SNIP - Happy Birthday, Echo!

Echo goes in for surgery tomorrow morning, his 1st birthday, to remove the two kiwi's between his legs. Let's hope he comes out ok!
We're going to give him a bath tonight after a trail walk, which should have been done weeks ago after his play date at the Dantry farm. He was filthy from that experience, complete with an almost full submerge into their creek out back. We figure going into surgery clean is probably a good thing. I wonder if he'll have to wear a cone like his cousin Jake has right now?

Marn and I think we have finally figure out what it takes to get Echo to sleep in in the mornings.... a comfortable "full body" bed to sleep in!
All this time since starting to sleep in our room, and especially since the brighter mornings started, he's been getting up between 6:30 and 7:00 AM and waking us up by resting his head beside (or on top of) ours as well as the occasional lick to the face or feet sticking out the bottom of the covers. It was a RARE occasion that he'd sleep past 8 AM. Well, we finally got to cleaning up his room and took out the futon in there. For fun, I plopped it down in the living room where it stayed for a week. Echo loved it, so we thought we'd cut it in half and use it as his pillow/bed. The Costco pillows suck as they get compressed hard and lumpy after a month or so, and there's no reviving them.
Well this past weekend, I folded it in half and put it in our room for him as well as left his other pillow in the normal spot. He went to his normal pillow the first night - for about 5 minutes. It was pretty funny because we didn't prompt him to go to the new bed or anything. He just plopped down in his normal spot at first, and then as if to say, F this, I'm going to the comfy one! That morning (a Sunday!), Echo let us sleep until 9 AM, and WE had to get HIM up! It caused us to be late for breakfast in town with some friends, because who would have thought that he would sleep until 9 AM!? When I got up to go pee, he only lifted his head to look at me, and then curled right back up when he knew I wasn't leaving the room. He's only ever done that if he had a really long play day the day before.
Marn and I laugh at how easy he took to it - after 1 night he doesn't even look at the old bed anymore. Every night since "the switch" we've been able to sleep as long as we want to. Not once has he gotten up before us to wake us up. Hallelujah! (even though it's only been 3 nights so far).

We'll see how long this lasts, but if it continues, we're not touching that bed!