A Good Appointment To Come and A Baaad Appointment

I'll give the good appointment first.  Today we have our monthly appointment to check on the "shrimp" (apparently that is how long it is). We also finally get to meet our doctor who we hear rave reviews about....well unless she's delivering a baby again. Not expecting anything too earth-shattering as SSG seems to be moving along, having a very normal pregnancy. The nausea and occasional barfing are still lingering in Week 13 and I keep crossing my fingers that she'll round the corner soon. Apparently from what we hear all of a sudden she could feel like 100 times better and have all this energy. I'll believe it when I see it and I hope to see it soon. We've also decided that SSG can't survive on one pair of pregnancy pants. Her regular pants are well snug. She's uncomfortable so we're going to have to do something about that. While most can't tell she's pregnant we can tell. She's getting just a little baby bump but her belly definitely is changing. I constantly am either touching her belly or looking at her belly in utter amazement thinking about what is going on in there.

Now on to a bad appointment that doesn't have anything to do with us, but our blog namesake, Darwin the beagle. Let me start by saying that while most dogs/cats don't generally like the vet Darwin over the past few years really HATES the vet. He feels the way probably most feel about the dentist. He's already a completely neurotic hound so add a vet visit and well it's unpleasant for everyone. A couple of weeks ago he had his yearly check-up where apparently he has some sort of fungal infection in one of his ears. He was a mess at this visit. Scared to death, crying, tail between the legs, aggressive because he was scared, and scared enough to well just poop on the floor. It literally scared the crap out of him. 

So they sent us home with ear drops. Not a big deal except again, he's neurotic, and he hates having his ears looked at/messed with. SSG and I discovered quickly that giving him drops was not going to be an easy task. He nips when we try and trying to get a muzzle on is impossible. We now resort to sneak attacking him and trying to get medicine in when he least expects it. It's ridiculous and we're successful like every other day. He now knows what the bottle looks like which doesn't help. 

Cut to last night...we had a follow up to check on his ear. Pull in the parking lot and he has a look of terror. We drag him in and the crying, get me the hell out of here behavior is in full-force. Darwin just hears the vet's voice and he's under the  chair. We go into the room and shortly the vet walks in and tries for about 5 minutes to muzzle him and he is just trying to bite so badly and is so distressed she decides that she just can't look in his ear. It was a whole hell of a lot of drama and not fun for Darwin, SSG, the vet, or myself. We were really concerned that he was so stressed. Going forward we're told we're going to have to freakin' sedate him to go to the vet which of course I'm thinking "how much is THAT medicine going to cost?" Until then SSG and I will continue to try to be stealth-like and get that medicine in his ear. I do love Darwin dearly but as SSG said to the vet last night, "He's always been kind of an ass."