Notice his beautiful, fluffy tail. You'd never suspect it, but beneath that tail is a very expensive...er, um...orifice.
Just yesterday I made two flying trips to the vet in Baton Rouge and spent $213 on Butch's butt. That's the second time in less than a month he's been treated for an anal sac abscess, and he has to go back for a follow-up exam in a week or ten days.
This is supposedly a very painful condition, but Butch never showed any of the usual behavioral symptoms. And he's too large a dog to pick up easily, so I don't often come eye-to-eye with his butt. We were fortunate that the vet noticed the problem when I took the dogs in for shots. Unfortunately, the antibiotics prescribed on that occasion weren't strong enough to completely heal the abscess, and it came back.
Butch has more powerful antibiotics now and is happy to take each one disguised in a bite of ice cream. He also has tasty, chewable pain pills to take once a day. All in all, he seems to be a happy camper already, and I'll feel better once I know his problems have been resolved.
Meanwhile, I and my occasional hemorrhoid just suck it up and deal with it.
(First published at Velvet Sacks on November 14, 2007.)
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