Just received this via email.

My daughter Karen sent me two pictures via email this morning. She took them when she came out here recently. During a break from her cleanup work she took Ruff and Bessie for a walk in the backyard and this is what she saw them doing. These photos were taken with her cell phone camera. Does Bessie look like she has gotten bigger?

Can't quite make out what's going on here. It doesn't look exactly like a game of tugs while it almost looks like the two were working together carrying that "big" stick. OK, call it Teamwork.

Updated June 21st: Took Bessie and Ruff the the county Animal Shelter yesterday to get their dog licenses renewed and saw they now had a large size dog scale in the lobby. I put Bessie on the scale and it hovered between 100 and 101 pounds. That's the same as it was at the Vet's office several weeks ago. So that answers my question, Bessie hasn't gotten bigger.

I'm back.

Lately I have begun to feel my life has become an obstacle course leaping over one hurdle after another. Maybe the 6-month battle with Prostate Cancer and the accompanying 3-months of daily radiation was too easy. For all those who offered prayers, I wish to express my sincere thanks. The cancer is gone. The after-effects are almost gone and life started getting back to normal. Then came the next hurdle, Carotid artery stenosis. A few more tests, and a few more visits to the hospital, a visit to the ER and some very worried Rottweilers, and now that is almost under control. So, hopefully, I am back posting for awhile, anyway. And I have a few stories to catch up on.

In between all these troubles the grass and weeds continued to grow and the rumored complaints from the neighbors about the run down look. That was helped along with several weeks of pleasantly cool weather and lots of rain, the two things grass and weeds love most. One thing I learned was teenagers living on my street now have cars instead of bicycles and are seldom at home and it is almost impossible to hire someone to cut your lawn. So I hired a "professional" guy to cut the grass but just because someone invests in a professional piece of equipment and does the work as a second job doesn't make them a pro. So after one particularly difficult weekend health-wise my neighbor volunteered to cut the grass. Then I got some additional unexpected help. My daughter Karen, worried about my health flew down for a 5 day visit and did an absolutely smashing job cleaning up the property, and the inside of the house. I just wish she'd paid more heed to my warning about wearing a long-sleeved shirt. She went home with both her arms covered in poison Ivy.

Several weeks ago, around the time of my last post, I took Ruff and Bessie down the back for a survey of the property and had some great photos of them standing in grass that was as high as their shoulders. And in my drug-induced misery I lost the pictures before I could post them. What a sight that was, though. Seeing them walk though the incredibly tall grass reminded me of the scene from one of the Jurassic Park movies of the people walking through the head-high grass before the Raptors attacked them.

And as far as those lost photos go, it wasn't just the few I took that day, it was my entire collection of over 25,000 digital photos taken with all four of my digital cameras over the last 15 years that I accidentally wiped out. I had mounted a new second hard drive in my computer and was in the process of partitioning it when I clicked on the wrong drive letter. Luckily I had prepared a backup of the photos but the backup was two months old and I had no copies of the pictures taken during that time except for the ones I had already posted here. So I went back and saved each one from the blog. Lesson learned, don't drink and drive, and don't mess with your drives if you're on medications.

I do have one photo to share with you. My big guy Ruff had fallen asleep on the couch one evening when it was his turn to keep an eye on my wife Jacqueline. This certainly is a classic pose, isn't it? Reminds me of my Porno Puppy Mocha.

I must tell you that for the time being my favorite place to take outdoor pictures of the Rottweilers has now become unreachable. By virtue of the fact that I have been having so much trouble walking down the back, until the meds begin to do their job I'll have to restrict myself to front yard and indoor  photography.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. And the personal emails were always a joy to read.