Signs of Danger

A new post from Linguist-in-Chief Anne-Michelle Tessier on dogs and dentistry. We’ve had some dental surgery around these parts, too, and honestly I could have written a lot of this post with the cats swapped in for dogs—which is bizarre because there is very little else that my cats relate to in the doggo world. Howard and Bagel, Evan and Alice send a very tentative hello!!

Howard (a dog) and me (a human) have both had dental surgery in the last week. We both got somewhat stoned, medically, and had things removed from our mouths (gingival growths for him, all four wisdom teeth for me.) Neither of us enjoyed it very much.

When Howard came home from the hospital, Bagel (the other, rather dumber dog) was truly thrown—by his presence, his wooziness, his smell, maybe all of it. She sniffed Howard’s face and licked his lips a bit; she looked worriedly at the two household humans and back at her alleged brother. She growled slightly at him once! Then she tried to talk him into wrestling, which of course he completely ignored, and finally she lay down on the carpet looking uncomfortably baffled. Poor Bagel. She’d had so few traumas in her sheltered life! … or so we thought.

Days later when it was my turn to come home from surgery, neither dog was especially alarmed, though I did get some confused face-licking. What must we smell like to our dogs in such a state -- when we have remnants of IV drugs in our blood and numbing sprays on the backs of our hands, gauze stuffed in our cheeks and heart monitor sticky gunk on our skin. That night, it hurt considerably to open my mouth at all, and so to eat my rice pudding I took my prescribed painkillers with codeine, which I presume further confused my scent for the dogs. We all rested somewhat uneasily.

By the next day I felt much better, and so I prepared to make us pancakes. I took a stick of butter from the fridge to grease the pans, but then I remembered to check the dog’s water-bowls, and so I walked out of the kitchen area proper, past where Bagel was snoozing. Suddenly she got up nervously, looked quickly back and forth between me and the other human, and went to hide near her crate. … What on earth? I looked down at the upright stick of butter in my hand, held aloft like a tasty talisman, like a … maybe to her, it looked like the bottle of ear drops I had glugged into her ear a few days before?

“Bagel, darling, are you afraid that I’m going to stick butter in your ear?”

… Yes, the poor idiot really was.

Once I’d put down the butter, she was all relieved licks and smiles, and everyone enjoyed the pancakes, (although mine had to be smashed down somewhat.) But since when did those ear drops become so traumatic? What triggered this connection and fear? Don’t ear drops and butter seem rather different? Do the smells of butter plus my codeine-infused pheromones add up in a golden retriever’s nose to ear drops?? They aren’t even prescription?!

Then yesterday, in another highly unsatisfactory development, Howard appeared to bite and then flee from a hornet (!) which had somehow become trapped indoors, while we humans were both outdoors looking in. While my other half managed to secure and evacuate the massive injured bug from the house, we were very concerned that Howard must have been stung inside his mouth. We examined him for swelling or worse, but saw no signs of injury on the brave boy’s face; only flashes of alarm when something moved in his peripheral vision, perhaps another pointy bug coming for him. We relaxed, but I thought it was funny how prepared we would have been if he had started swelling up, since the oral surgeon had given me those instantaneous ice packs to reduce facial swelling, but I hadn’t as yet had any.

Last night, however – what DID start causing me pain was swelling on the back of my hand. The injury was from where the IV drip had sat (which attentive readers will know has caused me notable previous angst) and so here I was pulling out the ice pack, breaking its internal chemical bonds and shaking it around to make it cold …. And then here was Bagel, jumping up nervously at the site of me holding something white and chemical aloft again, hurrying out of my sight and around the corner…

Bagel, darling. I’m not going to put this weird-smelling ice pack in your ear.

... Hopefully, all smells and mouths over here will return to normal soon.