Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is taking a brief break from his annual “rendering unto Ceasar” day of joy. During the break he went out and threw a ball for the dogs.

Yes. Dogs.

Your Maximum Leader can’t recall if he mentioned that he now has a second dog. His first dog, Maia, is 13 years old. The new dog, Bella, is about 10 months old. The circumstances of Bella’s arrival were not fortuitous. Mrs Villain announced, on the Sunday before Christmas, that she was adopting Bella and didn’t much care what your Maximum Leader had to say about it. She was then a surprised and upset when your Maximum Leader didn’t warm up to Bella and was giving Mrs Villain the cold-shoulder too. Anyway, that is past and Bella is, slowly, growing on your Maximum Leader.

Being a young’n, Bella has piles of energy and wants to play.

Being an old’n, Maia has some energy and occasionally likes to walk around slowly and sniff things.

While Bella has “livened” up Maia somewhat, Maia is still old. Maia has growing cataracts. She is arthritic. And Maia has been a little OCD for years. (NB: Not “a little OCD” in all honesty. She is very OCD. Do the point that we’ve had her on “downers” for about 5 years.)

Anyhoo…

Your Maximum Leader was taking a break to toss a ball for the dogs to run around a little. Bella likes to run and retrieve and bound over things. Maia wants to run, but sadly cannot. When your Maximum Leader throws the ball, both dogs start towards the ball. Bella runs, accelerates and jumps. Maia takes a few steps. Then stops. Then turns and looks at your Maximum Leader with an expression that says, “I’d like to run; but it is too much.”

Sadly, this bad arthritis in Maia is probably going to be the end of her. She has trouble with stairs (so much so that we walk her around the Villainschloss outside to avoid them). She often has trouble getting up. Some nights she starts to move around and we hear her groaning as she stretches. Her time is coming. Coming quickly I fear. It is going to be very sad when it happens.

Carry on.

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