Frankendog

Poor Miss Dahlia woke up with a swollen face this past Saturday.  She had one last October. It meant a tooth abscess and surgery.  So off to the vet she went and as it turned out she had a slab fracture of a back tooth which had (you guessed it!) resulted in a tooth abscess.  She also had a strange growth near it, which was likely an epulis (a benign oral tumor).

Monday she had surgery to remove both.  Coupled with that, we opted to finally remove the sebaceous cyst that had been plaguing her for over a year.  It started quite small but recently it's been getting larger and larger and had started to come to a head.  She keeps trying to bite at it, but it's not in a place she can reach.  Since it was irritating her and she was going under anesthesia anyway, we decided to remove it.

I had some sort of idea that there would be a tiny, 3" x 3" patch of shaved hair and a stitch or two.  Silly me had no idea.  Instead, she looks like some sort of poor Frankendog, with a huge patch of shaved hair and 5 stitches on her back.

With her thick fur it's exceptionally noticeable!

 

So now poor Miss Dahlia has her very own coat to wear outside.  She'll get her stitches out in another week and a half.  So far they don't seem to be bothering her too terribly much as she's leaping up on the couch and recliner with no problem.  It looks far worse than it actually is as the incision was not very deep (sebaceous cysts are right below the skin).  We'll likely even be doing a big agility seminar this Sunday, stitches and all!

A visit to the groomer

Every 3-4 months Dahlia is off to the "beauty parlor" for a little bathing, a little brushing, a little clipping, and a bit of R&R.  Well, probably a lot of R&R.  The groomer we take her to, which is only about a 15 minute walk (30 minutes if you go with Dahlia as she has to sniff and pee on most everything on the way down), is a really awesome place.

The dogs who are friendly get bathed and allowed to dry a bit and then get to hang out with some of the other friendly dogs there.  Dahlia loves it.  We know this because they tell us this.  One time I was at a dog festival and ran into one of the trainers who work there.  This is what she said to me:

"Dahlia is such a flirt."

That's right.  Our girl, the flirt!  I'm not surprised.  Dahlia is super social, both with people and dogs.  Apparently she is at the groomer's place as well.  She floats around the room and visits each dog for a little while and also spends some time with the humans overseeing things.

Following her around is Chester, an older black lab owned by one of the trainers.  Chester has a thing for fluffy black dogs, she tells me, and so he follows Dahlia everywhere because she's a beautiful black fluffy dog.  She's quite happy to have this older male doting on her.  She does seem to have a thing for the older dogs (Douglas, her "boyfriend" who passed on last March and Chester who must be 11 by now).

So yesterday was Dahlia's visit.  As always, she slinks away from David as they take her to the backroom.  I guess she has to put on a good show.

The groomers say she is lovely, easy to groom and always happy.  She's had a hot spot recently and David warned them about it.  They cleaned it up with some medicated shampoo, and trimmed away a bit of the fur around it.  They assure us that it's healing up nicely and that Dahlia was not bothered or upset about their being back there cleaning it at all.

Like everyone else who meets our girl, they're amazed at her constant calmness and how she's always sweet.  We get charged the minimum for a dog of her size and coat type because she's so easy to take care of.  It's good knowing that even when left with someone else, our girl does well!




They do such a good job with her, don't they?