NOTE TO MY READERS: I’d intended to write something
flowery and spring-ish or Easter-ish this week, but instead, I wrote a
confession about a dumb decision I made (what else is new?) in an effort to save money. Anyway, just about all of the subject matter in this post is
pretty gross and disgusting, so I thought I’d warn you in advance in case you
are squeamish, have weak stomachs or just don’t like reading about gross and
disgusting things!
* * *
I hate to admit it, but I haven’t exactly been keeping up with my two dogs’ stool-sample tests for the past two years. I know I’m supposed to bring a sample with me every time they have their annual physical exams, but there are several reasons why I made the decision to skip a couple.
The first reason is my dogs will not do their duty while I’m watching them. If I stand there, waiting for them to “go,” they flash narrow-eyed glares at me as if to say, “Some privacy, please?” This is because I have a huge fenced-in yard, where they are free to run around and do as they please, without any assistance…or an audience.
Another reason is that gathering a stool sample with the Barbie-doll-sized scoop the vet provides and then trying to stick it into the tiny collection-tube is just plain icky…and I always manage to get some of the “sample" on myself in the process.
And speaking of the sample, I will digress here for a moment and mention that the vet needs only enough to smear on a glass slide for a microscope. So I always chuckle when I’m in the waiting room and someone walks in and plunks down a bulging gallon-sized Hefty bag on the counter and says, "Here's my dog’s stool sample."
Anyway, the biggest reason why I stopped bringing in my dogs’ samples two years ago is because up until then I’d faithfully done so for every dog I’d had in the past 30 years, and the tests always came back perfectly fine...at a cost of about $46 each.
So, in 2020, thanks to my finances being really strained as a result of the pandemic, I finally decided to prioritize what my dogs needed the most – vaccines, blood work, heartworm prevention, etc. – with the stool test falling last on the list. So I used that $46 for something else…like food.
This year, however, something unexpected happened. When my dog, Wynter, had her physical last month and I was asked for her sample, as usual, I said I’d forgotten it and would bring it in at another time (my excuse to just skip it). That’s when, to my surprise, I was informed that the cost of the stool-sample test now was included in the price of the physical, so I’d be paying for it in advance!
The assistant then handed me a new collection-tube, smiled sweetly and said, “You have 30 days to return with the sample, or you’ll lose that money.”
Dang it all.
So the next day, I peered out of the window as my dogs romped in the yard. Finally, Wynter “did her duty.” I made a mental note of the exact spot, then grabbed my coat, latex gloves and the collection tube, and dashed outside…only to find two piles side by side on the target spot.
Which stool belonged to which dog? I had no clue. So I did a silent “eenie meenie” and put a sample of that one into the tube, then dropped it off at the vet's.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a voice mail from the vet, saying Wynter's test had come back positive for some parasite with a medical name about five syllables long. I immediately returned the call, all the while envisioning the parasitic creature from the movie Alien shredding its way out of my poor dog’s body.
The woman who answered basically repeated what she’d said in the voice mail.
“Can you please put that into words I might understand?" I asked.
“Tapeworms,” she said. "Your dog tested positive for tapeworms."
I was momentarily rendered speechless as I thought about my mother preaching to me, back when I was a kid, to never eat uncooked meat because it would give me tapeworms.
“But I never feed raw meat to my dogs,” I said to the veterinary person. “So how did she get tapeworms?”
“Usually from ingesting a flea that is infected with tapeworm larvae,” she said.
“I always check my dogs regularly for fleas and ticks and I haven’t seen one in years.”
“They don’t have to have fleas to eat one. They could eat or bite a small animal or bird that has fleas.” She paused before asking, “By the way, are you sure the stool sample was Wynter’s?”
“Um…not exactly.”
“Then just to be safe, we’ll treat both of your dogs. They’ll have to take two tablets each, and that should solve the problem. You can come pick up the medication today.’
That didn’t sound too complicated, much to my relief.
Still, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt because for all I knew, my dogs could have had the creepy tapeworms ever since their last test over two years ago.
After the call ended, I immediately went online to find out if I could get tapeworms from the dogs. The general consensus was not unless I ate a flea…or something like flea-infested roadkill…neither of which was on my menu in the foreseeable future.
The de-worming tablets turned out to be $35…each…a "mere" $140 for the four. And that was with my senior discount.
But hey, the tablets were meat-flavored, so my dogs loved them, gulped them right down and suffered no ill effects whatsoever afterwards.
The only thing that suffered was my wallet …and, well, maybe the tapeworms.
That same day, I also received a heating bill for $705.
On second thought, eating roadkill just might be in my foreseeable future after all.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor-columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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