Yesterday The Boy got him some clean toofs.
Yeah, the picture isn't any good; he's not that cooperative with smiling. But the point is, he got knocked out and cleaned up. And I got past some fears.
When I dropped him off, I told the teeth-cleaner two things: That one of my friends' dogs wound up clinically dead for a few minutes because of a problem with anesthesia during a cleaning; and that with Cub, the pre-anesthesia bloodwork for her teeth cleaning was the first tip-off that there was something wrong with her liver, leading me to associate teeth cleaning with the beginning of the end for my dog. (Despite these confessions, I'd still hazard a guess that I'm not the most neurotic dog parent coming through there this week.)
And yes, everything went smoothly, with the exception of a few minutes of screaming on The Boy's part as he was waking up from the procedure. They said they've seen that happen before with heelers. We know he's very vocal, and now they do, too.
The Alpha picked him up, and was regaled with the story of what happened before The Boy's checkup on Monday. Apparently it is unusual for one of the big talking birds in the waiting room to make her way down to the bottom of the cage just to laugh at a dog. And I mean long, sustained cackling. That's what happened when The Boy and I arrived. He was extremely curious, but didn't rush the cage or anything. It must've made the vet techs' week if they were still talking about it two days later.
So, there's that. Can you tell things have been pretty calm around here if I made a whole blog post about a dog having his teeth cleaned?
