[Dailydrool] My Hoosier Hound

[Elizabeth]

I guess it’s official, as of this morning during his annual exam. Young Charlie is now a Hoosier hound with an Indiana rabies tag on his collar. 

The last time he had his rabies vaccination we were living in Nashville, Tennessee. Now we live in the Indianapolis area. The old Tennessee rabies tag is sitting here beside my computer, making me feel sad about yet another small, symbolic leave-taking of a place I hadn’t wanted to leave. While I detest the oppressive, miserable, everlastingly hot summers that begin at the end of April and endure until the middle of October, I made a lot of friends and good memories during the fourteen years I lived there, and I put down deeper roots than I’d realized. 

It’s hard starting over, especially if you’re doing it in a place you didn’t really choose to be. I’m still looking for an adequate replacement for the Nashville Red Rover boarding facility I trust with Charlie’s care. So far I’ve toured five kennels in Indianapolis, and they’ve all come up short. I have a list of about five more to investigate and am not feeling hopeful.

Fortunately, though, I’ve stumbled upon a vet I feel comfortable with and Charlie appears to like as well. Except when she’s sticking a thermometer where he doesn’t want one stuck, poking him with needles, or forcing an otoscope deep into his ears. But when she’s not doing those things, he thinks she’s a lovely person. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t choose to have a basset herself, but she seems to appreciate Charlie’s basset-ness and certainly spends a lot of time on the floor doing hands-on physical exams because she clearly finds him gratifying to massage. For this visit I used a magic marker to draw big black Xs on all his lumps. Doing so made me feel like an unsupervised toddler, but it does make locating the lumps a lot quicker and easier for the vet, and the marks wear off eventually.

This time the vet spent almost as much time listening to Charlie's heart as she did massaging his loose skin. Has anyone told me, she wanted to know, that Charlie has a heart murmur? She’s calling it a grade 1 murmur and said these things happen as dogs get old. (Charlie is now twelve, which is hard to believe.) She’s not too concerned, and we’ll keep an eye on it. If it progresses a grade, then I'll take advantage of Purdue Vet School’s mobile cardiac unit to investigate it further. Boy, has veterinary medicine changed since the last time I lived in Indiana, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s! Back then the state had only a handful of independently practicing specialists, and really the only way to get specialized care was to drive to the vet school. Now veterinary specialists are all over the state, and the vet school even brings some of its services to you.

The vet said they’re seeing more reactions to rabies and doggy flu vaccinations this year. I wonder if this is just an Indiana thing or if it’s happening nationwide? Since Charlie reacted to the leptospirosis vaccination years ago (his whole head and muzzle swelled up so that all the fur stood straight up like a buzz cut, which would have been adorable had I not been so frightened his throat would be the next thing to swell), she gave him a Benadryl injection before his rabies shot. He’s been sleeping peacefully ever since we got home, and because I’m spending the rest of the day sitting next to him with a full box of Benedryl tablets in my pocket, I’m pretty sure he won’t have a reaction. 

Now to find a place to put his old Tennessee tag. I can’t throw it out. Not just yet.

Elizabeth
linktolindsey at gmail.com