it if it changed. Since it didn’t seem to be bothering Pepper all that much, I left it at that.

Pepper posing for the camera.

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I was holding off before giving another update on Pepper until a few things were more certain. After that, life got in the way a little bit.

These days Pepper is doing just great. I walk her fairly often and her leg may not be 100% better, but it’s close. In fact, her leg got so much better that surgery wasn’t even necessary. It was a pretty amazing recovery. Pepper is even back to playing ball. (Though, I do take it a little bit easier on her now.) With all the nice weather this summer, I was tempted to take her out in the backyard and throw the frisbee for her, but I think that might be a bit much.

Pepper looking at me, wanting something.

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Just thought I should post an update on how Pepper is doing.

She’s doing much better now, but she’s not anywhere close to 100%. I recently took her in to get her leg x-rayed to make sure it wasn’t broken and it wasn’t. I did cut back on her food a little more than I already had to try and get her weight down to try and lesson the stress on both her good leg and bad leg. She’s lost a little weight, but not much. That could be due to not being able to be as active as she was before.

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When the snow rolled through earlier this week, I at first didn’t think that it was that big of a deal. After all, I grew up in the Midwest and even spent a couple of years living in Maine. Snow is just a part of winter.

However, when I went out to actually shovel the snow, it was fairly obvious that this wasn’t typical. There was a drift that was literally 5ft high covering most of my driveway. Then the 12-15″ everywhere else. This wasn’t the light and fluffy snow either. I had to use a snow shovel to break it up before I could get at it with the snow blower.

Where the drift started that covered the driveway.

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