Just Keep Her Quiet, he said…

Despite feeling nervous about getting Elsie spayed it is not something that I would ever avoid.  Living here where hunting pigs with dogs is popular and where, quite frankly, most of the people I’ve met who engage in the activity are half wits, I would never be responsible for allowing ridgeback puppies to come onto the market; I’m not going to sit on the fence here, I have an issue with hunting pigs with dogs.  If you met some of the types of people who did it up here you would probably understand.  Let’s just say that if some of these folk had another brain cell they’d be able to bark (without intending any offence to dogs).  I know not everyone is the same, but there are enough out there.  If you’re going to use dogs to hunt then both owner and dog have to be highly disciplined and trained.  That doesn’t happen here.  Below is a conversation that a local vet had with a pig dog owner.  It is not a wind up.

Ok I’m awake now – Just got off the phone from a surreal/stupid/funny conversation. Guy rings up all angry and ranting because he has just noticed his dog that he got CASTRATED (he used this word) a few weeks ago is “missing his balls”….I’m like “yes and” Apparently according to this guy desexing a dog if done properly does not involve removal of the testicles. (“your not supposed to cut their balls off”) When I politely explained to him that yes actually thats exactly what it involves. He then called me an incompetent vet who doesn’t know the first thing about castration….. While trying to discuss this with him it suddenly also dawned on him if his dog doesn’t have testicles anymore how is it going to breed. Which of course made him angrier – apparently its a top pigging dog and he wants pups from it – when I asked him why he got it desexed in the first place if he wanted to breed from it he then said if a proper vet had desexed it correctly then he would have been able to father puppies. When I explained to him that desex means DE-SEX he said he had plenty of dogs desexed before and they had all had their balls still in tact and were able to breed and apparently any half decent vet would know that. I tried to explain if they still had balls then they weren’t desexed. He again repeated I clearly know nothing about desexing. When I asked him what he thought desexing was for he just got abusive. He told me he would come down in the morning to sort it… so I decided to put a note on his file – turns out he didn’t get it done here anyway but at another vet clinic so he is going to have words with them in the morning. Not sure what to say or think – can anyone really be that stupid to not know what desexing/castration actually refers to? (end rant)

I rest my case.

Back to Elsie.  I really wanted to leave it as long as I could because, from what I have read, that is better for the puppy and, as bigger breeds tend not to come into their first season until they are a bit older, there’s been no pressure.  Ideally I would’ve liked to have been able to have it done when I could take time off work to be around for a couple of days, unfortunately that couldn’t happen.  I also have a couple of trips planned over the coming weeks which mean that the dogs are going to have to go into kennels and I thought it would be better to have her done and on the road to recovery before that.  Were I to have waited until I came back then she’d be a few weeks shy of a year, which might be cutting it a wee bit too fine.

So, I dropped her at the v-e-t’s early on Wednesday morning.  All went well and I picked her up in the afternoon.  She spent the rest of the evening channelling Jack Nicholson.  When the anaesthetic began to wear off properly she was obviously uncomfortable and a bit confused; most of the night was spent with me sitting in her pen with her because she was whimpering, so I couldn’t sleep anyhow.

I look at this picture and Dylan’s ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned’ jumps into my head!

Now the mission is to keep her quiet and dry until her stitches are removed on Tuesday afternoon.  To help in this endeavour, Flo has been spending the day at The Furry Godmother Pet Resort, and to keep her dry Elsie has been confined to the deck, so she can’t access the pond.  I have expected to come home to destruction up there but she has behaved very well and so far so good – deck intact, puppy intact, puppy DRY.  The toys seem to be in pretty much the same place that I left them so I suspect that she’s just gone off to sleep.  I am VERY pleased to say that she has also held her bladder until I’ve got home each afternoon.  I had expected to come home to puddles and that hasn’t been the case.  My biggest post-op concern was her plumbing because Flo has leaked urine ever since she was spayed.

I will continue to try to keep them separated as much as possible due to Elsie’s propensity to use Flo as a trampoline.  Having said that, they haven’t tried any rough play since Wednesday.  Flo is a little under the weather – she’s had a bout of the runs… not a pleasant thing to have to be cleaning up at 4.30am, especially considering that the night before had been sleepless.

Roll on Tuesday.

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