Wishing Dogs Could Talk

Poor Sarge had to go to the vet today. He starting having some kind of trouble Sunday with not being able to open his mouth without pain. He was also very tired and we could tell he didn't feel good. We called the "on call" vet and once he ruled out snake bite he had me check a few other things, determined it wasn't life threatening and suggested we watch him closely and bring him in Monday morning at 8 a.m. The vet said we could leave him there for the day and they would examine him as soon as they could since we didn't have an appointment lined up.

When I called to see if there was any news later in the day the gal at the office just said, "Sarge is okay but the doctor wants to talk to you about what he may think is going on when you get here". That scared me.

Sarge has written about his adventure on our other blog "It's a Dog's Life" if you want to hear his side of the story.

Suffice it to say the vet says the symptoms are similar to having a "pus ball" behind the eye and showed us how the skeletal system of a dog works and why that would prevent him from opening his mouth.

The vet said the dog "cried" when he tried to force it open but showed no sign of infection in his white blood cell count and was able to press on his eye and not have any pain so the doctor was confused.

To be on the safe side he gave Sarge a shot of antibiotic with pills to follow up with and some pain medication. I suggested maybe we caught it early enough and the vet said he hoped so, otherwise he wasn't sure what was wrong.

We are hoping and praying he gets well. For a dog that loves to eat this is really sad to see him this way. We are glad that so far it doesn't seem to be anything major and hope with the antibiotics and time it will pass. The vet said sometimes they have to go in and drain it from behind the last tooth up toward the eyeball, ugh!

All that was enough to cause a stressful day for us. If dogs and babies could talk and tell us what's wrong we'd all be a little better off. Oh, and cats and other animals. :-)

We'll keep you posted. Don't forget to take a look at Sarge's blog, he has such a sense of humor in all this.