Or rather, Friday guilt.
Princess Gracie had quite the trip to the vet yesterday. The journey started a few weeks ago, when she went to the groomer for her routine spa day--yes, it worries me that Gracie gets more spa trips than I do--and the groomer noted that Gracie had an ear infection. This is a fairly common issue for Her Royal Highness, so off to the vet we trotted. While giving her a going-over, the vet discovered that she not only had an ear infection, but a rather badly abscessed tooth. Full of pus and general grossness. So, antibiotics for the abscess and a return for some dental work under general anesthesia, possibly to remove the tooth.
You'd think we'd have noticed something like that.
In our defense, Gracie is, for a princess, hardly a delicate flower. She never gives us an indication when something's not right. Ear infection? Fffft. Abscessed tooth? Who cares? She ate her crunchy dog food with great gusto and pranced around the house pretty much like she always did. OK, maybe a little lower key, but she is 8 after all, a little slowdown could be expected, right?
So off to the vet bright and early yesterday morning, with no breakfast. Ohhhh...the guilt started early. Gracie watched Holli have breakfast, but didn't get any of her own. She was completely befuddled and kept staring at me, as if to say, Mom, what did I do wrong? I didn't mean it! Please feed me!
But even better was when the vet's office called during the procedure to tell us that not only did the abscessed tooth have to go, there were 4 more that needed to go too. Five! Five teeth pulled! The vet's office was flummoxed too--the other teeth looked fine from the gums, but the x-rays showed a different story.
So poor Princess Gracie has been hobbling around with no less than five teeth in miserable shape in her little princess mouth.
She's home now, snoring away, exhausted from this less-than-spa-like experience. She'll be on soft foods for two weeks--which means none of her favorite rawhide chews--and then, remarkably, she'll be back to normal. Normal, minus five teeth.
But no Christmas goodies for her. Even though she doesn't know what Christmas is, that still makes me feel bad.
I guess Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a little guilt somewhere.