Seward Alaska, Doggie Sees Vet

Resurrection Bay, looking out to the Kenai mountains.  This is the view we get from our motorhome each and every part of the day.  Nighttime too?  Well, yes, but it is dimmer, not dark at night.  The town of Seward runs along this side of Resurrection Bay…to the left is the port (out of view), to the right is the opening to the Pacific Ocean.  We cannot, nor will we, get a full view of the Pacific Ocean from up here.  Of course we have seen the Pacific in Washington, Oregon and California…and I have seen it in Mexico…but up here, the inlets are so long and narrow that a full view is out of the question, and one cannot drive far enough, due to lack of roads, to get a view of it.

    

    

    

Above are some of the views we had from Williwaw Campground to Seward yesterday.  It was another pretty drive.  One thing about these drives…you drive in towards these port cities, and you also get to drive back out over the same pretty roads.  Speaking of roads, since we got south of Anchorage, the shape of the roads have been marvelous.  No rocking and rolling and bouncing and shaking. 

       

Now we get to sit back and enjoy all the boats going to and fro along the bay.  In a few days another cruise ship will come into the bay and anchor at the harbor.  Our neighbor, Maxine (a nice lady from Ontario Canada who comes to Seward every year for nearly 20 years now) says that the ships are in harbor for about 18 hours.  Only one ship at a time, which is good.’'

 

 

 

Maxine says that every day the otters play just off shore up and down the bay.  The first picture, of two otters looking like they are trying out to become mermaid swimmers back home in Florida, was taken about 40 yards down towards the docks.  The others were taken right in front of our motorhome.  The last one looks like it is saying “Goodbye…”.   But first, I need to tell you about Skruffy.

Skruffy is sick... When we were over at Portage Lake area yesterday I thought she might have been stung by a bee in her, well, there is no nice way of saying it, so, in her BUTT area. It had turned red and swollen on the right side of her, umm, you know what. Yesterday afternoon it was worse, even after applying ointment on the area, and I got online and looked up dog butt bee sting, and saw a picture that looked like her butt...but it was not a bee sting, it was a infected anal gland. OMG, my baby dog has an infected anal gland. Call the vet, no answer. The one and only vet in Seward.

By 9:30 pm it is now twice as large, her tummy is hot, her butt is hot. I am not positive that the vet is even still in existence because phone has a crazy message, and I cannot located his office on Google Maps...so I go out to look for it, and sure enough, 3 miles away from where Google says it is, there is his office. Now, if he is in his office in the morning, I won't have to drive 125 miles to Anchorage.

Sure enough, 9 am this morning, he is in his office. Matthew Hall, DVM, is the lone vet in Seward. I say, "You must have a primo vet job here", he says, "Not a very busy practice...", I reply, "But look at the area you get to work in, wow!"

He weighs Skruffy, she is down to 14 pounds....our vet wanted her down to 14 pounds, so that is good. He looks at her butt...over night she licked it so much it popped, he said that was good. She had cleaned it out real good, but he snipped a few bad tissue areas away.
She got a shot of Penicillin, enough pills for 20 days and he wants her on them for 10, wants her area cleaned out with Hydrogen Peroxide. Give her a baby aspirin twice a day, three if she is really hurting. Let her lick if she want to lick. Give her time to heal. Oh yea, the bill. Want to guess how much this cost up here in Seward Alaska????

BTW, he was from Indiana, had one of his first vet jobs in Gary Indiana where Marcia grew up (he only saw the rougher side of Gary, had his truck stolen there...they had an armed guard at the entrance to the Vet Office, armed with a shotgun.)

Ready for the price??? If you guessed $62, you are right! Now for this same thing in Florida, we figured it would have cost us twice that much. He was so nice, so friendly, and right before we were leaving and paying our bill, a large dog walks in with its mother and a small child, Skruffy growls, and he says, "Skruffy girl, you need to learn to pick your fights...you would lose that one for sure."

Thank you Dr. Hall, I hope you thrive in this small community, and I hope they realize that they have a very special Vet. Anyone who wants to see the infected area, just send me an email and will be glad to provide you a picture...for only $60 per picture by the way.