Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life.
What a week we have had and we still have two more weeks until our next transport.
Yesterday we took Sweet Moody, as in Mad Eye Moody from Harry Potter, to the vet to have
her eye removed.
Before she is the end littermate from the June 2nd transport, the one that I didn't
want to pull and then was told by Dr. Burton not to pull, but still ended up pulling.
This poor baby has been through the wringer with her eye.
We were hopeful it was just an infection and some drops, cream, and antibiotic would clear
it up, but it has slowly gotten worse and worse these last three weeks.
It swelled up to the size of a golf ball and it was extremely painful for Moody.
She was so terrified all the time that something was going to touch it and she would scream
in pain if anything even softly brushed up against it.
It was awful.
We actually cancelled her last follow up appointment because I sent a picture of the eye to our
vet on Monday and he agreed we didn't even need to try anything else.
We just needed to go ahead and schedule her for surgery instead.
And while one of the vets was doing surgery on Moody, another vet was removing a botfly
from one of our kittens in the next room.
We sure do keep them in business.
For those of you who are fortunate enough not to know what a botfly removal is, allow
me to ruin your lunch.
If you are not into learning about worms burrowing into the skin, feel free to fast forward about
60 seconds, but for all you science skunks like me, I will tell you all the juicy details.
Animals typically get them when they're walking in taller grasses.
A botfly, which is basically just a horsefly, will lay their eggs in a blade of grass.
So when something brushes past them like a bunny, a squirrel, or in this case a tiny kitten,
the eggs will stick to the coat and they will either be ingested when the animal is licking
themselves and then they'll migrate from the gut to the skin after hatching, or they'll
just hatch on the hair and they're going to burrow directly into the skin.
Once the worm is under the skin, it eats their flesh to survive, and as it grows bigger
and bigger and eats more and more, it creates a hole all the way through to the outside.
If left untreated, the worm will eventually just grow up and leave through that hole,
but you can also remove the worm as soon as you notice it happening, which is what we
had done.
So the vet will just go in and make the hole a tiny bit bigger and literally just like
the game operation, stick their tweezers in there and pull out a worm.
Other than the small hole, there's really no damage done to the animal.
It's more or less like having a mosquito bite that you've scratched until it bleeds.
Except instead of blood coming out, it's a worm.
But the hole is about that size and about that level of annoyance.
Okay, skippers, it's safe to come back now.
So in honor of these two medical cases today, I wanted to tell you about one of my all-time
favorite medical cases I've ever had, and weirdly enough, she was one of my very first
medical cases too.
So all the way back in 2017, I got a call from one of my former bosses.
In fact, my first real job was making snow cones at our local snow cone hut.
Grape snow cone on the bottom, a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle, and grape
snow cone on top will forever take me back to my college summer breaks.
Anyways, she called me and told me a dog had wandered up to her daughter's house and had
puppies and wondered if I would come and get them.
The dog had given birth in her dog's dog house, which meant her dog didn't have a place to
sleep.
It was between Christmas and New Year's Eve, so it was pretty cold and pretty windy.
I went and got them the next day.
It was a mama and seven puppies that were only a few days old, and they were absolutely
disgusting.
Mama dogs will almost always keep their babies spotless, but these were so gross and so slimy.
They were so nasty to the point I had to wear gloves when handling them, which is not normal
at all.
Anyways, I get them home and settled in my back room, and the mama is so skinny, so I
get her a big bowl of canned puppy food and immediately notice something is very wrong
with her.
She's drooling and she's just not eating right, and I'm certain something is wrong
with her teeth.
There's an abscess tooth or a stick stuck in the roof of her mouth.
There's something going on, I just know it.
So I open her mouth and I'm looking all over, top to bottom, and nothing looks noticeably
wrong.
I called my mom while I was examining her.
This was in the dark days before I knew that I could call Dr. Burton for everything, but
I remember saying to my mom on the phone, no, no, I can see every single tooth in her
mouth.
There is nothing wrong with them.
Like, all her teeth were so visible.
I had no problem seeing any of them and I could tell nothing was wrong with them.
But I knew it had to be something though, so I loaded the mama up and we headed to the
vet.
It has been six years since this vet exam happened and I still remember it like it was
yesterday, mostly because me and Dr. Clay talk about it almost every time we see each other,
but also because it was just so shocking.
So mama's on the exam table and Dr. Clay agrees.
By the amount of drooling, there is something going on.
He opens her mouth and he looks around, touching stuff here and there.
He's looking for a good 60 seconds in there and then totally nonchalantly he goes, I know
what's wrong.
I said, you do?
He goes, yep.
And he steps back and he calls one of the vet techs who was just starting vet school
at the time to come into the room too.
And he said, you're about to see something you will never see in your career again.
He opened her mouth again and he said, she doesn't have a tongue.
We were all shocked.
Everyone in the vet office came in and looked in the dog's mouth.
No one could believe it.
He said he could tell by the little lump at the bottom of her mouth where the base of
her tongue should have been that this was just a congenital birth defect and not something
someone did to her.
It's been six years and I am still shocked.
The fact that this dog even survived infancy when she was nursing on her own mother to
then be foraging out on her own for a year and then birthing puppies.
If you've ever witnessed a dog giving birth, you know how much they use their tongue.
They have to lick the puppies clean to stimulate them to breathe.
I don't know how she did any of it.
I don't know how any of the puppies survived birth.
I went home and immediately checked all the puppies to make sure they all had tongues
and they did.
But that explained why they were so nasty.
Not only were they still covered in amniotic fluid, but anytime their mama, who I named
Princess Poppy, ate or drank, she drooled all over them.
And watching her eat and drink was fascinating.
She would twist and turn her head around to move the food from side to side in her mouth.
And she needed elevated water bowls because she would basically just lay her bottom jaw
in the bowl and fill it up with water before lifting up and swallowing.
It was amazing.
This girl is the definition of survival of the fittest.
She was also a great hunter too.
I would let her out to go potty and she would disappear for long stretches of time.
I finally followed her one day because she was making me nervous, leaving so much.
Turned out there was a dead deer in the woods behind my house and she was going back there
to snack on it.
Now I don't know if she killed the deer or if she just happened upon it, but I will say
I have never seen a dead deer near my house before or after Poppy.
Poppy was almost one that I kept and didn't even send to Virginia.
Not because I loved her so much, which I did.
And not because I didn't think she would do well in Virginia, which I knew she would,
but because I was so afraid someone would adopt her for the novelty of it.
Just to say, want to see something cool?
My dog has no tongue, but keep her locked in a crate the rest of the time because she
was so gross.
And listen, I loved this dog deeply.
Because she was straight up nasty.
I knew it was going to be a huge chore every single day for whoever adopted her.
And I just didn't think anyone would be willing to take that on.
Again, this was back in the dark days before I knew how wonderful Virginia people are.
I obviously ended up sending her and Poppy was adopted by a family better than I even
prayed for.
The patience and understanding they have is unbelievable.
They have figured out what works best, and they only feed her certain times a day in
a certain room to help contain the mess.
Because they agree, they think she's nasty too.
But they know she's worth the mess.
She's worth the extra hassle and the clean up and the always having towels nearby to
wipe her face.
Because she's absolutely one of the most extraordinary dogs I've ever seen.
Her spirit and her will to live is unmatched.
For a solid year after that vet visit, any animal I brought in, Dr. Clay would jokingly
check to see if they had a tongue, regardless of the reason they were brought in.
There's a phrase in veterinary school, maybe actually human doctor school too, I don't
know.
But it goes, when you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras.
Because the diagnosis is usually the most likely one.
But their motto when they see me at this vet clinic is, expect the unexpected.
Because it is almost always zebra hoof beats that I bring in, or the exception to the rule.
I just like to keep them on their toes.
It's a rough life, but someone's got to do it.