to know me is not necessarily to love me..

ooops.

so rescuing a lot of sick and aged animals means occasionally doing things that maybe are new. these guys are pretty good at tossing curve balls so you have to be on your toes and ready for whatever they throw at you.

our vet unexpectedly called last evening..i said..'hi dave, how are you?' he laughed and said...' i am probably better than you."

hmmm...shit! now what????

tess's culture is back and she is growing 3 different bugs. 2 of them are sensitive to oral antibiotics but one of them is a really nasty bugger and is not. so he said i should do NS/betadine 50:1 vaginal flushes twice every day. i have never done vaginal flushes on dogs and tess is a fast and furious vicious shark if you start fooling around with her nether parts...oh freaking yay!

oh well if thats what she needs then thats what she gets...somehow, someway.

i gathered all of my supplies and waited until i had help. at lunch time it was brenda and tammy who helped me. tess wasn't too bad and they kept her from getting away or taking a chunk out of me. BUT..i could only get the tube in about an inch and i don't think that was right.

in the meantime..halo was not peeing the way that she should. there was only one very small bloody pee in her room this morning so i asked everyone here to keep a close eye on her. when i got home for lunch they told me she has piddled tiny amounts a couple of times but that was it. i tried to palpate her bladder and it felt hard but i wasn't sure if it was the tumor or an overfull, obstructed bladder. so i locked her in the dog room and went back to work. as soon as i got home, i checked in there and there still wasn't any bloody pee and there should have been quite a lot.
i called our other vet on her emergency phone and she kindly offerred to meet me at the clinic and euthanize if halo's bladder was obstructed. the long and short of it was...halo wasn't obstructed and she actually did then have decent bloody pee. while we were there i told colleen the trouble i was having getting the tube to fully go into tess's vagina so she explained to me the mechanics of K9 vaginal physiology.

when halo and i got home, i got chris and michelle to help me try to flush tess. they both wanted to run but they sucked it up and didn't! and thx to colleen's lesson this time the flushing went as it was supposed to and actually the tube went in really well.

i don't think maybe tess or chris or michelle love me too much today..and maybe colleen doesn't either because i interrupted her sunday...and maybe dionne and erin won't like me too much tomorrow either cuz i am going to show them how to effectively do a 50:1 NS/betadine k9 vaginal flush on my lunch break and that just creeps some people out.

BUT..i do think halo likes me because she got to go for an unexpected car ride and didn't have to be euth'd today.