Nadi's final day with teeth.

To be honest I didn't really know the specifics of this surgery until this morning. I am not lazy and of course I am extremely concerned about my dog's welfare, but I often don't see the point in veterinarians giving me very specific information about dog medical stuff because what am I going to do with that information? Contest them? Say they are wrong? I just take them at their professional word and presume they are doing what needs to be done and no more.

I did ask them to cut her nails while she is under anesthesia though because she hates that when she is awake and will fight me on it every time.

I put her on the scale myself when we arrived and ever since I started going to this new vet, Nadi is down in weight more than a kg. That might not seem like much but this is 1/6 of her weight. So to put it in perspective it would be like me dropping 17kg in the same time period without any additional exercise.

now before anyone gets worried about that you need to know that it was suggested to me to change the way that I feed her. For the past 10 years or so, feeding Nadi has consisted of 2 rather large meals per day and lots of snacking in between. It was made apparent to me that most store-bought snacks and treats are very high in fat and calories and you are not supposed to give them a lot of these throughout the day. It probably seems so obvious and I kind of feel like a fool for not already presuming this to be true.

So now we have 4 quite small meals in a day and if she does get a treat it is cooked chicken breast which is very low in calories and almost no fat. This resulted in a rather rapid weight loss and the vet has told me she is still a bit overweight for her breed and age and that there is nothing to worry about.

I still worry though.

I do like how calm she was at the vet though. She just chilled on the floor and on the bicycle ride there she didn't fight me at all. I have a little doggy carrier that attaches to the front of me that would normally be used for children and she loves it. It is like flying to her and is something that we should probably do more often since she can't really do a lot of walking around especially during summer in Vietnam where it gets seriously hot for me and crazy hot for an animal that is wearing a winter coat that she cannot take off.

The word is that she will go under around 10am and be in surgery for 2 hours. Then she will wake up around 1 but they keep her there until she can properly walk around and is normal so I will not get her back until around 5.

Hopefully not having a bunch of teeth anymore will not be too much of a problem and I hope that people will still think she is cute. If they don't, screw 'em. That will be a great way for me to determine who I should be friends with and who I shouldn't.

She will get the royal treatment for a while after this and she will get whatever food she will eat. I have already prepared a load of wet dog food that she can lick up and doesn't need any teeth for. We'll stay on that for as long as she wants to.

This begins a new chapter for us and hopefully this means that she can have a better quality of life. She never was in pain that I could recognize but I did notice that her breath smelled like death and I guess that is the rotting teeth.

If you have a small breed, you should have a look at their teeth and maybe get them used to having their teeth brushed at a young age. By the time this issue was pointed out to me Nadi was already too old for me to introduce a new procedure. I tried, but she fought me the entire time and it was just too difficult. I have seen videos of people with dogs that are totally fine with having their teeth brushed but this is because the owners got them used to it when they were quite young and now it is just a part of their lives.

I get Nadi back at 5pm or so today so I am going to spend the next 7 hours kind of nervous and pacing around the house. I think I will need to go on a run or at least a long walk to take my mind off of things today.