Cruel to be Kind

Today was a big day for McKenna: her annual checkup with the vet. She gets excited to go for a ride:

Here, she is beginning to realize where we are going:

The visit went fairly well--she has gained some weight and the doctor wants her to lose a pound or two, but says that she just has a "stocky build," so she'll never look like a Greyhound. I think that Kenna was offended.

They checked a spot on her ear that I noticed a few weeks ago and so far, the vet thinks it isn't anything to worry about. On her "report card," they have called it a "dermal nodule." Ick.

As usual, they urged a dental cleaning, which I have a hard time wrapping my head around for a dog. She doesn't mind it if I brush her teeth, so I'll just try to do that more often and see if we can get away with no dental work for another year.

Otherwise, the rest of the exam was fine and she is perfectly healthy. She was anxious while they were doing the exam, so her temperature was on the high side and she wasn't breathing normally, but her heart and lungs sounded healthy.

The most traumatic part was that they had to draw some blood for the heartworm/Lyme disease test and she is so muscular that they were having a hard time finding a vein to use. She was pretty good about it when they first started the draw, but it started to hurt her toward the end and she cried a little. I'm glad they did the test, though, because they said that there has been a huge increase in the numbers of animals getting Lyme disease in this area in the past few months and hers came back negative.

The last thing they did was give her the Distemper vaccine and it took three of us to keep her calm for that. After having her temperature taken and being poked and prodded for the blood test, she was ready to get out of there. She did get two treats out of it, though.

When we got home, she just wanted to curl up next to me and sleep, but I'm glad that she is healthy and happy.