My pups are voracious eaters. As is true with most Dachshunds, they're always happy to see food and inhale it like they haven't eaten in weeks, even if their last meal was mere hours ago, so when I noticed that Maddy wasn't very enthusiastic about her food a couple of weeks ago, that immediately caught my attention. She'd eat, but only if I hand-fed her. At first I thought she might just have a cold or something, but she wasn't listless or acting any differently, with the exception of mealtimes, and even then it was clear that she was hungry; she just wasn't interested in eating. After a week of this, I made her a vet appointment to have her teeth checked and cleaned. Turns out that she had a cracked tooth (with the pulp exposed) and a bladder infection, poor thing. They took out the bad tooth and sent her home with an antibiotic and painkillers and a shaved patch on her leg from where they put the IV, and, let me tell you, there is nothing more pitiful than a Dachshund with droopy ears and a shaved patch on her little leg.
Maddy's back to her old self now, snarfing her food (canned while she heals from the extraction) like there was never any problem, but the whole experience made me think about how much I worry when the pups are sick. It's so hard to know how to handle things given that I can't ask the pups what's wrong or where it hurts. I have no idea how long Maddy had the bladder infection, or how long her tooth was bothering her before it got to the point that something was clearly wrong, and I hate feeling like she may have been suffering with no way to communicate it to me.
