A Clean Bill of Health

It's been nine months since I've had to take one of my dogs to the veterinarian. Imagine that. In Butch and Kadi's final years it seemed I was there with one or the other of them on an almost monthly basis--sometimes more often than that.

Levi's annual shots were due, so we took care of that today. When he got his shots last year, he weighed 87 pounds--not roly-poly fat for the size of his frame but definitely solid. The vet advised me then to cut back on his food by one-third, so that's what we did. Today he weighs a svelte 75. With all that hair, it's hard to see the difference.

He has lost a bottom tooth since his last visit to the vet. I know exactly when it got knocked out, though I didn't know it had happened until about a month later. One day last summer he came in from outdoors with a bleeding, busted bottom lip. Because of his tendency to poke his muzzle into water, mud, shrubbery, his food dish, and Gimpy's throat, the wound stayed moist and kept reopening; it took more than a week of home first-aid for it to heal. In all that time of doctoring his lip, it didn't occur to me to look inside his mouth. When I did, weeks later, I discovered the tooth gap directly behind where the lip injury had been.

Levi was a good boy at the vet's this morning; he made me proud. It's good to know that he's officially healthy . . . though he is a little tired after that outing.