Been out of pocket since Wednesday evening on doggie matters. Took Alaska, the white shepherd/white wolf mix, in for his dental cleaning and asked them to look at a large growth on his paw that had appeared out of nowhere and was bothering him something fierce all night. Time for that to come off, they said, and so in for surgery he went. As the doggies are inseparable, Kaya stayed at the vet in the cage with him until surgery time. The techs said it was so cute how they obviously care for each other. They rattled off lots of examples (they lick each other, etc.) that we’re used to seeing at home but that always evoke “Awww”s from others. At one point Alaska woke up in the recovery room and heard Kaya whining, so he whined back, and they both started howling. (Alaska howls from time to time — his wolf heritage — and Kaya does her best to imitate it, even though as a lab/pit/shepherd mix she’s not really close). They calmed down after he went into a recovery cage right next to her. The surgery went well, the growths (two!) are off to the lab for analysis, and I picked both of our babies up yesterday afternoon.
I used to think pet owners who paid for pet insurance were ridiculous fools. I’d never do that, I said.
Well, I’m glad I did after paying this bill for (gasp) slightly over $1k. Happily the insurance will reimburse me for most of it in fairly short order.
They said pound-rescue dogs were inexpensive! Not when you treat them like your children, I suppose. A common failing here in Cali.
The first thing my Chessapeke did when we got him was to run into our outside A/C condensor and crack a toe, within 4 weeks he had eaten something that looked like plumbing grout for a combined cost just under $3k from our friendly neighborhood dog mechanic. He now responds to both “Kodi” and “Meathead” when I call.
*sighs* One of my basset hounds had to be put to sleep recently — she had cancer that had metastasized. We spent over $1k just trying to find something that would help, but… ah well. I miss that dog — she once stole a sandwich off my plate, right in front of me.
But for sheer wtf-ery, one of my friends has a cat. The cat had a habit of playing with loose change. Suddenly the cat developed metal poisoning…
(Yeah, you know how this turned out)
Cat goes to vet, operation successful, cat recovers. As my friend said, it was the most expensive 11 cents he’d ever recovered (he even tried to put the change towards the $500 vet bill).