“Let’s run some tests.”
To a pet owner, those four words are nothing less than blood-curdling when uttered by a veterinarian. Vet bills can run in the thousands of dollars, and few of us carry insurance on our furry or feathered companions.
Roxie, our six-year-old Boxer, had been clawing at her ears this week. She’s prone to ear infections because we did not have her ears cropped. (Cropping is a controversial practice in which the floppy part of the dog’s ear is cut off so that the ear when it heals is rigidly upright.) By this time of year, Roxie usually has had one or two infections.
The doctor was standing in front of me. I heard something about ruling out rare diseases with a variety of tests. My vision blurred. Tests! The very suggestion made my ears go rigidly upright.
“Hmmmmm,” the vet said as she studied her clipboard. “We’d like to check her teeth and do a saliva test, then take a swath from her ears and check it under the microscope. Also, we’ll need a stool sample and, of course, an x-ray.” As she turned to leave, she added, thoughtfully, “I’ll go work up an estimate of the bill.”
At that, my head cleared and I shot out of the chair. “Time out!” I shouted. Everyone in the office froze. I took a deep breath. Clearly, Roxie was suffering, but I was hoping to walk away from this situation without having to file for bankruptcy. “Doc,” I said, “what’s your gut feeling here?”
She hesitated, then conceded it was most likely an ear infection, easily treated with a cleaning solution and an antibiotic. “Can we give that a try before we run all those tests?” I pleaded. “If Roxie doesn’t respond to the antibiotics, I promised, we’ll be back.”
“That is, after I take out a home equity line of credit,” I said to myself silently.
Moments later, Roxie and I trotted out to the car together, with me triumphantly toting the bottle of medicine. She was better in a day.
As the old saying goes, common sense just isn’t that common. At Furniture Consignment Gallery, we pride ourselves on taking a commonsense approach to selling your furniture and helping you pick our pieces that will work in your home. Not every furniture store has the same attitude. We love to sell furniture, and lots of it, but we’re always going to opt for the practical and price-conscious. Our customers can bank on it.
