Sirius Gives Alex a Birthday Gift

Rollercoaster week for the dog: Monday we had "the talk" with the kids, as Sirius's health appeared to be headed downhill-- he had a couple urination incidents in the house (which never happened before . . . what a dog!) and he was totally lethargic and miserable; after we discussed the reality of his situation, Ian curled into a ball and cried, then he went upstairs to take a nap, I cried when I tried to console him, Catherine cried and hugged me and told me that we'd never have another dog like him (she's had a lot of dogs) and I had a couple of sleepless nights trying to figure out when to put him down (I was hoping he would make it through the week, because today is Alex's birthday and tomorrow is my birthday . . . that's no present) but Sirius must have heard us planning to shuffle him off his mortal coil and decided he'd rather be than not be, because yesterday he started wagging his tail, he greeted me like normal when I got home from work, and he actually ate some dog food, today he properly pooped and actually jumped up when I was getting ready to walk him-- his usual behavior-- and then he wouldn't let me bring him home-- he just wanted to keep walking around the park . . . the vet said that some of these medicines might take a while to work, so we are now cautiously optimistic that something good is happening inside his body and perhaps the kidney infection is abating . . . but at the very least he's not going to head into that undiscovered country on my son's birthday (or mine, I hope).