Bleep and Booster

This morning I was back up to the vet with Bingley, but on this occasion it was for a more routine consultation. With all the allergy related issues over the past few months and mainly because he’s been on long courses of Atopica which doesn’t mix well with other medication, his annual health check & vaccination has had to be repeatedly delayed.

Given the number of vet visits we’ve made over the past year it seems ironic to say that he’s missed his annual health check, but that’s one of the many worrying side effects of his allergies along with the medication which we’ve been using to control the symptoms.

In fact there was some concern that his annual booster was so late that we might have to start from the beginning and engage in yet another series of injections. But he’s just been through that process with the allergy jabs and it would have been horrid to have had to put him through it again with his annual inoculations.

It’s also looking increasingly likely that he’ll be back on Atopica before too long; his condition has gradually worsened since we finished the last course of tablets and until the allergy jabs start having an effect we want Bingley to be as comfortable as an 18 month old dog should be.

Atopica doesn’t combine well with other medication so if we did have to restart his inoculations from the beginning we’d been facing a dilemma: itchy dog or vaccinated dog? I hate him being so itchy, but the annual vaccination is an important inoculation and given where he pushes his muzzle (as well as what he sometimes finds to eat) I had visions of Bingley contracting some exotic and unpleasant illness if he missed his annual booster!

Thankfully though, it turns out that there’s few months leeway and Bing’s just within that window. Another month and we’d have had to start again, but as it is we can continue as normal. Or at least we can continue with what counts as normal for Bingley. His next annual health check is (quite reasonably!) next December. How nice, I found myself thinking as I paid the bill, if that really was going to be our next planned visit to the vet.

Not that I don’t enjoy visiting our vet, it’s a terrific practice and we always have fun. Today we enjoyed talking with someone whose 14 year old dog barked at everyone who came close: he’s been this way since he lost his older brother, she explained. There was also a man who’d brought in two budgies for a check up, which sounds like the beginning of a joke. He wasn’t a dog lover but he liked Bingley.

I had a nice chat with a woman who was having her 10 week old puppy checked over. At home she had a 7 year old Westie who, like Bingley, enjoyed jumping up at people. The thing is, I explained, when 5 kilos of dog jumps up its funny; when 38 kilos of dog leaps up it can be hard to laugh. I know what you mean, she replied, I used to have 2 German Shepherds who enjoyed jumping up at my mum. She was very slight and when they’d knocked her over and were sitting on her she was the only one who never saw the funny side of it.

I love our vet practice!