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A visit to King’s Palace in Vaihingen…

Bill and I had made tentative plans to go out yesterday.  We ended up staying in because our dog, Zane, somehow hurt his paw while Bill was walking the dogs yesterday morning.  After a trip to the on call vet in our area, where Bill dropped 88 euros for an office visit, x-ray, anti-inflammtory shot, and pills, we decided to stay home and make sure Zane was okay.  I’m not complaining about the vet’s prices, by the way.  In the United States, we would have spent way more money.  Zane is fine today, so we decided to stop by Panzer and Patch.  In between stops, we had lunch at King’s Palace, an Asian eatery in the Schwaben Gallerie complex in Vaihingen.

The front door to King’s Palace…

The last time I ate at King’s Palace was when we lived here the first time.  In fact, I think it was during the six weeks we lived at the Vaihinger Hof hotel in Vaihingen, so that would have been October 2007.  I remembered the interior of the place to be kind of fancy.  Having walked past the restaurant dozens of times since we moved back, I can see that it hasn’t changed at all.

At about 1:00 today, King’s Palace was hopping with business.  A young, hardworking waiter directed us to a two top table on the side of the restaurant nearest to the sun.  They had drawn the shades, so the sun wasn’t directly in our faces.  Unfortunately, the restaurant was pretty warm because the weather today was unseasonably spring like.  I was feeling cranky because I was hungry.

We sat down at table 31, noticing that we arrived at the same time as a large party of Asians.  It was someone’s birthday.  They were all speaking German, but hung up a banner in English that read “Happy Birthday”.  As the large party greeted each other and got situated, Bill saw the look of irritation on my face.  When I start getting hangry, I get impatient and bitchy.  But he laughed and said I wasn’t the only one who was feeling grouchy as the partygoers settled at their table.

Bill checks out the menu.  Prices are reasonable, especially on the lunch menu, which is apparently not available on Sundays.

It took a few minutes before a waiter took our order.  Since King’s Palace has a rather extensive menu, the slow service was kind of welcome.  It took time to figure out what I wanted and what was most likely mushroom free.

Bill gives me an obligatory disinterested look…

I took this for Untappd…  It was refreshing in the stuffy restaurant.  Bill’s Krystalweizen came with a slice of lemon.

I made Bill laugh.  I think this is a memeworthy photo.

I started with chicken skewers, which curiously came out before Bill’s bowl of Thai soup.  They were welcome, since I was hungry.  The peanut sauce was surprisingly subtle.  I would have appreciated a little more peanut flavor.  However, I have to admit to scarfing these down…

 

Bill’s spicy Thai soup with shrimp.  I almost ordered this.  I’m glad I didn’t, because it had mushrooms in it.  Yecch!  Bill liked it, though.  He said it had a kick to it.  He likes that in his food… and his women.

Bill had chicken curry which was pretty good, except it too came with mushrooms.  I tasted a piece of the chicken and it was pretty good.  Too bad I hate fungus.

I had crispy duck with pineapple.  This was pretty good.  The pineapple didn’t appear to be fresh, but the peppers were.  I ate most of this, which was surprising.  But, like I said, I was feeling “hongry”.

Rice and my sweet and sour sauce.  We were relieved that they only brought out one pot.

 

Like many German Chinese restaurants we’ve been to, King’s Palace has warmers on the table.  Everything was served family style.  I appreciated that, even if the fungus in Bill’s selections precluded me from sharing his dishes.  We were pretty satisfied after lunch, which ran us about forty euros.  On the other hand, Bill and I had some take out Chinese food in Kemnat back in August 2014 that was absolutely delicious.  You wouldn’t think a take out place would have better food than a sit down place…  now I wish I remembered the name of the restaurant and lived in an area where I could get it more easily.

King’s Palace offers good food and the interior is kind of cool looking, but I’ve had better Asian food.  On the other hand, I’ve also had worse.  I’d recommend King’s Palace, though the atmosphere was pretty hectic and sort of uncomfortable today– crowded, stuffy, and warm.  I did appreciate how industrious and hard working the staff appeared to be, though.  And today’s choice was a nice change of pace from the German, Greek, and Italian places we’ve been frequenting lately.  My kingdom for a pu pu platter, though.

A house shot with the bill.  It reminded me a little of upscale Hawaiian Punch.

 

We stopped by the commissary to pick up a few items for the week.  While we were there, we donated a ham and a turkey to the USO and I chatted with one of my fellow Facebookers…  Then we went to the Class VI store, where I spotted the wine pictured below…

I’m always skeptical when I see wine so obviously presented to sell to tourists…  I skipped it and picked up a few bottles of plainer wines.

 
 
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A PSA: If you’re going to put your dog in the local hunde pension…

Please be very sure you let them know if your dog has any medical problems or allergies.  It could mean the difference between life and death.

My husband and I have used the same dog hotel in Germany during both of our tours here.  Our dogs have always gotten good care there.  In fact, last time we were living here, our dog Flea had prostate cancer.  Our German dog sitters at the hunde hotel took great care of him, allowing us to take one last trip to Budapest before moving to Atlanta.  We lost Flea in November 2009, a couple of months after relocating to the States.

Since moving back to Germany, the hunde pension we use has had a change in managers.  The newer manager is very kind and our dogs love her.  When we go to the hotel, they greet her enthusiastically and they always say goodbye when it’s time to go.  She’s not quite as “on the ball” as the previous manager was, but we’ve been satisfied with the way she takes care of our boys.  We have recommended the hotel to others who have needed dog sitting services.

Unfortunately, even the best dog sitters/pet boarding facilities can have mishaps.  Today’s post is to serve as a reminder of how very important it is to let caregivers know about anything unusual in your pet’s medical history and what should be done if your pet gets sick while being boarded.

One of Bill’s friends left his dog at the hunde hotel for a lengthy stay.  During her stay, the dog somehow developed a skin infection on her back.  The people at the hunde hotel took the dog to a vet for treatment.  The vet gave her an injection of antibiotics.  Unfortunately, the dog had a bad reaction to the antibiotics, went into shock, and died.  It turns out the dog had had reactions to injections before, but the staff at the hunde hotel did not know about that.  They also did not ask.  And they took the dog to the vet for treatment without talking to her owners first.

It may seem like the caregivers were at fault for not talking to the dog’s owners.  Not having seen the severity of the skin infection, I can’t say for sure.  For one thing, the dog’s owners were several time zones away, which can make communication difficult.  For another, skin infections can be dangerous because they can spread rapidly.  I know this firsthand, having had cellulitis three times.  Prompt treatment is usually necessary because infections can get bad fast.

Bill and I have a lot of empathy for his friend because when we went to Scotland in 2012, our dog MacGregor got sick.  He did not die while we were gone, but we were told he should be euthanized (it turned out he had a malignant neural sheath tumor– found when we got home and had an MRI done).  Since the dog was in North Carolina and we were in Scotland, it was pretty difficult to coordinate his care.  I understand firsthand how nerve-wracking it can be when a pet becomes ill while you travel.

If you use a pet boarding facility, please make sure you let the staff know about any allergies or reactions to medications your pet may have.  Chances are good that the issue will never come up, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Zane and Arran approve of this message…
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Results of our German veterinary surgery adventure…

I took my dogs to the vet yesterday.  Arran needed to get his stitches taken out after the surgery he had two weeks ago.  Zane was along for the ride, but also got his routine allergy shot because we were close enough to the next month.  Arran’s surgical wound from his surgery has healed nicely and he even removed three of the stitches on his own.

The vet removed the remaining three stitches, then gave me the news about the pathology report.  Unfortunately, I was right to be suspicious about the growth on Arran’s head.  It was a mast cell tumor.  The pathologist graded it at 1.5, which means he thinks there is a chance the cells could spread.  However, the tumor had clean margins, meaning there was no sign of cancer cells in the skin surrounding the tumor.  It was also a very small growth, maybe the size of a medium sized pea.

The vet explained that we could put Arran through tests to see if chemo would be useful for him.  But, she said the pathologist said if Arran were his dog, he wouldn’t do that.  It would likely involve a bone marrow tap, which would be stressful and painful.  Moreover, chemo has limited results with this type of cancer.  There is a chance that the surgery was curative, but unfortunately, mast cell tumors tend to recur.  I will have to watch him closely and have every new growth tested and/or removed.

I don’t know if I could say Arran has cancer like I could with the two dogs that preceded him.  My old dogs, Flea and MacGregor, had prostate and neural sheath cancer respectively.  Flea was diagnosed by the same German veterinarian when we lived here back in 2009.  We brought him in because he was having trouble peeing and pooping.  She initially thought he’d gotten into something that upset his stomach until she checked his prostate and realized that it was hard and irregular and looked like a map of Russia.

Both Flea and MacGregor had their diseases for awhile before we knew what was going on, so there was little we could do for them other than keep them comfortable.  Arran, on the other hand, is very strong and healthy, and as far as I know, the cancer was removed when he had his surgery.  Or, maybe it wasn’t.  Only time will tell.  But then, when it comes to life, there are never any guarantees.  Even if he’d never had a mast cell tumor, he could die in an accident at any time.  Or he could die of something totally unrelated to the growth on his head.  It does look like we caught the tumor early, though, so this news isn’t nearly as horrible as it could be.

Another bright spot in this drama is that the vet bill was very low.  Yesterday, I got the comprehensive bill for the surgery, toenail clipping, a couple of allergy shots for Zane, pathologist’s report, and prescription drugs.  The bill for all of that was the US equivalent of about $250 before VAT.  Since our vet accepts a VAT form, we didn’t have to pay that.  Even if we had, it still was a lot cheaper than similar service in the United States.

Arran this morning.

Well, I’ll just have to keep an eye on him.  Luckily he’s both cute and sweet.  Anyway, let my story be a lesson to you.  If you find any weird growths on your dog or anywhere else, it’s best to get them checked out before they turn into something sinister.  I am glad I didn’t acquiesce when the vet said maybe we didn’t need to remove that growth.

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