Oh, poor The Loon. Her mulva is in terrible shape, somehow, and she can't reach it to clean it, so it's driving her bananas. Completely distressing her. I can't assign a better word than "distressing" to her condition. She will be fine, doing normal Loon things (like begging, or lying next to the fire) when suddenly she will JOLT! and ZIP! and go tearing around the room as though her bottom (or mulva) is on fire. She'll do this for a few minutes and then collapse, exhausted, onto the rug.
Dogs have this charming anatomical feature known as anal glands, where they store identifying scents that also help lubricate things along in the rear caboose. Typically, dogs are able to express (don't you love that) these glands through their normal course of play, sniffing, etcetera. Active running is supposed to be good for expression. Sometimes, however, certain doggies perhaps aren't exposed to enough expressionism, and they require forcible expression. Don't you wish this could be performed on stodgy old conservatives, forced expression? Say, prolonged exposure to The Vagina Monologues or a lecture on Mapplethorpe’s nudes? By the end of the series, the subject would certainly be begging to express themselves in whatever media they saw most fitting.
Well, dogs yearn to express through stinky old glands, apparently. So this is what I thought must be bothering the poor Loon. My friend tried to express them (can you imagine the scene? include rubber gloves and vaseline.) but was unsuccessful; in fact, she thought they didn't require expression. Yesterday morning, this topic was most obviously on The Loon's mind. She was so distressed, in fact, that I called in late to work (isn't my DOG a DEPENDENT?!) and phoned the vet for an appointment, post haste. We were booked for 9 am. Good.
Seeing as it was 7:00 in the morning, and it would have taken me a full 60 minutes to drive to work, drive home, pick up The Loon, and drive to the vet (not to mention driving The Loon home and returning to work), I decided to spend some QT with said distressed dog. She immediately went back to bed. I decided to peel an acorn squash for a vindaloo recipe I was planning for that evening.
Unbeknownst to me, my disposall, El Badger, does not like squash. He revolted and spewed chopped squash peel all over the inside of the lower cabinet. I truly felt like the Domestic Goddess when I was pulling out the seventy or so cleaning products (and pet stain removal products) from under the sink, wishing I'd had the foresight to store this myriad of chemicals in a nice tidy bucket. I successfully dismantled the plastic drain piping and scraped out the offending squash, but then became perplexed at the prospect of fitting it all back together again. So I left it. Best The Roommate supervise my effort and give a nice quality-control sign-off on the work, lest I assume I've done it correctly and then run the dishwasher (all over the floor).
(Did I mention that the night before, as I was diligently flossing my teeth, the bottom wire of my braces came unconnected to the last bracket?)
So The Loon and I traipsed off to the vet, where we learned that she is plenty expressed. Instead, she has an irritated mulva. Oh, Poor Loon! I don't even like to imagine, and I have seen it up close. Good thing I love my dog, since I'm cleaning things I never imagined I would clean...(okay, at some point I fantasized that I would have a dog, and I tried to imagine all the downsides to that - and this was pretty close to one of the downsides.).
To wrap it all up, the ortho technician snapped my wire back on in less than 30 seconds, and I managed to fit all the plastic drain pipe back together at the end of the day when I returned home from work. But it was remarkably exhausting, doing all of that. Most of all, emotional trauma resulting from concern that my dog was not adequately expressing herself!
Read into it what you like, people....should have read my horoscope for the day.
This was hanging from a hook above the open-air restaurant, above our table. Here I am with my committee's retiring corporate advisor (and the useful, stylish, fashionable hat I gave him as a present and then insisted he wear all night):
And finally, the largest tortilla I've ever seen!
Now, I don't know why my mouth looks enormous, and why my lips look like sausages, but I'm grateful to Jim for taking the picture all the same. I love how you can really see the difference between the coffee-and-curry-colored rubber bands on the bottom teeth and my new clear bands on the top. Of course my teeth still look crooked, but it's progress from this:
Not to mention - my front teeth on top? The ones I see disappearing in photographs? Look how much of an arch they're coming into:
(remember, we're looking at the top teeth, not the still-very-crooked bottom teeth). My DDS was completely enthusiastic with how fast things were moving. I wish I had a copy of his pictures; one is from inside my mouth looking up at the top front teeth - they are very, very crooked in that shot. The teeth actually angle into the mouth, instead of angling out as they are supposed to (and as they will!).
