Pemphilumphigus!

My Old Dawg, the Sweet Manatee himself, has decided recenly to engage in a new hobby; Losing Skin and Costing Us a Shitload of Moola. Decidedly ancient and yet still hanging around in his old dog body (as long as there is meat on the earth, he will do his best to stay here), he has developed Pemphigus, a fine rare autoimmune disease which causes the immune system to attack, of all things, his skin. So he now resembles the Velveteen Rabbit, all threadbare and patched up and most definately REAL. It looks as though he's been attacked by a set of renegade shears. And life right now is ALL ABOUT THE DOG, as in "Did you pill the dog?" and "We need to bathe the dog" and "Parts of the dog need to be vacuumed off the living room floor." Nonetheless, he seems quite pleased with himself, and despite the fact that I know more than a few of my friends and family members are wondering why we're sustaining the poor guy's miserable existence, he isn't really any worse for the wear. He just looks like he's being systematcially tortured by a fascist regime hoping to extract the secrets that enable him to sleep for twenty three hours a day. We've taken to calling him the Pemphilumphigus, after the Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.