Traveling between countries is a complicated situation and requires a lot of paperwork, most of which I think is superfluous and exists only so someone can have a job with a stamp.
I get my dog all the shots and regular doctor visits anyway because I am a responsible dog owner and Nadi is basically the center of my world and I treat her like a human child. This time we went to the vet just for her annual shots, which many people don't do for whatever reason but for me, even if I was opposed to the shots, proof of these shots are a requirement to move your dog to and from just about every country in the world. I'm not opposed to them since I have had dogs since I was 4 and there have never been any ill-side effects from any of these shots.
So yesterday we finally went down the street to the vet, which is thankfully just a few blocks from my apartment.
The mind of my dog always amazes me. Nadi is always excited to go just about anywhere and she will follow me into any building with a sense of glee and happiness. Some places that we frequent she is almost pulling at the leash trying to get in there and say hello to her human friends and will be fussy with me if we aren't actually going there and walk past it. Even though we have only been to this veterinarian 2 times in the past 2.5 years, she could tell 20 meters from the entrance that this is NOT a place that she wants to go and resisted walking with me. I outweigh her by a cool 90 kg or so and therefore this was a tug of war that I would definitely win but instead, I just picked her up and carried her inside.
once we were there she was shaking on the bench while I explained what we were there for. Everyone was really friendly and even though the needles looked scary to me (I hate needles) I don't think that Nadi even noticed she was being jabbed. It was all over in a few minutes and even though she cuddled up to me on the doctor table, hoping I would get her out of there, she didn't yelp or even seem to notice that two syringes were being unloaded into her back.
This is another thing I really like about Vietnam. I didn't have an appointment. I didn't even attempt to make one. I just walked down the street and was only waiting for a few minutes before we were ushered to the back for the shots. Then later the vet told me a few things about how she is going to be tired for a while and how she can not have a bath for 4 days. Then they put together a bill for me.
There's the total bill for all services and if it hadn't been for the probably unnecessary deworming tablet (I don't take any chances with my doggo!) that I requested it would have been half that price. Apparently, there are no generic versions of this deworming drug and that is the reason why it is so expensive.
I just love the fact that I can get Nadi her annual shots and an extra precautionary medication, administered by a person who presumably went to medical school, and the grand total bill is just over $20. When I lived in the USA I'm pretty sure that i had to pay $25 just to speak to the receptionist.
Now as to whether or not she has been "tired" like the doc suggested she would be the answer to that is yes.
I carried her all the way home and when we got back to the apartment she just stood next to the sofa and made a whining sound. She didn't have the energy to even jump up to her sofa pillow. She got plenty of belly rubs and went to sleep within minutes. She gets to sleep pretty easy on any day but I think that the injections expedited the process even more.
So now our doggy travel passport is good to go for the next year which could come in handy because I have no idea how much longer I am going to be in Vietnam. It could be a month, it could be a year. Either way, I know that I need to be ready quickly when this time comes and now at least for Nadi, all of the paperwork is in line. Now maybe one of these days I will get started on my own paperwork.
My grandmother had a dog, who would recognize the vet from 20 meters as he got some shots once from the guy. Every time the vet passed in front of the property, the dog was barking like crazy, wanting to tear the chain and bite the vet. Dogs don't forget 🙂
yeah it's pretty amazing what they can selectively remember. If we went there all the time I would understand a bit better but we have only ever been there one time before. I'm pretty impressed at her memory but I guess that is why she is able to poop in almost exactly the same spot every day even if we take different routes.
Wow, that is pretty amazing. I think you saw what my last bill was from the vet for all of Jovi's shots. Well then she goes and gets a UTI this past weekend and we just had to pay another $265 for them to look at her and do blood work and give her antibiotics. It would almost be cheaper to fly to Vietnam and get the work done there and then fly back!
medical care is exceptionally cheap here. I worry about the human medical care and how inexpensive it is but veterinarian science, especially routine shots are something that you could probably administer yourself if you had to.
I don't recall how much the vet bills were back when I had a dog in USA but I know they were more than 20 bucks.
It is crazy how expensive the vet is here in the US. Sometimes it rivals the cost of a human doctor (which is also insanely overpriced). I am not impressed for the most part with general practitioners either. Some of the least intelligent, most over payed people in America - as well as plenty arrogant. I suppose arrogance generally goes along with general stupidity. Oh well, I digress.
Where are you headed after Vietnam? Do you basically just hang out until your visas run out? Sorry if you've already talked about this. You seem to have an interesting situation out there, moving back and forth.
I intend to go back to Thailand. I consider SE Asia to be my home and while I do like Vietnam a lot, I learned to speak Thai while I was there and I don't speak any Vietnamese. That changes things a lot when you can communicate with all the locals. Here, if I don't have an app to help me or if I leave my little area which is colloquially referred to as "cracker-town" I can be totally lost and unable to talk to anyone pretty quickly.
You could drop me in the middle of a field in Thailand and I would be able to speak with almost anyone on at least a basic level. I'm not going to learn another damn-near-impossible one-country language though. It took me a decade to learn to speak Thai :)
I remember the last time we went to Italy I was having a bit of a freak out because I didn't speak any Italian, and the apartment we had rented online was locked when we arrived, and we had no contact number for the owner (they were supposed to meet us there). It was super stressful for like an hour until we managed to hand signal our way through communicating with random strangers until someone was able to help us call the owners.
One thing that surprisingly ended up helping is that I am fluent in Spanish. The village we were in apparently got a lot of Spanish tourists so there were a LOT of Spanish speaking Italians there. Plus the languages are similar. Everyone thought I was from Mexico because of my accent in Spanish... lol!
I definitely feel you on learning a one country language. That is some dedication! I want to learn another language but can't decide which one. I want to learn something that would be really weird for a white American dude to learn. That always trips the native speakers out.
i've been studying Spanish lately and am envious that you are fluent in it. We've probably discussed this before but as you know that opens up so much of the world for a person when they can speak that. I think in USA schools that studying Spanish should be mandatory. I studied French because they gave me a choice. Globally speaking, French is only slightly more useful than speaking Thai.
Yeah man, Spanish is super useful. Having Spanish and English has made lots of other languages accessible to me. Well, at least in written form. I can understand quite a lot of written Italian, French and Portuguese (I can actually understand quite of bit of spoken Portuguese if they have a mild accent). So many of the base words are the same so you can kind of work it out. I would highly recommend learning some Spanish if you get the chance.
One of these days I'm going to go to Spain for a quick trip while visiting in-laws in England. I've never actually been! It will be fun to run around Spain with a Mexican accent and slang. haha!
I keep putting off learning Spanish just because I remember how hellish it was for me to master Thai. People say that it is a lot easier than languages that use other script like Thai but honestly, learning languages in not my area of expertise at all and never has been.
I'm on my 3rd attempt at DuoLingo. I think I just need to buckle down and accept that it isn't going to be easy nor something that happens overnight. I have quite a few friends that live in expat areas of the Spanish speaking world and the ability to communicate just a little bit makes everything a lot easier. I know that in Thailand I am able to get things done a lot easier than the average foreigner just by being able to talk.
Maybe I should make a schedule and stick to it and put in an hour a day of studying.
About your Mexican accent I have heard that is a very real thing that people who are native speakers can identify almost immediately kind of like how I can tell after just a few sentences whether someone is Canadian or American - maybe it is even more profound given the distance between Spain and all the rest of the Spanish speaking world. I know that I accidentally ended up with a southern accent in Thai and the Thai people get a real kick out of that since the southern accent is considered the "lower class" accent of the country.
Crazy how dogs just know and it has to be the smell of the vet practice that they just know. Prices are ridiculously cheap there as I had mine done recently and cost over $100.
yup $20 is insane cheap .. here that would be hundreds of dollars easy
I find that to be the case with almost everything over here. Well, other than fast-food. I don't know what a 3-piece KFC costs in USA but over here it is one of the most expensive things I would order for dinner at around $7
you are right i have heard the same
really nice prices
here in my city it's about the same
I've heard about huge prices for USA medicine, that's why many Russians whom I know from the USA, come here back to make some medical procedures, for example visiting a dentist:] in the USA it would have been golden teeth:] though here dentists are one of the most expensive doctors among all other specialists.
Being sick is expensive. Though being healthy isn't cheap either.
Nadi is so pretty♥️I am a great dog lover. I hope your pet feels nice now and is ready for travelling again
Yep, it is a big load off my mind that her paperwork is in order. When the time comes for me to go it can be a real pain to move a dog from one country to another but one thing is for certain, the shots need to be up to date in order for it to be approved. One less thing I have to worry about.
This is one of the great tragedies of the world.
Cheers to this achievement, sorry Nadi, but it was a necessary evil. Hopefully this will help to conquer any bureaucratic airport or land border crossing foolishness. That facial expression of Nadi's waiting at the vet is not one I've seen, very tense, but she's obviously a trooper.
Yeah, she made it through. I always feel bad when I have to take her there but she always gets lots of treats and attention afterwards.
@justinparke here - Due to the recent drop in HIVE's price, the previous vote value I allotted each ASEAN Hiver according to their delegation size is now unsustainable. I am very much behind on curation at the moment because of this, so apologies for the small upvote, but everyone is still getting a vote proportional to their delegation size until I can catch back up and create a new more sustainable voting plan. Thanks for your patience.
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