The meal that never was.

((insert photo of lovely grilled tuna steaks with brown rice and salad))

Oh, that’s right…our dinner was ruined last night.

Sigh…

I was looking forward to our tuna steaks all day yesterday. I marinated them in Trader Joe’s Soyaki and started boiling the brown rice early on before Rus arrived from work. If you don’t know, brown rice takes a lot longer to cook than regular white rice.

Unfortunately, just as we put the tuna steaks on our grill pan…one of my dogs got a severe nose bleed…there was blood everywhere.

I asked Rus to handle the tuna while I tried to stop the bleeding.

“The tuna is starting to look like meatloaf!!!” Rus frantically yelled.

We switched off where he would look after Baxter and I would try to salvage the meal. Good god….the tuna looked more like burnt canned tuna. What a let down! The rice was also not fully cooked.

I turned off the gas and gave up. We had to take care of Baxter first and foremost, so we searched for a 24 hour Emergency Pet Clinic and drove 15 minutes away to one. It was not a great experience….as I told the doctor what the symptoms were, she jotted it down…and then left for an “estimate.” I waited for an hour in the examination room and when she finally came back, the “estimate” for diagnostics (tests) were 1600 to 3000 dollars!

We couldn’t afford that (like most people) so we decided to go home. Baxter’s bleeding had finally stopped anyhow. She didn’t give me any clear indication as to what was wrong with him, she didn’t tell me ways I could stop the bleeding and she just wasn’t helpful at all. The “examination” was so minimal…she basically put a thermometer up his (you know where). All that for $75!

It makes me very angry that we didn’t get anywhere with the vets. I know it’s difficult to determine what could be wrong with a dog without tests, but to pay $3000 for tests on a dog is completely shocking to me.

We finally got home around midnight…and we were both frustrated, tired and hungry. This morning, I looked into getting pet insurance for our dogs. We went with a health plan offered by the ASPCA which wasn’t too bad…$47 a month to cover medical exams, treatment, and medications for two dogs. I really hope it helps with future treatment expenses.

Even though we missed the potential for a great meal, we’re fortunate that Baxter pulled through in the end. Hopefully, we can find out what’s wrong with him without having to live off of ramen soup for a year. If we had to eat ramen for a year, this blog would get boring…FAST.

Who knows, maybe I could make a blog titled: “RAMEN 365: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF RAMEN SOUP FOR EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR.”