As I was walking Kelly around the neighborhood last week, a little girl stopped to visit with us. I told her that Kelly and I were on a diet. “Do you think she’s fat?” I asked.
“Well, her fur is fat,” the girl replied.
It was true. Kelly’s long, flowing coat was thick and plentiful. Just too much fur overpowering her delicate face and short legs. She looked like an overgrown Chia pet.
Luckily, she had an appointment for her second-time-ever grooming session.
The first time didn’t go so well. Kelly had never been left off in a strange place before, and she barked incessantly. This time, however was much worse. After nearly 2 hours my cell rang. “Uh, something’s not going right,” the groomer said quietly. “Kelly didn’t like her bath, and she didn’t like the blow dryer…” there was a pause. “And she’s pretty stressed out. Her eyes are really red, I think she popped the blood vessels in her eye.”
We rushed right over to pick her up. Kelly was wet, hairy, and half-groomed, tufts of hair sticking out unevenly. We took one look at her panting anxiously, her painful red eye looking like a bright cherry, and took her right to the vet’s.
The vet performed a series of tests and found not only a burst blood vessel, but also a scratch on Kelly’s eye. She gave her antibiotics and we made an appointment to be checked out again next week.
Although Kelly is not normally a stressful dog, I know that dogs can get stressed in new situations. Surely this couldn’t be the first time the groomers ever saw that happen. And it seems to me they should have called before two hours, before it got to the point where blood vessels were bursting.
Send my “get well” wishes to Kelly! Poor pup 🙁