O Frabjous Day!

Remember Bumble, from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? (You should; Wikipedia tells me it's the longest-running Christmas TV special, having been broadcast every year since 1964.) Remember how he went from this:

to this?:

It's all about the teeth. Hermey pulled Bumble's teeth, and he turned into a kinder, gentler monster.

Our own little fanged monster has – FINALLY! – lost all four of those sharp little puppy canine teeth in the last few days. The pain and bloodshed have come to an end.

As Lewis Carroll so aptly put it, "Callooh! Callay! "

Two of them just disappeared, probably swallowed. Two were found on the floor. They're such tiny things to cause so much pain:

Our next Darcy-problem is also tooth-related. Her lower jaw is a bit narrow compared to her upper jaw, so the canines tend to poke into the roof of her mouth, which must hurt! Our vet consulted a doggy-dentist (aka a board-certified specialist in veterinary dentistry) who recommended a "removable orthodontic device" - aka braces. Much simpler and less expensive than the braces the kids needed, fortunately:

She's supposed to hold a ball as much as possible while the adult canines come in, to try to push them into position. (For the vet-ishly inclined, here is a summary of the journal article.) So a lot of her toys have been disappearing over the last couple of weeks, and being replaced by road hockey balls, Kong squeaky-tennis balls, and other spherical toys. We'll be playing a lot of Fetch in the next few weeks – Darcy will chase and retrieve anything that is thrown (and sometimes she even brings it back). We really hope it works, because if not it'll likely cost a whole lot more than $1.99 for a road hockey ball at Canadian Tire!