Spayed, Unspayed

I took Perdita to the humane alliance's spay and neuter clinic yesterday morning for that necessary operation which all dogs must undergo. The clinic used to be right downtown on that weird little part of Clingman or Haywood St. along with the sheriff's office and the gay bar and the giant, decaying Victorian mansion but now it is in a larger, nicer building out off Leicester Highway with a bronze dog statue and a cute little path of doggie footprints, amenities that were grievously lacking in the old place. The decaying Victorian mansion has been all fixed up and I don't know if the gay bar is still there or not, but, whatever, that is not important, since I took Perdita on out Leicester Highway at an ungodly early hour in the morning. Everyone at the clinic is nice and friendly and helpful and you can't help smiling at them even though it is, like, this insane time in the morning when nobody should be doing anything but walking alongside the river in a half asleep fugue state.

So I signed her over and off she went on a leash with a nice guy and I went in early to work and fretted about her all day. When I got home the other animals were clearly fretting as well - whenever I take just one of them to the vet the others get all uneasy, as do we all when a family member suddenly gets disappeared by forces unknown. I was worrying about how the post op period would go with the three dogs being rambunctious and so I went over to the dog superstore and spent too much money on a cushy dog bed and some special post op treats, all the while thinking to myself that it was ridiculous how quickly my house had gone from feeling too full with three dogs to too empty with two.

This morning I duly toddled back over to the clinic immediately on getting out of bed where they told me that I didn't, after all, owe them $38. No, I owed them nothing because it turned out that when they shaved her belly for the operation, there was a tattoo and a scar there from where she'd already been spayed. Well and good and I laughed about how now she was going to have to share her special recovery toys and I took her on home where she is even now bouncing around on the back porch with a whole bunch of new fancy toys that I sort of wish I hadn't unwrapped last night.

The only problem with all of this is that, as we recall, I took her to the vet last Monday to ascertain if by chance she was spayed and my vet totally missed the tattoo and the scar despite shaving part of her stomach. Apparently the wrong part. Hmmmmmmm. This does not thrill me. I suppose it's hard to see although you'd think they'd make the tattoos big and visible - I would, if I was them, but then if I was them I'd probably give in to temptation and put flaming dragons and gothic letters that said BITCH on the dogs' bellies which is why it is a good thing I'm not in charge of spay/neuter tattoos. Speaking of which, I wonder if they bother with the tattoos for the boys? It's fairly, um, self evident.

However, I've been thinking seriously about switching vets, particularly since Charles told me about a vet he knows who is both holistic and makes house calls. I don't care so much about the holistic stuff because frankly I cannot afford the fancy natural organic dog food - or the fancy natural organic people food for that matter - but house calls sound completely brilliant and hell, if my vet can miss a spaying tattoo and a scar, what else might she have missed over the last seven years?