Our New Dog

3 March 2016

We had a new dog come home with us today.

Unlike Milk Tea, she is calm and quiet. She follows me with her eyes rather than her feet. She does not scramble madly around my feet as I walk, and does not run around frantically while whining when I step into the other room. She does not bark at every foreign sound she hears, and when a sound awakens her from her sleep, she does not stomp around growling menacingly, as if to say “Who dares disrupt my beauty sleep?!”

Yes, she’s the exact opposite of Milk Tea, and to be honest, I was hoping (and still am hoping) Milk Tea would be like that.

Meet our new dog:

Milk Tea ver. post-surgery

Ya la, it’s still Milk Tea, but I assure you she’s behaving like a completely different dog! (also, she looks like she aged 10 years overnight) She’s still recovering from the surgery (spaying, to remove the reproductive organs) and will be like that for 2-3 days.

I can’t say that I don’t welcome the new relaxed behavior, but I feel sad because she seems worn out. She’s also a bit dazed, sometimes standing in the same spot for a long time, as if unsure of what to do.

This was her just yesterday, taken on the way to the hospital:

That face! Now she looks like most of the life was sucked out of her :(

I’m not sure how spaying surgeries are done elsewhere, but in Japan, the dog is checked in early in the morning on Day 1. Tests are run (blood test, x-ray, etc) before the surgery in the afternoon. Any baby teeth remaining are also pulled out during the surgery. Then, the dog has to stay overnight in the hospital, and picked up on Day 2.

My friend recently spayed her dog and she said her dog was crying the entire night and lost its voice ;__;

When I asked the vet why does Milk Tea have to stay overnight, she said it’s so that they can keep her under observation. I then asked if there will be anyone in the clinic after it closes, she said no.

-_- No people around observe what?!

I asked the vet if we could pick Milk Tea up at night, right before they close, and bring her back the next day, she said cannot.

-__-

Apparently it’s just the practice here, and everyone just accepts it. Ugh.

So with much trepidation, we dropped her off yesterday and left her in the vet’s hands, closing the door as she anxiously looked on :( Sorry baby! We are not abandoning you nor making you a lab rat! It’s for your own good!

The doctor called in the late afternoon to say that the surgery went ok, and that Milk Tea was awake but not standing yet. I asked if I could go see Milk Tea and she said it’s probably best not to since some dogs get overexcited when they see their owners. That’s exactly what Milk Tea would do, so I took her advice since I didn’t want Milk Tea bursting a stitch.

Picked her up this morning and she looked so haggard :( My poor baby! But the doctor said everything was fine and since she already gave Milk Tea the medicine (via an injection), there was nothing else we really needed to do at home.

She also showed us the teeth she pulled (4 canines), and asked if we wanted to see the uterus and ovaries. We obviously said… yes. They were so much tinier than I expected!

The bill came up to 47,000 yen (about $580) and although we bought pet insurance(yes, there’s such a thing) for Milk Tea, it’s not covered under the insurance so we had to fork out the full amount.

When we got home, I was just looking at her when I thought I saw blood! Then I realized it was her legs, which were had red splotches on them for some reason. We concluded that it must have been caused when they were shaving her belly for the surgery *shakes angry fist*

Wanna see the leg wounds and the stitches?

Brace yourself!