Alyssa, my daughter who is in the Army, is home on leave.  She absolutely did not want me to rehome the pups before Christmas because she was worried they would become "Christmas puppies", i.e. dumped a week later.  So I will start my little rehoming project this week, for a few of the puppies (I am keeping several).

Puppies never make good surprise presents.  The only time a person should get a puppy as a present is when they have asked for one, are aware of what they would have to do to take care of one, are willing to commit to taking care of the young pup, and love the little monster. 

Because for the first few months, that pup will be a monster.  A real monster.  The puppy will chew up everything, shit on your floors, piss on your Persian carpets, eat your favorite book, tear up that dissertation you worked on for a year, ruin the power cord to your laptop, and make a playtoy out of your iPod. The puppy may make you pretty miserable.  This is a temporary state, and will end when the puppy becomes a dog. 

What they bring to you is joy and love and happiness that will last for years.  But since most people don't seem to know how to handle those things, they focus on the negative temporary effects that even human toddlers go through.  If they could only see that back some decades ago they were the ones chewing on the furniture, maybe they wouldn't be dumping that puppy at the pound a week after Christmas.... 

As is sometimes the case, my hand didn't heal at all while the stitches were in place.  Dr. Tremor realized that they were causing more damage than helping, and removed them.  He said with my diabetes and decreased ability to heal, that the wound would have to heal from the inside out and the stitches just got in the way.  So he took them out, in favor of strips.  The strips fell off after a couple days, and the wound looked better than it had since it had happened.  He also told me to use the antibiotic once daily, and let the wound dry (which one of the nurses in the ER also said, but the ER doctor instructed otherwise).

Now, though it is still not healed (and there is a great deal of pain in it when I don't take painkillers--which I am avoiding right now), it is almost completely sealed.  I can't see all the way down through my skin into my muscle tissue--and sometimes glimpse my bone, as before.  It no longer extends around the side of my hand, and the opening is only about half an inch long, though the picture looks like it is longer (that is the peeling of the outer layers of skin along the edges of the original wound).

I really appreciate Dr. Tremor's experience with this kind of problem.