Two girls, two days, two vets

Thursday was Serena's follow up vet appointment. It was all good news. Since the problem went away with antibiotic treatment, it seems that she had an infection in her shoulder joint. The vet said that septic joints are rare, he sees maybe two of them a year. Moreover, hers had no apparent cause. He called it, and this is a technical term, "a fluke." He reiterated what he had told me before, that infections in joints may take months of antibiotic treat to completely resolve. We decided to continue the antibiotic for another month anyway, although he said that he felt no swelling in the joint now.

I can't help but believe it's related to the injury she sustained that brought on the limping, although that isn't something that should have resulted in an infection. It's a mystery, but I don't really care about the cause as long as it's resolved.

Serena was scared at the vet, but nothing terrible happened other than taking her temperature, so I hope she will remember that vet visits aren't always dreadful. The only part she really didn't like and didn't cooperate with was being taken away from me so he could walk her and observe her movement.

She tipped the scales at 113 pounds yesterday. When we got home, we went out for an afternoon walk with Maya.

Friday I took Maya into the vet for a surgery to remove that growth just below the inside corner of her left eye. I have never seen my little girl so scared. Her legs, her entire body was visibly shaking when we went in. She absolutely didn't want to be taken away from me and the feeling was pretty mutual. I picked her up at the end of the day, cone and all, and she was happy to see me. We'll have the results of the biopsy sometime next week most likely. The site of the surgery looks good, hardly even noticeable that anything was done.

I have a feeling I'm going to have a cone bumping into my leg pretty constantly for the next five days or so, along with regular requests to remove the damn thing. I can't see hiking with her with the cone on, so that's going to mean activity restriction that she won't like either.