Monty's Terrible Day

Friends, Monty had his teeth cleaned yesterday. Above all, I think he would want me to tell you that he was and continues to be NOT OKAY with what went down.

Turns out it's a pretty big procedure. Who knew? He was on antibiotics three days before the event, they had to put him right out for the actual surgery, *it's called a surgery*, they did all kinds of blood tests, administered pain meds during and after the surgery, and he had to be at the vet's all day. One day later, he is still groggy as all hell, kind of pissed off, and paranoid-needy like you wouldn't believe. I think if he had a choice he would willingly have his balls chopped off again instead of another teeth cleaning.

Maybe we should have known it would be so horrible for him from the pre-op consent forms we had to sign: ones for if there are complications during the surgery (!), ones for if they are to administer pain meds during and after, ones for if we want liver tests to be run, etc, etc. Each yes answer came with a price tag and ethical dilemma: you're a shitty person if you deny your dog post-op pain meds but also it's for a teeth cleaning so does he really need them or is your vet just up-selling in a bad economy? Hard to say. As E and I debated this particular dilemma I argued, "Maybe he just doesn't need all this medication." E doesn't want me to tell you how she responded but you can't just sit on stuff like this. She said, in all seriousness, "We don't want him to get addicted." I paused and then said what anybody else would have at this point in the conversation, "That's true, we don't want to wake up one day to find that he's in some back alley sucking cock to pay for his habit." Eventually, we consented to the painkillers.

The surgery went fine! Aside from carrying around an extra 2-3 lbs (aren't we all?) he's the picture of health and oral hygiene. You would never know it from his reaction to the event. We dropped him off at the vet's at 7:30am and picked him up again around 5:30pm. They led him out of the back and his ears were down, he barely wagged his tail. I picked him up and he started crying into my shoulder and didn't stop until he'd fallen asleep about 20 minutes later. We got home, E gave him his meds (wrapped in bacon), and I put him next to me on the couch. He'd sleep and then wake up and cry and then fall asleep again. Was he in pain? Just feeling weird from the anesthetic? Having horrible flashbacks to the trauma of being in the pound? Overacting? We just don't know. Whatever happened to him yesterday, it was awful.

He's better today but he's not eating his food with the usual verve so I think his teeth still hurt a bit. Poor thing.

But the before and after pics of the procedure are kind of shocking (not only because they're close ups of a dog's mouth):

That's what a $271 vet bill can get you. His breath is about 1000% better so that's a gift that keeps on giving and vets have been bugging us about his advanced tooth decay since we got him from the pound (his misspent youth on the mean streets of Chambana were hard on the teeth, apparently). One vet estimated that just getting his teeth cleaned would increase his lifespan by one or two years! Again, upselling in a bad economy? Whether we've been suckered or not, I promised Montoya that he would never have to go through this procedure again.