Old Man Harry

Harry had some teeth pulled and the rest cleaned and polished Wednesday. It took him a full 24 hours to fully recover from the anesthesia. He was in a lot of pain so I got some tramadol for him yesterday afternoon. He's feeling much better now--better living through chemistry.

He's had a recurring soft tissue injury on the inside of his front left shoulder, and some perplexing GI issues. He's been on antibiotics for the last week for the latter, and will remain on them for another two weeks following the dental surgery. That should take care of any lingering GI problems. And his two days of rimadyl and tramadol, plus two weeks of NO TUGGING will sort out his shoulder, at least for a while.

No tugging for two weeks--for a dog that lives to play, that's going to be tough going. As I type this, he's pulled his favorite toy from the basket and is standing in front of me squeaking it repeatedly while looking at me coyly. He's such an irrepressible little bugger!

The cool part of this is that the doc that did his dental surgery was one of the vets that I shadowed with. She let me watch, even help a little bit, during his entire procedure, which fortuitously took place after I finished class for the day. She took the time to show me all the xrays and to discuss the various tools that she was using. It was extremely exciting.

You'd think it would be much more distressing to see my little guy stretched out belly up on the table, intubated, a wad of gauze in his throat to keep the rinse water and blood from going down. One of his molars had to come out--it was a very large tooth with a reasonably healthy root but that wouldn't have been the case for long--the xray showed a cavity between the tooth and bone. She had to cut that enormous tooth into three pieces to get it out. He also lost all of the little teeth in his lower jaw between his canines.

During the surgery, the entire field of view telescoped down to his mouth--it becomes a mouth and the teeth become a dental problem to be solved. I was of course aware that it was Harry but for most of the gory affair, I wasn't thinking, oh, this is Harry.

For sure, I turned right back into the worried owner when I called yesterday and said, he needs stronger pain meds. But for those couple of hours, old man Harry was a fairly routine dental surgery.

Oh, and Harry most emphatically does not like dog kibble gruel (I ran some through the food processor). I have to soak the kibble to make it soft (for two weeks! he's got some gaping holes in his mouth) but it still has to look and feel more or less like kibble. For some reason, I expected him to be less discriminating.