Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been feeling rather funky for the past few days. He’s got a lot on his plate at the Villainschloss. Major repairs in the dungeon are costing more than anticipated. And now your Maximum Leader is facing a serious ethical/financial dilemma.

You see… Your Maximum Leader’s trusted hound got a cut on her left rear leg about two years ago. It was slow to heal, but it healed. We thought she was fine. Then she started licking the leg way more than she should. It got sorta nasty looking. But she stopped and it healed up again. Then at the end of last year she started the licking again. A wound developed. We took her to the vet. The vet prescribed some serious drugs for her. Our dog spent the next 8 weeks on various drugs recouperating. It looked like she was all healed up. Total cost of Vet and drugs: $800. About two weeks ago she started licking the leg again. We went back to the vet. The infection in her leg had returned. We got more drugs, but this time there doesn’t seem to be as much of a positive response to them. The Vet has now recommended we take her to a veterinary surgeon who could cut out the infection and see if there is something else in there causing the problems. Approximate cost: $2500. There is no guarantee of a favorable or final result from surgery.

Now your Maximum Leader is facing the massive amount of spending going on at the house, and the prospect of a massive amount of spending on the health of our dog. He has to admit that he has more than once wondered if he should even seriously consider spending the money on our dog. But every time he starts down that path of reasoning he feels like a heartless ass. At what point is a dog a dog and not a four-legged loving member of the family? Your Maximum Leader could probably swing the various home repairs and one surgery. It would require a bit of creative budgeting; but it could happen. If anything happened after that…

Carry on.