Some pre-surgical jitters about my dog

Nadi is old. She is already older than the average lifespan for Shih-Tzus but she still has some "spring in her step" and appears to be happy and healthy. She is a bit slower on her walks and gets tired and wants to go home much earlier than she used to but for the most part she is in great health for a dog her age.

She still acts like a puppy every now and then and enjoys playing with her toys. She does sleep an awful lot but that is ok and according to the internet, this is totally normal even for a young Shih Tzu. This doesn't change the fact that in dog years she is 91 though.

At the advisement of the local veterinarian who has been seeing her for her liver and gall bladder issues she needs to have some of her teeth removed because many of them are rotten and if we don't remove them they will become infected and this can lead to blood issues that can actually kill her. This was not an issue that I was aware of in dogs and I have had quite a few of them in my life. Apparently this is very common in Shih Tzus because they are not "chewers" like a lot of dogs are. You can't just give them the Milk Bone chewy things that they work on all day that results in their teeth getting cleaned naturally.

Some people brush their dogs' teeth and had I known this was a common issue with this breed I would have done so. This is something that I think Shih Tzu owners should be made aware of because if you get your dog used to having their teeth brushed when they are young they will not fight you over it as they get older. This is kind of like how some dogs aren't bothered by having their nails cut because to them it is just part of their weekly procedure kind of like how Nadi doesn't fight me over getting baths and knows that we have to wipe down her feet after a walk but if I ever try to cut her nails she will fight me and cry and whine the entire time even though it is not hurting her.

I tried to brush her teeth once. She hated it and fought me the entire time. I never tried to do it again.

She has only lost one of her teeth naturally and I wasn't immediately aware of it when it happened. She now has a pretty gnarly grill on the bottom row of her front teeth because 2 of them have fallen out. I don't think that she really needs teeth because I haven't really seen her work on biting anything other than a plush toy and she has never even managed to destroy even one of them in the 12 years that I have had her. I know people whose dogs rip apart toys on a regular basis and in her entire life Nadi has never managed to do this. She probably wants to, but just can't because her mouth is so small and her teeth are basically useless.

She also swallows her food whole and I can no longer give her any large chew-able snacks because she just attempts to swallow them whole like a snake rather than chew on them like a normal doggo. One time in her life she was choking and I thought she might die and I had to remove this long treat from her throat using pliers. That was a very scary day because her breathing was very weak and she couldn't move. I never gave her a long treat from that day forward.

So in a couple of days we have an appointment for surgery to have 6 of her teeth removed. She is having ALL of the back ones that if it was in your own mouth would be used for chewing food, and the doctor has told me that this is necessary. She is required to tell me that there is a very small, but also very real chance that she could have complications during the surgery and there is a very very very very very small chance that she could die.

This would obviously be very upsetting to me since the surgery is actually supposed to extend her life, not make it shorter.

To put my mind at ease she sent me a website that says this

The overall risk of anesthetic-related death in dogs is approximately 0.17%, with the risk rising to 1–2% for sick dogs compared to 0.05–0.1% for healthy ones.

Nadi isn't sick per se, but she is old and like any older creature her internal organs are not as strong as a younger dog's would be. That 1-2% chance is very small and as you may know, there is always a risk of this when humans have surgery as well. I don't know a lot about anesthesia, but in order for any creature to not feel pain during surgery you have to take the body to a state of nearly killing them to make this possible. It's pretty amazing actually and at least for humans the people that do this procedure are extremely well-qualified and they make a great deal of money for this.

The stat does put my mind and ease but there are certain things that make me feel a bit worried. The main one is that I am in Vietnam and things just aren't as modern and reliable here as they are in other countries. We have to concern ourselves with potentially dodgy pharmaceuticals from China or India, and also there is always this lingering fear that the professionals are kind of second rate here because they could be making a lot more money elsewhere if they truly were the experts in their field.

I try to push this to the back of my mind though and just trust the vets who went to school for a very long time to be where they are. I also look to the fact that they have saved Nadi's life once already when she nearly died from bones being stuck in her throat and were very close to entering her lungs. That surgery was quite a complicated one whereas with her teeth, they don't even need to cut her open or enter her body in any way.

Nadi has no idea what is in store for her on Wednesday, but I am going to be very stressed out and worried for the couple of hours that it is going to take for them to do this surgery.

In all likelihood things are going to be just fine and I am worried over nothing. I guess a lot of this comes from the fact that my life is relatively stress-free so when little things come along I feel worse about them than someone who has a great deal of stressors in their life.

I just know that come Wednesday afternoon when she wakes up and things are just fine I am going to be very happy. She is going to get treated like a princess for the rest of the week and I don't know what to expect as far as eating is concerned. Nadi will likely just be very confused about how eating is so different but I plan to give her soft food for a while anyway.

She likes that better anyway