April 11: Mindy's teeth cleaning and her little eyelid surgery in Franklin

My sweet little Mindy has horrible teeth. I guess it's because her breed(s) has trouble with teeth? I put off her teeth cleaning for a long time after we moved to Franklin because it's so traumatic for her and expensive. Finally we decided it had to be done. :/ So I made an appointment with the vet in Franklin who did her yearly exam in January. Last time her teeth were cleaned (in SC), when she woke up from anesthesia she freaked out and made a horrible yelping noise until the staff finally called me to get her early because she was making all the other animals nervous. Poor girl!

Also, I'd been watching a little growth on her eyelid (what is it with her and her eyes having problems all the time?). It just came up about a week and a half ago, and hadn't really changed all that much over that time. Mindy didn't even seem to notice it. I asked the vet about it over the phone and she said she'd evaluate it before cleaning her teeth in case we needed to remove it. If we did need to remove it, it would be better to go ahead and get it out of the way since she's already having her teeth cleaned.

Bright and early this morning at 8:15 we took her to the vet. Here she is, intrigued by traffic.

Dr. Foster looked at her little benign eyelid cyst and advised us to remove it, because it would probably get bigger and start scratching her eye. Unfortunately this means the "cone of shame" for a week so she doesn't scratch it. She does not like it one little bit, but at least she did better with anesthesia this time. The staff said she wasn't making noise at all, and she wagged her tail a little when we picked her up.

I'm very thankful everything went so well. I tried really hard to keep from worrying about her during the day. I guess that's another reason I kept putting this off, and why I feel like it's "new thing" worthy. She's only had one other teeth cleaning (because I didn't know any better until a couple years ago), and we know how that one went. The only other surgery she's ever had was being spayed, and that ended with an infection because she got around the cone of shame and licked her wound. Here are her stitches from her eyelid surgery.

She's having a very hard time with this cone. She's running into everything, she keeps trying to pull it off, and she's frustrated that she can't scratch or clean herself.

My dogsitting friend Veronica calls Mindy "Blondie", and when she saw her cone, Veronica told me Blondie looked like one of those ladies from the 1800s with bonnets. Haha!

I was happy Mindy felt like going on a walk tonight! Hopefully she will accept the cone of shame and not try to take it off anymore, especially while we're sleeping.