Don't call DPS!
Vet appointments make me as nervous as they make my dogs. I always have a lingering fear that if the vets don’t approve, then they can call DPS (dog protective services) and have my sweet critters confiscated.
I usually like to have a perfect pet persona when we go into the vet. Which means that I have a routine of making me seem like I’m better than I am. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely take care of my dogs really well, but when they are being analyzed I like to go the extra step and do a deep grooming all at once. My dogs have been groomed since they were puppies, so they are pretty easy to deal with. We bathe them, brush their teeth, clip their nails, clean their ears and wipe out their tear stains. After all this I feel confident the vet will give us a good review.
On Saturday we had a vet appointment to get Indie his 1 year shots and for Shia’s annual check up. We had done their vet routine, but it didn’t really matter, because at 8am we went to the sandy house to stain the fence and put up rain gutters. At the Sandy House their is a big yard for the dogs to run free in. Around 11:40, we gathered up the dogs to head the vet and realized they were a mess, they’d been eating grass and dirt, digging holes, laying in the mud, wrestling and being the dogs that they are. Jared and I weren’t in top notch shape either. Our clothes were filthy and we had stain all over our arms and probably on our faces too.
Shia and Indie walk into the vet and receive their normals loves from all the vet techs, get weighed (Shia is 64 pounds and Indie is 43 pounds) and we head into our exam room. Our normal vet was gone, so another one came in and started to ask all the questions that make me nervous. Our vet is in a snooty area, but it’s the best vet I’ve ever been too. He grabs her front paw and immediately starts taking his thumb digging through her fur. He looks at me and asks “where is all this blood coming from?” I feel like he’s about ready to call DPS, so I get down and start frantically looking at her, when I realize it’s stain. We’d been staining the fence a dark red color and Shia had spots of stain all down her arms. Shia is so bright white, that you could spot one spec of dust on her, so I wasn’t surprised that the stain raised a flag. I was relieved that Shia wasn’t bleeding and over all is in great health.
Luckily both dogs were in pretty great health and neither of them were bleeding all over the place, so we didn’t have DPS called on us. The vet suggested that Shia loses 3-4 pounds, which to me was such a small number that I wonder why he even noticed. Both pups received shots and had thermometers shoved up their bums and yet they were still totally happy.
I did learn something new though. Shia and Indie both tend to have gunky ears. I clean them all the time and they still just build up. I normally take a Q tip and swab out their ears with some solution I bought at petco. He showed me that you can tilt the dogs head fill their ears with solution then take a pad, like a make up remover pad, and you can push your whole finger in their ear as deep as you can. Dog ear drums are so far back that you can’t poke them. He showed me on Shia and she was in heaven, drooling and rolling her eyes back. He pulled so much gunk out that I was surprised and impressed.
After we left I felt like we should have gotten a bumper sticker that says “My dogs are healthy!” because caring for a dog can be a lot of work and I kind of want the world to know that I’m a good dog parent.
