[Dailydrool] Elsinore suffered another veterinary assault to her person

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

And she is very unhappy about it.

Last Friday--after the vet’s office had closed, of course—I gave our Elsinore a biscuit, and she took a long, long time, much longer than she should have, to eat it. She clearly wanted to eat it, but it seemed to be giving her unusual difficulty. Then she had a drink of water, and I saw blood in the water bowl afterward. Uh-oh. 

Over the last week she’s also been more reluctant to eat her kibble unless it’s been soaked first, and even then she’s been trying to hide her bowl of softened kibble under the towel it’s on. This is the same behavior I saw after her tumor debulking surgery last summer when her pain and Tramadol-induced nausea zapped her appetite. For the last month I’ve been watching her occasionally move her tongue around in her mouth in a way that looks as if she’s trying to get a piece of stuck kibble out from between her teeth and the inside of her jowl, but she won’t let me put my finger in there to help dislodge whatever it is she’s trying to get out. And Sunday night Ken accidentally walked into her, bumping the side of her face with his leg, and she yiped. 

This morning I took her in to see her vet. On an empty stomach and without being allowed anything to drink. All of which didn’t make me popular. She’s more thirsty these days what with her declining kidney function and all. So to not even be able to have a drink was upsetting, and she danced around me to no avail to call my attention to this gross neglect.

The last thing Elsinore wanted was be cooperative when it came to letting the vet do a thorough exam of her mouth, so he had to sedate her, which is what I’d been expecting and why she’d been fasting since midnight. As he told me later, “Elsinore was Elsinore,” so he had to settle for getting the sedation drug into a leg vein instead of a neck vein. But she was eventually rendered metaphorically de-fanged. While he had her immobilized, he also did a bladder draw and, bless him, trimmed her toenails.

It turned out he would have had to have sedate her anyway because she had a pedunculated mass on the upper inside of her left jowl where her jaw hinges. I felt rather vindicated because before he took her off to look in her mouth, he rather minimized my concern, saying the changes in behavior I was seeing were all things old dogs do. 

“Peduncle” is our vocabulary enrichment word for the day. It’s a slender stalk that attaches a mass to a body part. The vet said to think of a pedunculated mass as being like a mushroom. He said Elsinore's looked irritated, and he wouldn't speculate on what kind of mass (benign or not) it is. He removed it and has sent it off to be biopsied. The results will be back in five to seven days. Elsinore came home with two stitches inside her mouth that will dissolve in a few days. I came home minus the same amount of money we had to spend last month to replace the front brakes on Ken’s car. Sigh. When it rains, it pours.

I’m annoyed about this because I’ve been suspecting a dental issue and asked the vet Elsinore saw at the practice several weeks ago to check for mouth problems. But that vet merely lifted Elsinore’s jowls, gingerly, and declared her teeth “bad.” We won’t be returning to that vet. I much prefer the one I saw today. I started seeing him back when we had our late Jane Basset, and I think we’re on the same wavelength. I also think these constantly changing vets at his practice are new and inexperienced. I’ve not been happy with most of them. But sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. However, that’s why I waited until today, Tuesday, to take Elsinore in—so I’d be sure to get the vet I feel better about. He gave Elsinore the thorough mouth exam I’d been wanting and declared her teeth look “good,” considering her age. 

Elsinore left the vet’s office looking very much worse for the wear, and I got the distinct impression she felt I was to blame for it. Her vet said she’d sleep the rest of the day. She did not. She wandered aimlessly around the house for a couple of hours, periodically stopping to stare off into space. I kept waiting for her to just collapse on the floor from exhaustion. It was well into the afternoon before she finally gave in and went to bed. 

She’s not been excited at all about her softened kibble this evening, but she’s just eaten two large biscuits with enthusiasm. And she’s had her first amoxicillin capsule because the vet called to say her urine sample showed a lot of bacteria. He hopes the antibiotic will help her peeing problem. She’d been doing better with that, and I was delighted several times last week to come home after a three-hour absence to find a dry floor. It made me think the new low-protein diet and fish oil supplements might be starting to help. But these last couple of days she’s had trouble making it for even just an hour. 

Poor Elsinore. She’s still feeling hard done by and would like to invite everyone to join her in feeling sorry for her. 

Elizabeth