Zachary's Bris

On Monday, Mrs Schwartz pointed out to me that it seemed like Zachary's "Red Rocket" never went back in the silo.
She had noticed it and thought, at first, that he seemed to be excited an awful lot. When she realized that it was all the time, she told me about it. His Doghood looked like it had an infection on the end. It looked like there was a swollen, red, inflammation, right on the tip. I'm thinking, He already has football knee, now the clap?! What the hell goes on during the day?
It didn't seem to bother him at all. [If it were me, I'd have been concerned]
We decided to take him into the vet.

The next day, she called me to tell me that her Jeep wouldn't start because she left the door ajar and the dome light had been on for days.
When I got home, I jump-started it and drove it around town for a while to charge it. When I was driving it around again, I noticed that the voltmeter was showing 19V. Weird, but I hoped it would magically be ok the next day.
The next morning, she called me at work to tell me that it wouldn't start again.
I called a mechanic. The next morning, I jumped it again and we dropped it off at the garage and she took me to work and took my truck. This would be Thursday.

She called me, hysterically crying.

The vet said that he had a malignant, cancerous tumor on his Doghood.

It turns out that he had a Mast Cell Tumor, and that this is a very common form of cancer for older dogs. He said that it looked like Zachary would need to get the tumor, and some part of his Doghood, removed. He would then require reconstructive and plastic surgery. He also said that we would need to go to a specialist because it was beyond his capabilities.

But first, he was going to anesthetize him for a closer look.

After that, he called us back and said that it looked like the tumor was only on the surface and had not gotten into the organ itself, but he might need to take a little of the foreskin off.
He said he could do the surgery and it wasn't nearly as bad as he had initially thought.

So we left Zachary there [Thursday night] and he had surgery Friday afternoon. He called us afterwards and said that everything went well, but he wanted to keep him for observation for the night and we could pick him up Saturday.

So we picked him up this morning. [Mrs Schwartz has been driving me up a wall]. He came bounding out, as usual, all happy and goofy. He had a cone on his neck. The bill called it an Elizabethan Collar, I shit you not. It was $18.
At first, they said he needed to wear it for 7 days. Then they said he only needed to wear it when we weren't watching him, so it looks like he will only have to wear it at night.
We took it off him when we got home. He has finally settled down enough to sleep. We made a bed for him [and Mrs Schwartz] in front of the couch.

Zachary's shaved leg

UPDATE 7-20-07: We heard back from the pathology lab. The bad news is that his tumor was made of lymphoma-type cancer, which is a very bad type, and is the type that killed his brother. The good news is that the tumor has "clean edges". This means that the doctor can easily determine the extent of the cancer cells, and "get all of it".