Frumpy Mom: The small beast and his flea-sized problem

Why can't you take your pet to the vet without it costing $500?

Our dog Lil Wayne has been scratching a lot lately, so I had to do something I try desperately to avoid: I took him to the vet.

I always feel badly about this for various reasons. One: Because he gets so excited to ride in the car, and then it’s crushing for him when he realizes he’s been betrayed, and his final destination is the hellish torture chamber known as the doctor.

Also, because a trip to the vet always costs $500. Have you noticed this? I can never get out of the vet’s office for less, no matter where I am.

I’ve always called Costco “the $300 store,” although lately I think that’s gone up to around $450. Well, the vet is the “$500 store.”

My last trip to the animal doctor was for our snotty, entitled Siamese cat, Cairo. I paid $500 to find out that Cairo did not have a bladder infection, as I had feared. He was just randomly urinating around my house because he’s a jerk. (Yes, he’s fixed.)

Yeah. That was money well spent.

What with the high cost of living, I was trying to economize by giving Lil Wayne the cheap over-the-counter flea meds that only cost one arm, compared to the prescription ones that cost an arm and a leg.

Sadly, however, the fleas now just scoff at my attempts to save money and refuse to die. So that’s how I ended up taking our generic white pooch to the doctor, so he could get some more deadly meds.

Of course, when you haven’t taken your pet to the vet for awhile, they want to run 387 costly tests to make sure that he’s healthy. And to help pay for the cost of the machine.

At my highly advanced age,  I’m already familiar with this scenario so I just prepared myself emotionally and sat down to wait, with the pooch on my lap looking balefully at me, Iike I’d tricked him in to coming.

Eventually, we made it into the Inner Sanctum, where a very nice veterinarian examined him and didn’t even scold me for using the cheap flea meds. (I had stayed awake the night before worrying about this.) She understood my budget concerns, and didn’t schedule a single MRI, though of course there was a blood test involved. There’s always a blood test.

I like this clinic because my friend used to work there, and she had a very high opinion of the doctors and the way it’s run. But it is in a fancy neighborhood, so you do have people coming in and out with their designer dogs, just to get their nails clipped. Seriously? People go to the vet for that? Apparently they do.

Allow me to add that I do appreciate you veterinarians and everything you do to keep our animals healthy. My late stepfather was a vet, so I’ll admit I was spoiled by free pet care. (He was also an obsessive duck hunter,  so he healed animals during the week and killed them on the weekends.)

Anyway, we eventually emerged from the clinic, after I spent $345 on a year’s worth of flea meds.

And the visit didn’t even cost $500. Since the vet did her best to save us money, it cost $667. That’s with nothing actually wrong with Lil Wayne at all. Imagine if he were truly sick.

The only good news I can say about this visit is that the dog’s no longer scratching, so apparently the pills are doing their deadly job.

And the vet did give me one piece of welcome information: My 10-year-old dog has perfect teeth. Not a drop of tartar to be seen. If you have an animal, you know this is a big deal because teeth cleaning is expensive.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it,” she told me, which is exactly what my oncologist told me on my last visit, when a scan showed my cancer was mysteriously shrinking.

I was puzzled, but then I think I solved the mystery while I was driving home.

Lil Wayne is obsessed with baby carrots. Every time I open the produce drawer in the fridge, he comes running like he’s about to get a steak dinner.

Instead, he gets a carrot, and he’s so overjoyed that he spins around in a circle and takes it eagerly into his den to consume in private. I’m happy to give them to him, since they are low calorie (and cheap) roughage.

And, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll bet gnawing on them is keeping his teeth clean, and a lot cheaper than those fancy “Greenies” treats they sell at pet stores.

I like gnawing on baby carrots too. I wonder if they’ll keep me safe from the dentist.

Now, I have to think about the cat. I don’t much like him because he ignores me, but I guess he needs some flea meds, too. Maybe I’ll win the lottery.

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