The heeler Mom goes back to the vet this week to get her stitches out. But we had another veterinary issue to decide this weekend, and haven't formally come to a decision, yet.

You see, when you flip a heeler over on her back to check the stitches on her chest, you best do it when you're alone in the room. Because if you do it in front of other heeler witnesses, they will be distressed to see you make their mother submit in such an abject fashion, but they will also take that submission as a sign of weakness, and try to take advantage to raise their own status in the pack.

It's a canid thing.

Even if the pack member being forced to submit on their back is their own mother.

So, to keep peace in the pack/family, when the sisters witnessed their mother's health checks, they were then immediately grabbed, thrown on their back and forced to have the same checks of their bellies.

If everybody gets knocked down a peg, well, then everybody's back where they started, right? No need for hostile posturing.

So, on one of these fake "keep-peace-in-the-pack" inspections, we found a lump on the little maskless heeler. Down by her nipples. And deeper in the tissues, not like the fatty tumor the mother just had taken off.

So, I discussed this with the surgical vet at the heeler Mom's appointment Christmas week.

Best course of action? Take off the lump, spay the bitch.

Yeah, we knew there was a risk to having a female dog unspayed and unbred. A higher risk of cancer, due to the severe hormonal changes every half-year or so. Lucked out with the Mom, but apparently not with her little daughter.

So, at last week's appointment, we also brought in the little maskless heeler, and asked our regular vet. His advice?

Take off the lump, spay the bitch.

Yes, if we still wanted to try to breed her, they could just take off the lump and run a biopsy. But either way, there are really only three possibilities: a cancerous lump, a pre-cancerous lump, or a lump that is likely to become precancerous with her next heat.

So, we do that option, we better breed her the next cycle (sometime early this spring, late winter) and spay her right after birthing.

We're not really ready for puppies. Haven't even lined up a good male, yet. And the whole point of getting her bred would be to get another female to keep.

Do we really want four heelers in the pack right now?

And besides, after having these two, I really think having two littermates is the way to go. At least for a hyper breed like heelers. So are we ready for five heelers? (And the need to get a breeder's license?)

So, we haven't resolved this, and eldest son, who is technically the family member in charge of this little girl, has not spoken up since we first discussed it.

But I think we're gonna take off the lump, and spay the bitch.

And this is my own digitally modified version of the first new view of the surface of Mars I have had in some time. The view I saw last night (or this morning, actually) was looking over the shoulder of a scientist in a news photo, but you can find the complete panorama here.

Now, doesn't that just make you want to walk over and see what's on that low ridge on the other side of the dust dune?