What Next?!?

Guess what we found out today? Here is a hint.

Before you get all freaked out . . . I know that was ornery of me to tease you like that. Here is the rest of the card.

A couple of weeks ago while I was playing with Hans I noticed he had two rows of teeth. His adult teeth had started coming in, but his baby teeth didn't fall out. At first we thought it was kind of a unique occurrence and we started calling him "Shark." It certainly wasn't for the lack of chewing and tugging. He has lots of chew bones and the other boys are NOT gentle with him. Fritz actually plays very rough with him. We thought eventually the baby teeth would start to fall out. I checked them often and tried to wiggle them to see if they were getting loose, but they were not. Then we noticed his breath was smelling really bad. 



I've always brushed our dogs teeth so I thought it was time to introduce that chore to Hans. He actually liked it, well, more likely I should say he likes the doggy toothpaste. Anyway, as I was brushing his teeth I noticed I was getting lots of debris that was stuck between his many teeth.

Then we noticed him not wanting to eat very much and acting like it hurt him to chew. So last week we called the vet's office. Kevin did not talk to the vet, but one of the other workers and he seemed to think it was no big deal and said to wait a couple more months to see if they fell out.

It just seemed to be getting worse so I told Kevin this morning, "Call the vet. I want to take Hans in." So he did and our appointment was at 12:30. Of course the wind would have to be blowing 60 miles an hour today and I could have easily stayed home, but we didn't we took Hans to see Dr. Yarbrough. Hans was NOT excited. I have never seen such a little dog put up such a big fight. It took the doc, his assistant and Kevin to hold Hans down so he could look in his mouth. First thing Dr. Yarbrough said, "Oh yeah, those have to come out." I asked him if it would matter if we waited two weeks as we were going to be out of town next week. He said that would be fine and scheduled Han's surgery for November 12th.  I looked it up on the Internet and apparently it's not that unusual, especially for small breed dogs. The official term for the condition is retained deciduous teeth.  All the green stuff you see in the photos is not rotting teeth. Hans was chewing on a green chewy we got today at the store, but you can clearly see how it gets lodged between all those teeth. I guess I better go get out the doggy toothbrush and get them cleaned up. Poor baby. Sounds painful to me.