This afternoon, Andy called; we're on our way. He had left the fishing hole early to pick up the vet at his clinic. When they arrived, Gigi took one look at the vet and barked sharply. I tied her up to a post and muzzled her. The doc held up his syringe and approached. Andy and I both grabbed her sharp end while the doc busied himself with the back end. Gigi suddenly relaxed. I couldn't see anything happening behind me. Is it over? I asked. It was as easy as that.
Later this year Gigi's vet will become our neighbor. At the opposite end of the cul-de-sac, he and his fiancee are building two houses, one for them and the other for the parents. They will move in after the wedding in August. I think this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship for Gigi and her doctor, who will have many more fond memories of her.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Dear Ones:
We decided to get Gigi the Mutt spayed last Sunday. It was a traumatic event for all of us.
We knew it wouldn't be easy. Taking Gigi to the vet is never a pleasant experience. She hates the car. This is because she has never left the yard in 3 years since she first arrived next door as a puppy. When we got her she never had her shots, never had been wormed, and never had been spayed. She was healthy but I remembered what happened to Coffee Bean, our puppy that died of distemper. I didn't want to take any chances. So March was Gigi's first trip ever in the car as well as her first visit ever to the vet for her shots and de-worming. Her second trip three months later was to have her toenails trimmed. She didn't like that either. As a result, I bought a nail clipper and now I do it myself to avoid unnecessary trips to the vet.
As for the spaying, the vet said wait six months after you've had her to give her time to adjust to her new surroundings. Well, it's been six months and I was the one that pushed for having her spayed. Andy was against it from the start, knowing how much she hates the car because all of her trips have been to the vet and none of them were pleasant experiences. Still, when I weighed the consequences of allowing her to come into season I felt the good outweighed the bad. I made the appointment for Sunday at 8 a.m. Gigi was supposed to be NPO (nothing by mouth) for 12 hours before the surgery.
We lined the trunk of my hatchback with shower curtains. Gigi balked when I brought her to the back of the car. I bodily lifted her into the trunk, handed Andy the leash to hold until I could clamber into the backseat and take the leash from him. That done we set off for the paak soi (the vet's office is at the top of Soi 93). Gigi shivered and panted.
At the vet's office, Andy dropped us off. He had to go back home because he forgot to bring his golf shoe to the shoemaker to repair. Meanwhile, the vet, his English-speaking assistant and I tried to restrain Gigi so that the vet could give her the shots. She did not like the first shot he gave her. But I thought that was the only one. I was shocked when he said, he hadn't given her the sedative yet. That was the shot to dry up her saliva.
I thought he should have given Gigi the sedative first. It didn't matter at all now, because she was really angry and refused to be restrained. She broke free of the muzzle I put on her, scratched my arm and grazed my finger with her teeth. The vet paused to wipe my arm with alcohol and betadine. He slapped a large piece of gauze and tape over the wound. His assistant gave me a cottonball soaked in alcohol for my finger. There had to be a better way, but he didn't offer us one, and it was too late to stop now.
When Andy got back, he was horrified at the situation. He was all set to go back home, but then what? I got the muzzle back on Gigi and fastened it tightly. He thought quickly. Andy knew that there was no way he was going to be party to bringing that poor dog back to have stitches removed. He told the vet he wanted dissolvable stitches. He held Gigi's head and I held her front legs. The assistant held on to Gigi's back legs, the safer end. The vet jabbed. Gigi snapped and clambered off the table.
In 5 minutes she went from standing, to sitting, to lying down. Back on the table, she protested weakly when he jabbed her again to start the IV. Andy and I left the vet and his assistant to work. Out in the market, Andy and I looked around for breakfast. I didn't see anything appetizing. I went into the 7-11 to buy a band-aid for my finger and a microwave dinner for breakfast. At least it was hot. Andy's meal was cold.
We went back to the vet's. Surgery was still in progress. I reminded Andy we might need the plastic hood so he went back home to get it. While he was gone, a car pulled up and two women came into the office leading another small yellow Mutt on a chain. They came prepared with a hood, an old towel, and wads of paper towel. This Mutt looked amazingly like Gigi, with one ear up and the other down, the same sharp nose, and that disgraceful curled tail defiantly announcing her mongrelhood. Her nose was pink whereas Gigi's is all black. She promptly went into a squat and decorated the floor copiously.
The older of the two women clucked her tongue in annoyance and looked around the reception area for tools to clean up the mess. I, however, was prepared for this with a supply of plastic bags in my pocketbook neatly folded into triangles. I gave the older woman one. Andy came back just in time to translate. He saw, as I did, that this dog resembled Gigi very much. He asked them her name. As she cleaned up the mess, the woman laughed and told us that the dog's name is Long, which in Thai means "lost." She was the only survivor of a litter of puppies that had been abandoned by the mother. The women told us, rather matter of factly, that they think field rats carried off the other puppies. Life and death is a soi dog's gamble.
Lost was very active and the women were constantly scolding her and threatening her with a rolled up newspaper. The poor pup was never praised for doing anything right. I think she just did whatever came naturally and took the consequences. She was nine months old but she was the same size as Gigi. Like Gigi, Long is a snake-catcher but not an experienced one. The younger woman said Long was bitten by a snake recently but that the vet was able to save her. She was supposed to be NPO too, laughed the elder woman as she rested her bare feet on Long's chain, but Long ate mud instead. Now they were bringing her in to be spayed too.
There was no recovery room period. The vet gave Gigi a shot of antibiotic. She never knew it. Gigi was still unconscious when he helped Andy to put her in the car trunk. Only the whites of her eyes were showing. They laid her on top of the shower curtains. Long watched, unaware that the same thing would soon happen to her too. The vet gave me a batch of pills and instructions--Andy translated. He said she might wake up in a couple of hours but she'd be groggy the whole day. She might or might not eat.
On the way home, Andy told me that "Grandma" the old lady in our cul-de-sac was ninety-one that day and her family have invited us to her birthday lunch. Grandma likes to sit at her front gate and watch the comings and goings of her neighbors. I wai her and she wais back. She thinks I speak Chinese when I am speaking English. Andy understands what she's saying because I've never heard her speak Thai.
Honestly, I was so tired I really didn't feel like a party. We got back home. Andy backed the car in the carport and we put Gigi's inert body on the porch next to a bowl of food and water, just in case. There was a catering truck for Grandma's party in our cul-de-sac and another just arriving with a grill on the flatbed. Food, plates and utensils were spread all over tables beneath the umbrellas set up in the street. Thunder rumbled. It would rain. I saw dishes of marinated chicken's feet waiting for the pot. The car port of Grandma's house was already set with tables and chairs for the guests.
We went in to wish Grandma happy birthday bringing her some Chinese green-bean cakes. She was so delighted with all the fuss everyone was making over her birthday. Her son invited us to stay but Andy declined. For one thing, I don't speak Thai well enough to carry on a conversation, and he was anxious to get going after giving up his morning at the fishing hole. Of course, the fact he was wearing his fishing t-shirt, the one that says "here fishy, fishy, fishy..." says it all.
As the party progressed, I could hear thunder rolling. Gigi was still asleep but now the pupils of her eyes began to show. It was so unusual not to see her trying to hide from the thunder. Two days ago, both Andy and I were out during a thunderstorm. When we came home, Gigi complained aggrievedly at our inconsiderateness. She had muddy paws and a wet coat. Judging from her paw tracks, I think she first tried to hide in the flower bed then she climbed up on the "fish tank," the storage bins in the carport, where she left a lavish impression in mud, Jackson Pollack style, both on the wall and on the hinged lid of the fish tank. Along the way, she left a splotch on the door where she had scratched at it in the vain hope we had somehow got past her and were in the house. Silly Mutt.
That evening, Ginda came over to wash the cars with Boong. Gigi had moved slightly but she was still sleeping. I slipped the plastic hood over her head. She's going to have to wear it for 2 weeks until the stitches dissolve. Andy and I went out to dinner. When we came back home, Ginda and Boong had gone home. They had lit a coil of mosquito incense and left it near the sleeping Gigi. They really like the dog; they will buy her ice cream and Ginda will bring her chicken bones as a treat. (I know what you are thinking, but Andy says Thai dogs know how to eat chicken bones!)
On Monday evening we stopped at the vet's to pick up Gigi's worm medicine. His English-speaking assistant wasn't there. Just him. I know he can speak English but he just prefers not to. I had to ask him. Why, I said, didn't you give her the sedative first? He said that he had to give Gigi some medicine before the sedative, otherwise he would have had to use a higher dose of sedative which would have been dangerous. I held up my arms, the bandaged finger and forearm. There had to have been a better way to put her under. He just laughed. I don't know why he laughed.
The bandage on Gigi's underbelly is beginning to fall off. There is no way she will let us take it off so we'll just let it fall off by itself. There is no way she'll let us put a fresh bandage on either. But there is no pus or bleeding, and by midweek Gigi was back to normal, eating, pooping, and peeing, so I think she is on the mend. At first she was stiff getting in and out of her cage...I said to Gigi, I know how you feel, girl. After my fibroid surgery, I was stiff and sore too. Bless Andy, who had the foresight on that horrible morning, to insist on dissolvable stitches.
Both Gigi and I have souvenirs of Sunday's trauma. It cost Baht 2,550 (approximately US$75.00) plus 15 baht (about US 45 cents) for bandaids at 7-11. I couldn't believe that the vet actually charged me Baht 50 for the dressing he put on my arm! The fact remains that what should have been done when Gigi was a pup like Long has now been done. I realize there are some truths I'll never be able to change. She'll never like cars. She'll never trust vets. And she'll never have puppies.
I sit here irritably fanning myself through another hot flash, and I wonder, why is it fertility and its complications occupy us so much? I thought of the other two women at the vet's. Fertility is a "female problem" that transcends cultures and crosses species. Long's mother took her chances to have her litter in an archetypal urban jungle filled with the usual stock characters, people and other vermin. It's not a kinder, gentler world in the sois of Bangkok. Like Gigi, Long was rescued from the streets and given a home. They are among the lucky ones.
Walk good,
Jo Anne
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