A friend who read my recent piece on climbing Mt. Mansfield was confused over one of the sentences at the end, which seemed to indicate that my wife had had our dog put to sleep.  Not so -- it was the lady who gave us the cookies whose dog had been put to sleep, and the cookies were his last meal.  Max, my dog -- he's partly pictured with me on the contributors' page of nt.com -- is just fine, although he just can't hold down turkey skin.  We learn this every Thanksgiving, and promptly forget.