Sunday, April 09, 2006

Living like the Puritans

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you take your animals to the vet, you find something else wrong and then it costs you more? Well, slap me in the butt and call it foreplay, but I’ll be damned if our dog didn’t develop some hideous growth on his leg the day before his annual check-up. I definitely got my money worth on Saturday.

Any of you who have met me, personally or intimately, know I’m a softy for animals. I hate to see them in pain. One time, Larry came home to find me crying in our family room. He looked over and saw that I watching Emergency Vets! during the segment about puppies with cancer. “Why the hell are you watching this? You know it makes you cry,” he said.

I wailed even harder. “I know but there was this incredibly hot vet on the show.” He grabbed the remote and turned it off.

On Friday, when I noticed that our daschund was licking his leg worse than a dancer at Wet! (gay link, handle with care), I discovered a nasty looking growth. It looked like a mushroom about the size of a quarter. We pay pretty close attention to our dogs’ health, so I knew it hadn’t been there a few days ago.

Now I could have been a really good dad and taken him to the emergency clinic to have it looked at, but that would cost us a mortgage payment. So if it didn’t bother him, I could live with it another 24 hours.

So yesterday, this not-so-hottie vet decided that the growth was a wart, which would fall off in about 5 days. The only requirement was to prevent him from licking it. So you dog owners know exactly what that means...the cone head.

Yep, we now have Hester Prynne from the Scarlett Letter patrolling our floors and scooping up dirt as he shuffles through the rooms. The poor dog can barely reach into his water bowl without tipping it over. So now for a week, he must live with his Elizabethan collar.

Hey, you think this is bad, try watching him pee in a snowstorm.

3 Comments:

Blogger Daddy Cool said...

Poor little guy, hope he feels better soon.

Our 120-lb. rotty mix practically destroyed our house when he had his collar on. It was catching on everything and moving furniture with that thing. Collars were ripping from the abuse. It was ugly.

8:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sam, one of our 2 stinky boxers, is a cone-head right now, too! She had a lump on her leg that grew very large very quickly. Based on her age the vet recommended we have it removed. He said a biopsy would cost about the same and might miss something. So, we went ahead and took it off. The surgery cost more than my wedding dress!!

The good news is after looking at the content of the removed lump, the vet doesn't think it is cancerous. We should get final biopsy results tomorrow.

In the meantime, Sam's in the collar to prevent licking while she heals. At first she would freeze and stand like a statue for hours when we put it on her. Now she's gotten used to it and when excited she will dance around with her big ol' cone trashing wildly. It's hilarious.

10:11 AM  
Blogger Bacchus said...

I'm like you in that I either am crying at the pain of the animals or railing that the people who do it to them can't be quartered, drawn, beaten and then given the same treatment they dished out. Usually in the 1/2 hour of the shows I've run the gauntlet. I'm not allowed to watch it unchaperoned. He'll sit with the remote so he can change the channel. One of our vets is a hottie.

1:37 PM  

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