My Dog's Abscessed Teeth and Women's Liberation

Lying in bed the other night, I was reading when I smelled it. Wafting tendrils that, once they hit my nose, assaulted with a sharpness I couldn't ignore, kind of like that one time I rolled over and discovered a fork in my bed.

I sat up and looked around. My cat was passed out on the foot of the bed. I know cat toots are potent, but could that have been the source? He did look rather pleased with himself.

Scritch, scritch, scritch. Truman climbed up the carpeted dog slope by the bed and hopped over to me, tongue lolling out in greeting.

"Oh, GOD," I gasped, covering my nose with my T-shirt. It was officially the first time I smelled my dog before I saw him. I knew it wasn't his stomach contents turning from solid to gas.

It was his teeth.

I suffer from an irrational fear that putting my dog under anesthesia to get his teeth clean will result in him never waking up again. I'd rather have a dog with grandpa gums and still have a dog. I know this is irrational - vets wouldn't do it if it wasn't safe. People get their dog's teeth cleaned all the time with no problems. And, come ON! I've been under anesthesia about 30 times and I've woken up each time since (so far...). Clean. His. Teeth.

A teensy part of my reluctance stems not from worry about Trumie's health, but worry about my financial health. I've finally reached Real Life, where money does not grow on trees, and sometimes you have to make choices. Do I pay for this or do I restock that? I'm making ends meet, but that's without a $500 dog dentist bill. Where is that in the list in priorities? The fact that it's not number 1, is that evidence, once and for all, that I am the world's worst dog mom?

If I was a better dog mom, I'd have a job that paid me so much money I could have a live-in robotic dog nanny take care of Mr. T during the day (robotic so that he didn't bond to anyone more than he bonds to me : ). I'd have all the answers, and finally figure out why he refuses to be housebroken. I'd be a good mom and teach him poopie goes outside, rather than just calmly pick it up off my (concrete) floors and dispose of it. I would teach him to come inside NOW, rather than bribe him with half of a Beggin' Strip.

Instead, I make sure his needs are met and then move on to the next bundle of things on my to-do list. A woman's freedom to work, to be independent, and to live life as she sees fit...sometimes it's not all that liberating. Sometimes we have to make decisions for priorities, at the expense of other priorities, always juggling, and always judging ourselves.

I looked up pictures on Google of abscessed dog teeth to reassure myself that Truman's jaw isn't going to fall off before November, when the vet's office does teeth cleaning and extractions for 20% off. This might seem like an odd thing to Google, but my cookie cache is already so ridiculous - "Why do people have fingernails?", "picture of Cobb periosteal elevator," "video of colon anastomosis" - that I'm sure "abscessed dog teeth" is not too strange at all.

I looked through the pictures with a scientific detachment. 'Okay, yeah, we've got that going on...a little bit of that...oh, poor doggie...Holy Crap!' I leaned forward for a better look.

I won't go into any detail except to say, whoever let their dog's teeth get to THAT point, well...THAT's a bad dog mom.