How was your Labor Day weekend? Mine was the worst ever, thank you.

We learned that our 6-year-old female Labradoodle, Ruby, had a uterus infection that spread throughout her body and she had a 50/50 chance of surviving a $5,000 operation, including a blood transfusion.

We loved Ruby, to say the least, and it was an infection that came on quickly. She remained upbeat until her diagnosis, although, looking back at some of the signs we missed, it was probably too late anyway before we made the hardest decision of our life — and her life.

She had a condition called pyometra, which strikes the uterus of dogs that aren't spayed. We had three other female dogs that weren't spayed and it never affected them. They lived 12, 15 and 15 years. We had never heard of the disease. Of course, now I wish we had.

I hope people with young dogs read about this affliction and take the corrective steps to avoid what we just went through. We don't want you to go through what we have during the past few days.

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This may be a bit late and not worthy of mentioning, but because of the bike/car accident which occurred this week in front of our office, I am going to write about it. Please, bike riders, don't ride down Townsend Avenue against traffic. It's dangerous and against the law. Personally, I have come across four such incidents this summer, almost hitting one bicyclist, and I am sure others have experienced the same situation — probably more than I have.

We presume that Rotarians, when they hand out their rental bikes, are telling the foreign workers about this rule of the road. But it seems that it goes in one ear and out the other.

*****

While on a similar subject, perhaps we need a patrolman or volunteer to tell pedestrians to use the sidewalks (and crosswalks), especially on Commercial Street. Signs won't work — we need someone to take charge and tell these jaywalkers to stay out of the road while walking to their destination.