Here's Lucy!

Sorry about the long silence, but things have just been too hectic to take some time off and write. I did want to give you a quick update on Lucy, though, because so many of you have been asking about her.

Lucy came home Saturday morning from the hospital. She walked out on a leash, her tail all a-wag the moment she saw us. The hospital worker couldn't keep up with her! We were happily surprised because just the previous night, when we'd visited her, she'd looked miserable with red-rimmed eyes. She seemed to be in a lot of pain, which was only natural considering she'd just had a leg removed. When Desi put an arm around her she lay down and actually wailed. It was heartbreaking.

But this time she seemed to know she was going home. The fact that one of her legs was missing seemed not to make a whit of a difference. She hopped into the backseat of the car, and gave us long kisses-- something she's usually too shy to do, but then she wanted to let us know she was happy.

Of course, there's a lot of work ahead. Lucy's body still has to heal. She is also learning to get around with three legs, but right now she tires easily because the back leg is still not used to doing the work of two. Occasionally, though not often, she'll lose her balance and stumble. The doctor tells us this will improve with time.

She is also wearing one of those miserable cone collars around her neck a lot of the time to keep her from licking her surgery wounds. We are also still waiting for further results from the amputated limb, which will determine the course of her treatment.

I wanted to say thanks to all of you well-wishers who've sent in your thoughts, your prayers and more for Lucy. The one hot Nupur and her dashing Dale sent Lucy some lovely homemade treats, which came just in time for us to bring to the hospital when we visited her Saturday. She adored them. I didn't even have time to get a picture before they were gone, with enthusiastic help from Opie and Freddie, of course. :). Thanks, Nupur!

And thanks, all, for being there!

Mac 'n' Veggies

Eating healthfully becomes ever so important when stress threatens to consume you. With Lucy's surgery tomorrow, there is a confusion of questions running through our minds: are we doing the right thing? Will she learn to walk on three legs? What if she doesn't?

And the biggest one of all: how long after this will she be healthy? How long will she live?

But every night, when I lie in bed and hear her breathing hard-- something dogs do when in pain-- or when I hear her tumor-afflicted leg drag on the floor as she makes her way to the water bowl, I remind myself that the surgery is going to make her feel better.

Tomorrow morning I will drive her to the hospital where she will stay a day or two before coming home. The doctor says she is in good health otherwise (however ironic that sounds, all things considered) and everything should go well. In two to three weeks all the pain from the surgery should be gone and she will be happy again.

Kaipakya Theeyal

First, a huge thank you from me and a super-special "woof!" from Lucy to all of you thoughtful folks who left messages and sent emails wishing her well. These have been incredibly difficult days for Desi and me and reading through your words, your tips and your advise helped more than I can ever say.

I don't have good news to share, but it's not bad news either. Lucy met with a specialist Thursday who confirmed that there's a pretty nasty tumor in her rear right leg. We've scheduled the amputation for this coming Thursday.

It was a hard decision to make but three vets have so far assured us that Lucy will be 100 percent pain-free after the leg is gone. We can see that it would help: the pain is growing almost by the day, despite the painkilling drugs she's been on.

The surgeon we consulted with showed us pictures of a dog with an amputated leg about the same size and weight as Lucy, and looking at those really helped us make up our mind. "People usually say after the surgery that you've given us our puppy back," she said, pointing out that for dogs, unlike us humans, there is no stigma associated with losing a leg because they don't think about how they will appear to others.

I've also been looking up dogs with amputated limbs on the internet and they all look happy and healthy. Last year, on our road trip, we met a three-legged dog, Miracle, on the beach in Charleston and she looked completely blissful as she took a soak with her family.

After the amputation will come the chemotherapy. While waiting at the vet's office we met another dog parent with an adorable 14-year-old cocker spaniel who, his father said, has been on chemo for the last two years. He also hasn't had any remarkable side-effects.

I feel encouraged already.

I wanted to address here quickly one discordant message I received last week among the dozens of supportive ones. The writer-- who did not disclose his/her name-- asked me to spend a couple of happy days with Lucy and then euthanize her. There was something wrong, this person wrote, with fetishizing about a dog as if it were a human child.

Be Well, Lucy

My girl Lucy is very sick.

She loves to chase squirrels and when we first noticed her limping a little last week, we put it down to a sprain. But the limp began to get worse and we rushed her to the ER.

It has to be a sprain, I said to Desi again and again on our drive over. We should never have given in to her demands to run around with Opie in the backyard. We should have forced her to rest, however much she hated it. She doesn't know any better-- we are the parents. How could we be so careless?

We did have deeper fears: Lucy's a German Shepherd, a breed prone to hip dysplasia, a displacement of the hip bones, and when she neared her eighth birthday last September the vet warned she could be at risk. We steeled ourselves to hear it was that, or arthritis. Devastating as that would be, we could deal with it: we've been living with Opie's arthritis and hip dysplasia for four years now.

We had no idea.

Looking at a picture of Lucy's leg bones on an X-ray screen Sunday morning, the vet gave her verdict: Osteosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer that has usually spread through the body before its symptoms show up.
 
At best, she said, after her affected leg is amputated, Lucy might live up to a year, maybe two if we were lucky. "It is one of the worst cancers a dog can get," she said. "The prognosis is very poor." 

Like all pet parents, Desi and I have always known that our kids won't live through our lifetimes. We don't think about it a lot, but we know it will happen and accept it. 

But at eight, Lucy is too young. A child forever. Even in dog years, she is only middle aged.
Were there signs? We've been wondering. Was she, somehow, trying to tell us that she was in pain and we missed it? Dogs don't show pain easily: a trait bred by instinct and experience of living in packs. Any sign of pain would be construed as weakness by other animals in the pack. We don't know how long she may have been hurting before she began to limp.

Lucy is our first-born. We call her that because she was our first rescue in the United States. She came from the Washington Humane Society, a one-year-old so smart, so silly, so gorgeous and so redheaded that we just had to name her Lucy after the wonderful sitcom star.

The first day we brought her home, a naive Desi -- who she immediately adopted as her favorite person -- put her new collar around her neck, a little too loose as it turned out, and took her for a walk. She easily pulled her head out of it to chase after Polo, the doberman next door, and disappeared into some woods nearby. But bright as she is, she found her way back by herself minutes later although she had spent only a few hours with us by that time.

Over the last two years I've shared many stories on this blog about Lucy. How the pressure cooker and thunderstorms send her flying for cover in the basement. How she has figured out ways to score treats without working for them. How she literally stops traffic in our neighborhood when we walk her, beautiful and elegant as she is. How she bosses over the other dogs at home and fiercely protects them around strange dogs. How she loves to go for long drives, hogging the entire backseat. How she offers up her stomach for a tummy rub to every person that comes into the house.

I could talk to you about her all day and all night. But right now all I can think of is making her better again.

There is a difficult road ahead of us, most of all for Lucy. Biopsy, amputation, chemotherapy, radiation are words that seem too harsh for our baby girl, but I've been reading up and apparently dogs do really well with three legs. And there are dogs who, with treatment, have even beaten osteosarcoma -- a small percentage, but they do exist.

The first time I saw Lucy, she was sitting in a run at the animal shelter, a skinny but beautiful creature. Unlike the other dogs, climbing up on the bars and barking to lick hands and kiss faces, she sat quiet, too dignified to demand attention from strangers. She barely acknowledged me when I offered her my hand. But both Desi and I could see that she was special.

When the shelter volunteer took her outside so we could meet her, the first thing she did was run all the way to the fence. Then she ran back and forth along it, a creature so majestic, it was hard not to fall in love with her.

Running is what Lucy loves best. Except, perhaps, going on long drives and barking at every dog she sees out the window. Occasionally on weekends we'd take her out to the woods and she'd go to town chasing squirrels, bees and even the occasional bird (she's never actually caught anything in nearly eight years, but she doesn't think that's any reason to give up).

She can't run any more because the bone in her leg is so weak, it could fracture easily and not heal. She can barely walk. But veterinary medicine has advanced quite a bit and we have every hope our baby will heal and maybe even run again. And there is still a tiny hope that maybe the bone biopsy might reveal it is something else after all, not cancer.

Please keep her in your thoughts.

Savory Sweet Potato Quiche

Spring is time to go yard-saleing. It's one of the reasons I most look forward to this time of year.

Much as I hate going to shops, I admit there's a gorgeously vicarious joy in going into other people's homes and rummaging through their stuff -- even if it's stuff they've decided they don't want anymore-- and finding treasures I can put to good use.

My home's filled with all kinds of finds-- some of it is quirky, like an antique valet chair picked up by Desi who has an eye for the unusual. Some of it is elegant, like a beautiful, weathered wooden desk that we picked up at the home of a former journalist in the neighborhood who had just passed away. Some of it is just really useful, like a comfortable couch that we got for nothing. Turns out the owners, who were moving, were cat lovers and when they found out we were too, it clinched the deal. It now sits in the den and Pubm pretty much dominates it, soaking up the sun filtering in from the window, so I assume she somehow found out she was the reason we got that couch. :) Smart, those cats.

Desi also loves picking up old records at yard sales-- and I find it hard to pass up any good baking tools and pans that I can find.

Railway Mushroom Curry

This curry was heavily adapted from a "Railway mutton curry" recipe I found on Sanjeev Kapoor's Web site.  The curry, Kapoor says on his site, "gets its name from the days of the Raj when it used to be served in the railway pantry cars." The "raj" being a quaint word used by some to describe Britain's often bloody colonization of India for three centuries.

Whatever. I do like the part about it being served on railway cars because what can be a better setting for food than changing scenery? Besides, the curry really is delicious.

For those not familiar with Indian television chefs, Kapoor is India's first-- and perhaps its most successful-- one. Apparently he's called India's Rachel Ray for having spawned a food empire, but I don't think that does him any justice-- I think of him more as India's Julia Child, if you know what I mean. A trained chef,  Kapoor comes up with some pretty great recipes. In fact, I can't think of a single recipe of his that I've tried and not liked.

It's A Vegan World: French

Share I haven't announced a new chapter of my occasional series, It's A Vegan World, for a few months now because I've just been too busy at work and home. So when Graziana of Erbe in Cucina offered to host it in April, and even suggested a cuisine-- French-- I jumped at the chance to revive it.

I had considered a French edition of IAVW before but hesitated because veganizing French cuisine can seem a huge challenge to anyone. When I picked up a copy of Julia Child's  Mastering the Art of French Cooking at a yard sale years ago, I thumbed eagerly through it hoping to find at least something that I might be able to veganize. I gave up because, honestly, it seemed almost impossible to pare down all the animal-rich ingredients in there.

But now I think I am ready to dust it off and thumb through it again.

I might not be alone in my fear of cooking French food. Although often simple and stark, the cuisine of France seems daunting to any cook who's new at it, perhaps because it occupies such a hallowed place as one of the world's most luxe cuisines. Just the minute attention to detail and technique is enough to drive an otherwise accomplished but time-pressed cook to throw in the apron and call for Chinese takeout.

Besides, it does seem to include a lot of meat and dairy products. But it also includes lots of fresh vegetables and lentils. And when you think back on all those French recipes you've run into, you're bound to think of something that can easily be veganized or is even vegan to begin with. Ratatouille, for instance.

So toss aside those inhibitions and all those ideas about doing things just so and get cooking. We are not trying to win the Michelin stars here...we are just trying to make some healthy, wholesome, delicious food that we'd love to sit down to after a day's hard work. And have some fun while we're at it.

Here are some Web sites to help you get started:

French Vegetarian Recipes

Voila!Vegan Does French

I also came across this book of vegan French recipes, in case you want to check it out of your public library. And one of my favorite TV chefs to watch, Jacques Pepin, often demonstrates French recipes that are both simple and vegetarian or easily veganized.

Don't forget to look up the event announcement page at Graziana's blog with the guidelines, and to send her your recipes. The only thing you need to remember is that it has to be vegan-- if you have any concerns about whether a certain ingredient qualifies or not, think about whether it involved some animal or insect. Honey, fish, milk, eggs, gelatin are NOT vegan, and not allowed.

I'll see you around.