Tanner needed surgery

Our travels around the western US were well underway. We were moving quickly, checking off new bucket list destinations and visiting old favorites from our last trip to the region. All this time, we were waiting for mid-March. We had an appointment in Utah to get our axles replaced. While this isn't the fun adventure type of travel destination, it was the main reason we ventured back out West this year. We had been driving on busted axles for over a year and finally needed to lay this problem to rest.

We landed in Nevada and were able to enjoy a week at Lake Mead and Valley of Fire. We love the state of NV and hoped to spend more time there, heading further north to Great Basin National Park. But as oftentimes happens in the RV life, reality hit and the adventures needed to be put on hold.

We had been monitoring a cyst on Tanner's leg that had been there for several months, but while we were in Alamogordo, NM, we noticed that the cyst began bleeding and draining. As Tanner has aged, cysts have been a pretty common issue. They've all been benign and some of them he just lives with. Others have needed to be surgically removed, particularly the ones that run the most risk of infection.

We hoped that eventually this cyst would stop draining on its own. We have a process of keeping it clean and putting a compress on it to help it drain. However, after a few weeks, the cyst had become more widespread and was bleeding nonstop. We could tell that Tanner was uncomfortable. The risk of infection was high because this was an accessible area, and the more uncomfortable he got, the more he'd try to lick it.

Finding vet care on the road is stressful, especially when we've been moving so quickly so far this year, often through remote areas. We considered our options and decided that heading to Utah early made the most sense. Instead of going to Great Basin, we could buy ourselves a full extra week by heading straight to the metro Salt Lake City area – a distance we could easily cover in one drive day. This would hopefully give us time to get Tanner seen by a vet, and we'd be in position to go straight to our axle appointment when the time came.

Originally, the plan was to park ourselves at a full hookup RV site for a couple of nights before the axle appointment. The appointment would take at least 2 days, and so we booked an Airbnb and would need to pack for our displacement. We always like to use a full hookup site for this, so we can dump our tanks and use as much water and electricity as we need. We chose Rollin' Home RV Park as our packing site. It's one of the few year-round RV parks in the area, about 20 minutes south of Trailer Parts Wholesale, our axle place. With our changed plans, we hoped that we could spend an extra week there. We felt we had a chance because March is very much still the off-season in the Utah mountains. We called Rollin' Home to see if they could extend our stay from 2 nights to 8. Sure enough, we lucked out, even getting to keep our original campsite for the whole stay.

With our site at Rollin' Home taken care of, we now had to research vet clinics in the area. As we had hoped and expected, there were a ton, and some were very well-rated. We needed to get Tanner in for an appointment as quickly as possible. Assuming he'd need surgery to remove the cyst, we'd be looking at at least 3 appointments, possibly more. The extra week gave us some leeway, but we had a pretty strict cap on how long we could spend in the area. We don't want to ruin any surprises, but let's just say we had a campground booked for the end of March that we did not want to cancel if we could at all help it.

And so, that gave us just 16 days to halt our adventures and deal with real life. If there was anywhere we could pull it off, we knew it was here. After we got stuck in a flood two years ago, we had the most insanely productive 5 days getting our trailer – and our traumatized selves – back in working condition. The helpfulness and efficiency around here cannot be underestimated.

We made Tanner an appointment at Payson Family Pet Hospital, 30 minutes north of Rollin' Home and in a town we got very well acquainted with last time we were here. We made sure to get his records sent over there ahead of time. Tanner not only has a long history with sebaceous cysts, but he is also a senior dog who needs extra medical attention. Having his records handy ensures that any vet he sees can be updated on all his previous procedures and his meds regimen, which these days, is quite extensive.

The only other time we've needed to find a vet on the road was for Lily, when she stopped responding to the antibiotics she was on for her chronic bacterial cystitis. We found a well-rated cat hospital outside of Philadelphia, and even though she ended up getting the meds she needed, we did not have a good experience. The vet did not respect all of the work we had already done to accurately diagnose Lily and basically tried to convince us that we were wrong. This is a big problem when vets think after meeting an animal for 15 minutes, they know better than a vet who has been working with the animal for years.

This experience gave us some reluctance to take Tanner somewhere new, but our experience was nothing like the vet outside Phili. Payson Family Pet Hospital was awesome. They diligently went over the pertinent parts of Tanner's history. They never once tried to override his current health routine, and they respected everything we had already done with Tanner's primary vet. We expected them to need to biopsy this cyst to ensure that it was benign like all the rest of them. They specifically asked us if this one had been biopsied, but it hadn't. However, they gave us the option to remove it right away and get a histology on it afterwards. This was much more time-effective. We got Tanner a physical exam and ordered some bloodwork, and we scheduled his surgery for two days later, Thursday, March 13.

By surgery day, Tanner's bloodwork had already come back, which helped the vet determine the best anesthesia meds. The hospital kept us informed about everything along the way. We dropped Tanner off early on his surgery day, and he was ready to go home by mid-afternoon.

As all of this was happening, we were under a winter storm warning. Up until Tanner's discharge, we only experienced a little rain, but as soon as we picked him up, the downpours started. Thankfully, we were low enough in elevation that we avoided the snow until several hours later. However, we had barely helped Tanner up the stairs and into our RV when we heard two extremely loud thunder booms echoing through the mountains.

We spent the rest of Thursday night hiding out from the rain, and overnight the rain turned to snow. The timing of the storm was definitely in our favor. The worst weather days, we had no plans but to hunker down with Tanner and help him recover. The weather got cold and at times windy and rainy/snowy, but in the grand scheme of winter weather incidents, this one was a piece of cake. Unfortunately, the same storm pummeled the Plains and the Southeast, with one of the worst high wind and severe weather outbreaks in a long time. We did not take our situation for granted.

That following Monday, Tanner was due for a follow-up and bandage change. The storms were over, and this was our big moving day. On the agenda was checking out of Rollin' Home early, heading to Trailer Parts Wholesale as soon as they opened to drop off the trailer, then drop Tanner off at the vet, and then check into our Airbnb. It was a stressful day, but once again, timing was on our side. It's always tough for Tanner to recover in the small space of the RV. When he wears his cone, it gets stuck on things. Then this time, his bandage restricted his ability to bend his front leg, which coupled with his arthritis, made him unsteady on his feet. We were glad he had a whole house to spread out, with wall-to-wall carpeting which kept him from slipping and sliding.

A week after the surgery, we got a call from the vet, and he let us know that the histology results were in. Tanner's cyst was not cancerous. With his clean bill of health, we were ready to take him on new adventures! Only, we had one more important decision to make.

Tanner's stitch removal needed to be 2 weeks out from his surgery date. This was beyond our 16-day window in the Salt Lake area, and next we were supposed to go to one of our most anticipated destinations of the year. We really didn't want to cancel or shorten our next stay, but we would if we needed to for Tanner. Where we were going, vet options were slim, but we hoped we could roll the dice and find someone to fit Tanner in for a stitch removal. If not, we would stick around a few extra days and keep his appointment at Payson. We always say that flexibility is key when living the nomadic life, and it certainly came into play here.

We found a well-rated clinic – one of just two vets in the area – who had time to remove Tanner's stitches. This meant both we and Tanner needed to put our trust in someone new again, but it should be a short and simple appointment. Tanner had one more follow-up before we left the Payson area, and then we returned to our travel life with a repaired pup and repaired rig!

The following week, Tanner got his stitches removed. The vet techs did a great job, but Tanner was definitely over these constant visits to new clinics. Normally, we wouldn't put Tanner through so much newness and high-anxiety situations, but he took one for the team. We were able to get him taken care of and still keep up with our travel plans. Thanks for being a good sport, Tan Man!

Tanner's recovery went really smoothly and he's healing great. We attribute this to how attentive the staff seemed to be at Payson Family Pet Hospital. Even the vet tech who removed the stitches commended Payson on what a great job they did. We're relieved to have found a vet that was patient with Tanner and took his anxiety into consideration.

RVing with pets means that sometimes we'll need to attend to them far from home, which can be really stressful. Finding vets on the road who respect our nomadic life and treat Tanner well always puts us at ease. Now when we travel out west, we will feel safer knowing what resources we have nearby. Utah has become a world of resources for us, first for our RV and now for our fur baby. We like knowing we have a little safe haven out west where we feel cared for. This is just as important to us as the grand adventures.