It's time again for Lambi's annual vet visit to take care of her teeth. She needs to have the tartar (or calculus) removed every year. Poodles, especially the smaller varieties often have buildup of tartar because they never chew at things to keep their teeth and gums healthy. We do our best with Lambi by using Plaque-Off each day, feeding her good quality dog food only and buying special biscuits to help with her gums, but she still requires this treatment every year. She has also managed to get another bout of noskvalsten or nasal mites, which is very common in Scandinavia and we require medicine to get rid of those as well.

When we lived in Stockholm, we were very happy with the vet care she received and when we moved here to Nynäshamn we hoped that we could find an equally good practice. But alas, this has not been the case and other dog owners in town are also unhappy and actually take their dogs elsewhere, even into Stockholm for treatment. The practice seems nice enough, but we feel they don't clean her teeth as thoroughly as we'd like and they are also not happy that we wanted to stay with Lambi. After we insisted they let us stay while she was anaesthetised and when she came to, but not while her teeth were being cleaned.

We discussed the option of trying the big clinic in Stockholm or Södertälje. It is a long train/tube/bus journey and we were reluctant to go there as we had no idea if the treatment would be any better. It was then that we thought "Why not go back to the practice we used to use when we lived at Upplands-Väsby" and that is why we were on the 9am train heading north this morning for the two hour journey to the Upplands-Väsby Vet.

Lambi was fine until we got there, then she looked for a way to escape asap.



But there was no escape. When they listened to her heart before knocking her out, they heard a noise that they were not happy with, so they suggested an ultrasound of her heart to check it out. Oh great! 1,300kr ($250!) for that picture. But we would never forgive ourselves if we'd said not to worry and she died. We had noticed that she was really bothered by heat this summer, so perhaps it required investigation. As it turned out, there was no problem, except that we were 1,300kr poorer and soon Lambi was fast asleep and ready to have her teeth cleaned.



The girl who attended her was very professional, careful and caring. We were both very impressed with her work and when she had a query about one of Lambi's molars, she immediately called in the senior vet to take a look. This is a busy practice that has been owned and operated by the same vet for thirty years and everything was handled with skill and care and made the long journey worthwhile.

Soon it was all over and we waited for her to wake up enough to take her home.



She slept most of the way home and hopefully after spending 3,250kr on her teeth, she won't have the dreaded dog breath for a while.

Now if we could just do something about her penchant for toy boys!