Emergency Vet Trip

Over Easter, my aunt was in town visiting and took our larger dog out for a walk.  While she was out with him, another large dog ran from his backyard which had the gate left open, and charged our pup.  There was quite a scuffle but after a few minutes, the other dog's owner came and pulled his dog away.  Jordan and I weren't there, and I'm actually glad I wasn't with Little Man.

Our pup seemed fine at first, but a day later we notice she was a bit lethargic and limping a bit.  We combed over her and found that she had been bitten!  Her hair is so long that we missed it at first.

There is no vet in the town where we live, but I called the emergency line in the next town over and made a plan to drive her in the next morning first thing.

The vet shaved her shoulder, cleaned her wound, and gave me a week's worth of antibiotics.  Here she is sitting in the back of the Escape waiting to go home.

I felt so awful for her, but she's already feeling much better.

One of the best things though, about that trip. Is when I went to pay ($115), I grabbed my credit card...and then paused.  Then I pulled out my debit card.  I didn't need to take money from our emergency fund, or use our credit card.  That felt so good.  That we had money in our day to day that I could use to take care of my dog without worrying about it one little bit.

Free Things

After writing June's spend update post, I wanted to share with you one of the free things that we do just about every weekend...and that's taking the dogs on a new adventure.  Here's a couple pictures from the last couple of weekends.

This first one is playing in a creek.  We go to this place just about every weekend for a hike. The dogs love playing in the water!

This is Aries (brown) and my mom's dog Rider (black).  Baxter is on the shore for this one, he doesn't like getting his belly wet.










And this second picture is all the dogs in the back of the Escape...all half asleep tired from all the playing!

Spring Cleaning

There's just no point unless the dogs get a bit of a refresher too!  A week ago or so I shared that Jordan and I found a vet and got the pups vaccinations all up to date.  On Monday, they had a date at doggy day-care and the groomers (one place).  They've never been to that particular groomer or kennel before - and it was only an extra $10 to stay the day...that makes sense for us, so neither Jordan or I had to take a day off of work, plus the dogs got to know the place so if they ever have to stay a weekend it will be familiar.

We were quoted $45-60 for Baxter and $75-$100 for Aries - and it turned out to be at the lower end of the scale for each one.  The total wound up being $147 after the daycare fees and taxes.  They were also totally tired!  They lounged in the living room all evening, sooo nice!

Puppy-Care

This past Friday I worked from home so I was able to take our pups to the Vet to get their vaccinations up to date.  I had never actually taken them to one...never had a need to.  I've been wanting to get my ducks in a row for them, so that in case there was ever an emergency they had somewhere that was safe to be and that was familiar - part of that is getting their vaccinations done.

I looked at the neighborhood vets (about 4 of them) and compared practices (and price) as well as after hours and emergency care.  None of them offered the latter and so we chose to go with a vet about 20 minutes away (in the next city over), but has after-hours care in addition to a great reputation and the lowest prices!

We spent a grand total of $349.66.  This included:

• Annual examinations
• Rabies vaccinations & tags
• DA2PP vaccinations
• Bordetella nasal spray
• Parasite Testing

It wasn't planned for, but their annual health care visit really ought to be.

We got a call back the day after the appointment and they came back all clear - no worms or other parasites! Yay! Healthy puppies...well healthy but a bit porky.  They aren't overweight, but they have certainly put on a few winter pounds.  Baxter is up to 22kg (48.50lbs) and Aries is up to 43.4kg (95.7lbs).