poor Rascal
Rascal went to the vet clinic for a checkup yesterday. It didn't go so well: in fact, it got so bad that at one point he was sedated and restrained on the operating table with an oxygen mask over his snout and his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. But don't worry, he's perfectly healthy: the vets just needed to do all that so they could, you know, prod his stomach and look in his ears and things. You know, check-up stuff.
You see, even at the best of times our wonderful puppy is a little neurotic, and he's never what you call pleased when presented with the prospect of anyone he doesn't know touching him; still less with being closed into a small exam room saturated with the odors of other dogs' terror (although I assume they do a good job of cleaning up all the actual pee...). So he wouldn't even let anyone put a muzzle on him, which was a prerequisite for getting near him in a medical capacity. Thus the sedative.
If all had gone well, he would have been sedated right there in the exam room, checked out and vaccinated, and then the sedative would have been reversed by another injection. The vet was very positive about the prospect. Unfortunately Rascal is like a super-villain in that, even when injected with a dose of tranquilizer warranted to stop a dog 20 pounds heavier than he is, he can fight it off for quite a while. And when he finally did go down, he kept fighting to the extent that he started seizuring. So they gave him valium. Here he is completely out of it being brought back to the surgery where they could make sure he wouldn't die while examined him.
they took off the muzzle because of the seizures
At this point I had already been at the office for over an hour, but while he was pleased to report Rascal's fine state of health the vet also had to tell me that he wouldn't recover from the valium for another couple hours. So I had to go home dogless.
After an hour at home—I was told to wait two hours before returning, but, you know, the half-hour drive each way—I headed back, this time with Harvey along for the ride. When they ushered us in to see Rascal he didn't look like he'd ever be able to stand again, but they assured me that he was coming out of it wonderfully—so much so that they had him well-muzzled up. Apparently the wild snapping part of his brain is the first to come back online.
Figuring he'd be happier waking up with his family, the techs set us up in an exam room with him (and with a movie for Harvey—Snow Dogs, have you ever seen it?). Realizing he was among friends he jumped right up but was very unsteady on his feet, and after I petted him for a couple minutes he laid back down and went to sleep. I think he would have slept all night, but there's only so much Cuba Gooding Jr. I can stand so we woke him up and hauled him out of there. He slept in the car on the way home.
Back home it was kind of scary how out of it he still was. He could walk around but didn't have any fine motor control: he tripped over things and misjudged corners and was just generally clumsy. What with that combined with the strands of drool—the drugs made him forget how to swallow—and glassy eyes, he was quite disturbingly zombie-like. But we got him settled down and he went to sleep again for an hour or so, then roused enough to come upstairs and join us on the bed.
He's still not quite himself yet—he didn't eat his dinner!—but he's much more active and coordinated today, and I'm sure that tomorrow will see him completely restored. That said, I'm not looking forward to next year's checkup. All the staff at the clinic were super-nice throughout the whole thing, but I can't help but think there has to be a better way. In all honesty, I feel the same way that he does about doctors, I just have the social conditioning to hide it!
Anyways, that's how I spent yesterday afternoon.