The Priestly Dog

Jake has pristinely clean teeth, probably for the only time in his life. He is also sporting a green bandage on his rear paw where he had a growth removed.

We found a wonderful old-fashioned vet after our vet bills continued to skyrocket at the animal clinic where we had always taken him. Melanie Smith was actually the White House vet, caring for those Brittany spaniels and the cat Socks during the reign of the Bushes. I’m hoping that did not imply she is a loyal Republican, but rather an Army vet who was assigned to care for the First Animals. She’s now in private practice in an office reminiscent of the 70’s, where she spends as much time as she needs to with every patient.

Whatever her politics, our visit yesterday was probably half the cost it would have been at the old place. Jake went in at 8 am. She cleaned 11 years of tartar off his teeth and removed a small growth on his left rear paw.

He came home quite groggy with instructions to wear his Elizabethan collar if he started chewing on his green paw. For now, he’s being good and does not need to support the collar he detests wearing. When he does have it on, my husband has nicknamed him "Cohen head", which could loosely be translated as "priestly dog."



In 10 days the stitches will come out and hopefully we will hear that it was simply a benign lump on his paw.

In addition to performing these procedures, Dr. Smith took the time to review Jake’s homemade dog food recipe and pronounced it “complete and balanced.” This paves the way for me to share it with others, possibly in a class at Hill’s Kitchen later in the fall. Woo-hoo!

Meanwhile Jake is accepting all offers of sympathy and would like to receive a life-time supply of dog biscuits from his admirers. Just kidding...