My little buddy has a toothache.

Marilyn brushes the dog’s teeth almost every day and noticed that with Buster what had been an easy exercise was suddenly getting difficult. He had a sore spot in there somewhere. We watched it for about a week, it still bothered him every time Marilyn brushed his teeth so yesterday she took him to a vet here in Apache Junction.

Seems somehow he has broken a tooth. The vet explained that a broken tooth is not that uncommon with older dogs (what? He’s getting older too? He is a couple of months short of 11 years old) and for geriatric dogs they need to do  extra tests to make sure he’s OK. End result, $600 on top of the close to $200 to get him checked out.  We booked an appointment for Friday Morning.

If they could have done it yesterday afternoon, when the emotions were high he would be down a tooth or two this morning and we would have been down eight hundred bucks. This morning I’m up early, telling this story to you and the “Second Thoughts” are cutting in. Obviously we are not going to let him suffer, not even for a minute, but he  appears to be in no pain until we touch his mouth.

Six hundred bucks to pull a tooth?

Mar and I, We need to talk. Maybe we need to find a more reasonable vet. Or maybe I just need to suck it up, Buttercup. We’ll keep you posted.

They’ve had a shampoo, had their nails done and were groomed yesterday morning. Next I guess it will be my turn for a haircut. I’ve noticed that most small children and all the good looking girls (with the exception of Marilyn) are running the other way lately. It’s time.

We keep hearing about the Occupy protests in New York, Oakland, Toronto and lot’s of other major cities. It’s a lot bigger than that.
From Edmonton on, most towns with a population of a few hundred and more have had some sort of demonstration of a dozen or dozens of people. And a lot of the protesters we are seeing in these small towns are not young kids unless of course you consider people in their 60′s, 70′s and 80′s “young kids”

Finally, here’s a few words of useful knowledge for us all:
You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Stopped  in to get the truck washed  this afternoon, gotta get it cleaned up before we hit the road tomorrow.
While we were there we just had to check out the new “soon to be opened” Dog Wash.

Cool!

We know a lot about poop, Marilyn and I. Angel’s favorite is Canada Goose poop. She loves to go for a walk around the little lake here at 50 Point because that’s where the geese love to hang out, sqawking  and shitting all the while. Unless of course she is  in Mazatlan, then Buster and her just love Horse poop, most especially the fresh, newly dropped kind the Mexican horses leave on the beach as they gallop by (we call them horse muffins).

And of course we follow the dogs around morning and night with our little bags so that we can pick up their latest droppings before one of our neighbors steps in their left overs.

Which brings us to the picture above.  I guess the truck driver got a ticket for his shittly faux pas. Who would ever be carrying a bag this big to clean up a mess this huge?

Every year, when we get back from our winter travels Mar & I both book appointments with our doctors to check us out and make sure we are still healthy. Same deal with the dogs. And very year, as we age, the list of tests and examinations continues to grow. Once again, same deal with Buster & Angel. Today was their big day, they both got their annual physical.

This year they needed to provide a stool sample.

Providing stool sample is something that both of them are actually pretty good at. I’m not bragging here, but I can tell you that they have pooped in a lot of Canadian provinces, not to mention  most of the states in the Union to our south and a lot of the states in the country south of that too.

The problem is that they poop pretty much when they want, not necessarily when I want them to.

So first of all, to be ready for their appointments, I had to make sure that they pooped first thing Monday mornings. You try it; say “Poop now” in Shi Tzu with out alarming the other folk out walking their dogs.  They (the dogs) don’t always listen (the people always do…..and then they stare), so now say it three times, quickly; “poop Now” See what I mean? 

Fortunately we mastered that too in good time, they are (once again I’m not bragging) pretty smart dogs. So as we neared the appointed Monday morning I realized that we had two lessons left: not only did they have to learn to poop in the bag, but they had to learn to poop in the right bag.  Imagine if you will, the confusion if Buster’s sample arrived labelled Angel, and vice-versa.

So now I had to teach them how to read. There just wasn’t time for the whole alphabet but Angel is younger, and a little quicker, so she now recognizes A. And Buster, I still don’t think he gets it, but at least he does know now to use the other bag.

So it all worked out just fine. The dogs are certified to travel and have enough Revolution to last them till next April.

Of course this all cost us a cool $561.94, so Marilyn may not be drinking any of the good wine for a while, but hey, we both love the two of them.

The Revolution at our vet works out to about $C18 per tube. I mention this because everybody tells me how much cheaper it is in Mexico. so I want to remember the price here to compare. With my memory I need a lot of help. So now it’s a group effort. Remember with me please: Revolution is $18 a tube at Buster and Angels vet.

Thankyou I appreciate the help.

Way back in 1991 our Daughter  brought a new kitten into our home. She called the cat Pebbles. I remember that Peb’s was born on Girl Guide Cookie Day April 22, in ‘Chilliwack BC.  Her and Pam became fast friends and spent a lot of time together until, in 2001, Pam headed off to University.

Pebs was with Marilyn, Buster and I  on our first trip to Mexico and stayed with us in Grimsby. At some point, we think 2006, Pam announced that she was getting a kitten so her and her now 15 year old kitten were reunited.

On May 28, 2010 Pebbles, now 19 years old, moved on to a better world. I repeat here Pam’s Ode to Pebbles

–
Pamela Jane Vanstone

Be careful, very careful if you choose to use this stuff on your dogs!

We have used similar topical squeeze-on products for years to control fleas on our dogs. They are extremely easy to apply and protect our pets and us from fleas for a month. Because we’ve been on the road and in the warm lately, they have got treated monthly for more than the past year. As I said, we’ve used similar chemicals for years and have never had an issue.

It was time for their monthly while we were in Mississippi so we  made a trip to a Pet Smart to get some. We had never used this SentryPro XFC before but it looked like it was worth  try, besides, the dog in the picture looks exactly like Jason and Elizabeth’s  dog Izzy. She’s such a sweet dog, the product must be good!. We even bought a spare package while we were there.

This time though there was a huge difference in the results. Within a couple of hours of treatment both Buster and Angel started getting very agitated. As the day wore on, they became more and more stressed. To this point we had not connected the dots.  By 10 oclock at night they are going crazy, Mar made the connection and rinsed them off. By midnight they were racing around the coach, jumping up and down and looked they were on speed or something. By now we are beginning to think we are going to lose them both. Marilyn this time washed their backs off thoroughly. Within an hour or two they began to settle down a little and by about 2 or 3 AM we were all back to sleep. By the next evening, they were both prettty much back to normal.

Today I emailed Sergeant’s Pet Care Products to tell them of the  problems we had with their product and then for the first time googled SentryPro XFC. Look what comes back!  Obviously, we were very lucky. Why would a company that makes this many pet products (they also sell the Hartz line) offer this product? Why wouldn’t they at least change the warning on their packaging? Why would Pet Smart and others sell it? Is it really all about corporate greed or am I missing something?

 I can promise you that the next time it’s time for a flea treatment it won’t be some over the counter product bought a Pet Smart or other pet store. I’ll be taking our dogs back to the vet in the next few days and we’ll come home with a few months of the good stuff.

I can also promise you that at least in the short term, until this is resolved, I’ll do my best to not buy any product manufactured by Sergeant’s Pet Care Products, Inc, Omaha Ne.

I’ll let you know what Sergeants and Pet Smart say in their replies. For your part please foward this post to anyone you know who has pets. I sure wish we had been aware of this problem. We could have lost our dogs.

April 16: Today we received a reply from Sergeant”s offering their apologies, explaining their position “statistically, this doesn’t happen often”. They have offered to replace the product with another or provide us with a refund. I believe we’ll take the refund. From here on we’ll be a lot more careful.