Lily's First Vet Trip

As it turns out there is something Lily hates more than cars... going to the vet. :-) We knew there had to be some issues in there, right?

She was not happy about having to show her teeth or get her ears checked. She didn't get mean or anything, she just got scared and struggled a bit.

I'm running a poop sample up there today, because I forgot one yesterday. But Dr. Mary looked at her sutures from her spay and decided she needed to keep them for another week. She also asked me to keep her way from unknown dogs that may not have their vaccinations until she gets her next set of boosters. This makes sense to me. :-) So we set up appointments on July 7 for suture removal with a tech, and Lily will go into the vet with the black and white mafia of cats on July 15, which is fitting, since she's now a de facto part of them. Luke was the first one to give in, which I kind of figured. Nyssa finally gave her approval yesterday when Lily walked up to her. Instead of hissing, they touched noses and went on their way. The only hold out is from The Don -- Clawdio. He's still annoyed by her mere presence, and the puppy is not allowed to gaze in his general direction without the whole, "Are you lookin' at me?" monologue going on...

Dr. Mary was also able to say that she thinks the rescue group was probably right on her age within 3 weeks. Her teeth aren't loose, which usually happens around four months, but we'll know more if they're loose or starting to fall out on the 15th. She also said something that made my husband very excited -- that for her husband's birthday, she did a breed type test on her dog. :-) Her partner, Dr. Sandra ran the test on her family dog for her husband for Christmas. MacTroll had been talking about the one he saw in the Sky Mall catalog, which made me snort. But I do understand his intellectual curiosity.

Besides the answering the obvious question that we'll get asked from now until Lily's end of days about what kind of dog she is, there are some actual medical benefits to knowing that information for both our dog and others. First of all, it is possible for mixed breeds to suffer from illnesses known to be predominate in specific breeds, even if they're only 25 percent of that breed. Mary said she ran the test on a dog that came back a quarter doberman. When the dog got sick, she was able to figure out a diagnosis for the animal very quickly regarding an illness that has a high frequency within the doberman population. She said she never would have though the dog was doberman at all, so it was very helpful. The company that our vet uses also uses the blood in some kind of experimental blood bank to do research on certain blood diseases based on the breed analysis.

When the rescuers looked at Lily they thought retriever/poodle mix. The vet sees maybe sheltie/border collie because her ears aren't flat they perk up -- and something else. Similar to X-man's two year peds appointment where Dr. See guesstimated X-man's grown size (around 5'11 to 6'1), there's a similar weight estimation for puppies -- to multiply her  body weight at 4 months by 2 (I think I remembered that right). Yesterday, Lily weighed in at 18 lbs. So that 40-65 lb estimate from the rescue looks to hold true.

I mentioned my morning experience with the door smacking to go out at 3 months. Dr. Mary smiled. And said that house training can happen early with really smart dogs. She reiterated the border collie sentiment regarding the ears.

I decided to run a little test this a.m. on the whole experience to see if Lily is really coming up with a schedule and if she's getting to the point where I can call her housetrained.

For the last two nights she's fallen asleep at 9:45 p.m. It's all she can do to stay awake long enough for me to put X-man to bed, run the dishes and turn off the lights. She follows me into the bedroom, jumps up on the bed and passes out. She's so asleep that Clawdio and Nyssa will come up and lie within a foot of her  (on me, of course) for rubs while she's there without acting upset.

She wakes up at 4:15 a.m. and crawls over to my chest to lick my face. I get up and take her outside. She pees and comes back inside. Yesterday, I just stayed up. This morning, I put food in her dish and went back upstairs. I laid in bed for 30 more minutes, when Lily comes bounding into my room, stands at the end of the bed and whines. There's that whole idea that when you give a kid a bottle, you'll have to change his diaper within 10 minutes because if stuff goes in, stuff has to go out... well, it's the same with Lily. In goes the food, so out must come the poop.

So, I got up and followed her around the yard for 4 minutes, and boom, she poops.

She came, found me, signaled her need and got rewarded for her behavior with praise. And I got a primo poop sample for the vet. :-) So, that's two days in a row. We'll see if it happens tomorrow like this, too.

But on the same note, she's also figured out she can fit through the "cat door" on the gate to the laundry room, and has been trying to help herself to extra "snacks" in the litter boxes when she's bored. She's also, right now, trying to get Luke to play with her. And he's not very excited about that idea. I have been trying to use her brain a bit. I taught her to sit yesterday. She doesn't get it on the first command (it takes a bit to channel the word from her brain to her wiggly puppy butt). But she does totally get it.

So that's all the excitement from puppy land. MacTroll gets a night alone with her on Saturday, while X-man and I run up to Chicago to spend some time with my sister (hopefully at the beach). And yes, someone can smack me for thinking the taste was going to be over by July 4 weekend. When your business is tourism, holiday timeframe does make a lot of economic sense. So, hopefully besides the drive to our hotel after the beach, we won't be put out too much.