Late last week, Ursa started to act tender about her mouth. We try and wipe off her beard after she has some water, or she tends to irrigate the house. Normally, not a problem, but she started to give a painful sounding yip. Stuart and I pried her jaw apart and looked as best we could, but couldn't see any injuries or swelling or anything unusual. However, she approaching the age when her adult teeth will start to erupt, so we thought it was probably teething pain.
We all loaded into the car on Friday and headed to Edmonton. The car is still not her favorite place, so after a potty break in Red Deer, I looked back to make sure she was settling back in ok. Her head was turned just perfectly to let me see a nasty, pus-filled swelling on the outside of her lower right jaw. I called Mom, who got us the address of a 24-hour emergency vet on our way to their house in Edmonton.
The vet took one look and said "That looks very unusual." NOT what I wanted to hear. Her best case scenario was that it was an abscess and worst case - something along the lines of a tumor. However, they didn't have x-ray machines, so she gave us antibiotics, painkillers and faxed her report to our vet in Calgary. We called the next morning and got an appointment for Monday morning. In the meantime, she took her meds without any great fuss and they did seem to reduce the swelling and definitely the pus and gore.
Yesterday, Stuart and Ursa saw a different vet at our regular clinic, who thought it just looked like Foreign Object damage that had gotten infected. She gave us a referral to what may be the only canine dental specialist in Calgary. We had a choice - go this morning or in four weeks! So Ursa and I bundled into the car yet again this morning and tooled down south to Woodland. The specialist said a) she's definitely teething, so her whole mouth is sore and swollen b) she wants those cracked teeth out pronto, before there's any damage to the root c) there's no way to tell for sure what's up with the swelling without and x-ray. Sooo... for any head x-rays, they sedate the dog to keep them from moving and therefore, she suggested doing the x-rays, checking on her adult teeth, removing the cracked teeth and doing whatever turned out to be necessary for the swelling. The initial estimate for anesthetic and x-rays is $850, plus whatever it costs for the tooth removal and the swelling damage. If she'd been an adult, we have had to book on the specialist's regular schedule, which is the end of August right now. However, because Ursa is a puppy, she didn't want to wait and gave us one of her "emergency" slots - so we go back Monday morning.
As I said to Stuart Friday night - this is what we got the pet health insurance for. Thank goodness we decided to do it. After two months, a savings account would not be covering this bill!
Fortunately, Ursa doesn't seem too distressed about all this. She's still energetic, playful and eating well. It's only when she forgets and scratches her muzzle that she's really unhappy.
The rest of the weekend went well, but I'll save that for another post.
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