This is a picture I've shown before. It was taken when Hank was a little puppy and Henrietta was a little worried about it all. Now they are inseparable, of course.
Hank has just been diagnosed with cancer. It will be another two weeks before the tests tell me if anything at all can be done. There is a small probability that her front leg could be amputated but a larger one that the cancer has spread. This reminds us of the importance of each day we spend with those we love and of the fact that we walk this path together only until our roads diverge.
Hank is six years old and fairly young to get cancer. I have found in the last few days that several youngish dogs in my area have or have had a similar type of cancer and all these dogs have gone to the same dogpark and have also been of the type that likes to run in the little stream there. All this may be pure coincidence and the incidence figures may be quite normal, but I also happen to know that the dogpark was built on an old city dump. To this day shards of glass and so on turn up every year.
I am going to look into this, if only to disprove the hypothesis of an environmental cause.