We’re back from Jorah’s first adult trip to the vet. Weighing in at 60 pounds on the nose, he’s nominally “full grown.”

I was optimistic (foolishly) that this visit would be just the usual weigh in, vaccinations, and pats on the head (for him, not me). We managed all that, of course, but because he’s one of my dogs, there was something a little extra. I’ll never be the kind of guy who has perfectly healthy dogs, it seems.

I asked the vet about a “spot” on Jorah’s leg. I’ve never managed to catch him licking it or even found it damp, but it looks very much like a areas on his right foreleg that’s been licked incessantly. With a diagnosis of “nothing obvious” we arrived home with three weeks worth of prednisone and two weeks worth of cephalexin and the vague hope that a course of steropids and antibiotics would work their magic.

If they don’t, we came home with a cone of shame too… but I promised my boy we’d only go there in extremis.