Today is my 100th post.

Wally was very woozy when I picked him up at the vet’s yesterday, and very wobbly on his feet this morning. Poor little guy had been shaved on both sides of his torso with lots of big red stitches. He did get some doggy Vicodin, so he should be fine (he must take after his mom). Here’s the best part. When I went in last week to find out how much it would cost (thinking it was out of my price range), the vet handed me a written quote for $550-650, depending on how long he was under for. When she called me after the surgery to tell me the lumps had come out easily, I assumed it would be the lower number. When I went to pick him up, they told me the total would be $1,050! My eyes nearly popped out of my head. As it turns out, the young vet who had given me the quote had made some horrible mistakes – the first being that she only quoted me for the removal of one lump, though I asked her when I saw the price seemed low if it was for one or both and she told me both. Secondly, she didn’t quote me for half of the anesthesia or something. At any rate, HUGE mistake.

She apologized and I just looked at her like, “And…?” They weren’t planning on coming down on the price. I said a written quote is a type of contract and you can’t increase the cost nearly 50% without notifying me and then expect me to pay. She went and talked to the head doctor who told her to “just” charge me cost - $850. I said that was still sort of unacceptable being that it was still almost a 30% difference from the highest price I’d been quoted. I appreciated that she had made a huge, accidental mistake, but I didn’t think it should be my responsibility to pay for it. The truth is, had I known it was that expensive, I wouldn't have done it for another year. I ended up having to talk to the head vet personally, who didn’t seem to understand his responsibility as the owner of the business in this situation. Long story short, I eventually agreed to paying $750, but not happily. I wouldn’t have been so upset if the vet had not basically tried to make it sound like they were doing me a favor by giving it to me at cost, and that I should just accept the verbal apology and not expect to pay less than the surgery was actually worth. The cherry on top of the cake was when he said that me taking the $200 loss personally would have less of an impact on me than it would on his business to take the same loss.

At any rate, Wally is doing OK and spending the day at home with many, many friends stopping in to take care of him. Here’s a photo of him with his big owie. (He has a matching one on the other side).

The song for today is “Dream Police” by Cheap Trick off the 1979 album of the same name. I could have stayed in the 80s and went with “The Flame,” but their earlier stuff was so much better. My older sister loved Cheap Trick and had several posters of them on her wall. I think she actually saw them at the US Festival in ’82. I’ve never seen a band that looked less like a rock band – Robin Zander, maybe, but two of the other guys look like they could have been friends of my dad’s or something. They would never make it today where you have to be able to sing AND look good. This is yet another song that reminds me of those old roller skating days.