poor Krista!!

yesterday was a long day for Krista (and for us, too). We went to the vet at 7:00 am, so I could drop her off... she got her teeth cleaned, polished, and also, unfortunately, needed a couple (we thought) extracted. This is her 'before' picture, while we waited for her to be checked in:

She has a weird sort of underbite going on where you can see her bottom teeth when she looks at you. Turns out, those bottom teeth were  moved out of place because they were loose! She also had some pretty bad breath going on, apparently due to lots of gum disease, and even had some abscesses and  quite a bit of bone loss in her jaw. So, instead of just a few teeth being removed like we had expected, after about 6 hours of work altogether between the cleaning, all the X-rays, and the extractions, Dr. V. ended up extracting a total of 15 teeth. (dogs have 42 teeth total, but still, 15 is a lot!) I guess the same thing could happen to us, if we never brushed our teeth or saw a dentist regularly until we were middle-aged? 

Here she is last night after bringing her home from the vet's office. She was still pretty loopy from the morphine, and didn't even move after I got her comfortable on the floor. (poor thing!) When she did finally try to get up, she got to the tile floor and went straight down, sort of like that scene when Bambi tries to walk on the ice for the first time... 

This morning, she's doing much better, already! She ate all of her breakfast (mashed up with some warm water), and is much steadier on her feet. Now, she just has to chill out and heal till her 10-day checkup. (no problem, there, at all- her favorite activity is chilling!) Hopefully, she'll feel even better than she ever did before, considering that she's probably had these problems  accumulating for quite a few years. 

And as soon as I can, I'm going to start brushing her teeth, so we don't have to go through this again! :) (and brush the other dogs' teeth, too!)