Our boy has a drug problem.

A still-life, with Christ and pills. Specifically, Gomez's post-neuter antibiotic. Client and doctor names have been removed from the label, to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the potentially negligent.

The instructions clearly say: give TWO pills TWICE a day for 14 days. That's a total of FOUR daily, two thousand milligrams of Cephalexin sunshine. No problem. Gomez has a junkie’s weakness for peanut butter, which makes jamming pills down his throat much simpler for everyone:

“Dude! Time for your meds...” and he comes running, literally drooling for a fix.

It wasn't until we got closer to the end of the supply that we discovered we'd been given enough for half the dosage specified on the label.

So what's wrong here: the number of pills, or the instructions? Is this a wicked new reality show, where a hidden camera feeds our confused looks back to a lounge filled with drunken veterinarians, pissing themselves with laughter when we realize we’ve been overdosing our dog?

I suspect the instructions are at fault here, not the amount of pills we were given. Four pills a day seems like a lot, but then, it was surgery... We’ll find out soon. Either way, it's a nice little heart attack for us humans, trying to do the right thing and finding out, uh, no. We were not.

UPDATE: It was neither. The error was in the “14 days” -- Should have been 7 days. So it wasn't as bad as all that. But still. We'll be starting fresh with a new vet this Saturday, and these guys come with almost universal praise from the neighborhood.

...never did like "reality" TV shows, particularly ones that exist only in my paranoid fantasies. Damn those giggling vets and their faulty medication instructions and their hidden cameras.

A total nut job

It's Sunday morning as I write this, and the neighborhood ladies are strolling towards church in their quiet dignity. It's a weekly procession which I find pleasant, despite my lack of the Christian habit. It's a time when the place resembles a "neighborhood" more. We all seem to be members of a club, those of us who choose to be awake at this hour on a Sunday.

But our reasons for being up and about are not the same. It's a very different scene at Intangible House, where for the past 48 hours the topic has been, invariably, balls.

Friday was Neuter Day for Gomez. We dropped him off at the vet in the morning, collected the body after work, and it's been a tragic/comic opera ever since.


He was typically stunned when we brought him home, as the dregs of anesthesia left his bloodstream. His was the sleep of the dead, without even the characteristic twitch of dreaming dogs...totally on the nod.

So far, he hasn't pestered after his incision much at all. No licking or chewing back there. This is encouraging, as I've heard that some pups don't need the elizabethan collar during healing times. We've put the collar on him twice, as a training exercise. Or as an exercise in absurd cruelty, depending on your point of view.


Predictably, he flew into a suffering fit, as if we'd set his head on fire. So now the prospect of leaving for work tomorrow with him in that collar is NOT comforting, even with extra visits to check on him. I figure we might come home to a terrible disaster scene. But overall it's been a fine experience, and Gomez seems to be rebounding nicely.

We are a bit disenchanted with his vet, though. Seems we had to specifically ask for every bit of aftercare advice we got: How long for healing, when can he be fed/watered after surgery, when can he be bathed, what about the e-collar, etc. For the love of christ, we're not the experts. This is why we go to a VET.

So here we are, days after the procedure, still thinking of questions which are, honestly, things they should have told us before taking Gomez home. Or at the very least, they could print some goddamned brochures for people to take away. Seems odd that we ended up surfing the web for post-op advice. So, despite the stellar endorsement by the DC police K-9 team for this particular vet, we'll be shopping around for a new one.

Local readers: any suggestions for a vet in Ward One? The folks at Green Pets seem big on City Paws on 14th street, but I'd rather hear it from real people vs. another business.

In the meantime, gotta find a cure for Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, which has been stuck in my head since Friday night. Appropriate choice, sure, but enough already...