Babe had a “tune up” at the clinic this morning. We had to get poor Babe out of his warm house early this morning, coaxing/luring him with Fig Newtons (Pig Newtons has a better ring to it, don’t you think?!) to come out of his enclosure, then we lured him into the crate and never did give him the Fig Newton we lured him with...rotten of us I know, but we don’t let them eat before sedating them. Babe rode in style and comfort to the clinic in the Piggy Van (thank you, Maura and Derril!) but he did complain most of the way about being stuck in the crate.
Once we got everything set up in the area in which we were working at the clinic, we brought Babe’s crate in and Sandy (our Piggy vet tech) and Brandi (our Piggy caregiver) administered the gas. I think that Babe wasn’t the only one to get some of the gas either! Babe was fairly well behaved about having the mask on his face which is always a nice thing because if the pigs want to fight you on having the gas administered it can be quite the struggle. Babe was a good boy, as usual. Once he was sedated, we placed him (with help from some of the clinic staff…thank you) on the blankets and began working on him. Dr. Tara trimmed his front hooves while I worked on the back ones, which worked out well since his front hooves were the worst and she’s better at it than I am. Sandy was monitoring Babe’s breathing, adjusting the level of Isofluorane at Dr. Tara’s direction, checking/cleaning his ears and cleaning around Babe’s gorgeous deep blue eyes. After I finished the back hooves I moved on to a little bit of exfoliating of Babe’s skin with a brush and then gave him a partial “sponge bath” with the John Paul Pet shampoo that the Paul Mitchell folks were kind enough to donate. I chose the Calming/Moisturizing shampoo which is a conditioning formula since Babe’s skin tends to get dry. I only bathed the one side because we always try to get the pigs out from under the sedation as quickly as we can plus his skin seemed to not be drying a quickly as I had hoped and I didn’t want him to get chilled. When we returned to Piggy Paradise and allowed Babe back out of the crate I just had to compare the bathed side to the non-bathed side to see if there was a big difference. There actually was! The skin that had been bathed with the John Paul Pet shampoo was not only whiter in appearance but definitely much softer. I have to say that I had while I had expected the skin to possibly be a bit softer I was pleasantly surprised that it was much softer! What a great shampoo and as I mentioned in one of the earlier entries, it’s tested on humans first to make sure it’s good enough for our animal friends.
While Babe was under sedation and in LaLa Land, I also took the opportunity to apply olive oil to his face to moisturize it. I do not want to put anything with chemicals on his face so olive oil was the perfect moisturizer and not that Babe is vain enough to care, but it does wonders at keeping wrinkles minimized (yes, I’m speaking from personal experience!). Maybe today was more of a spa day considering Mr. Handsome received a sponge bath with such spiffy shampoo and an olive oil facial!
