When her stomach gets upset, she has a natural instinct that drives her to eat some grass or dried leaves to sooth herself or to make herself throw up whatever is irritating her.
This past Saturday, she started exhibiting signs that she had an upset tummy and was demanding between air licks to go outside. Well, it's winter here. There is no grass to speak of but there is a pile of dried up clipping and leaves so out she went. As I stood at the door watching her I noticed that she wasn't content eating leaves and grass but she was also devouring sticks. I thought to myself "I'm not sure that is such a good idea, especially since they are frozen solid" so I went back in and quickly chopped up a pile of carrots and spinach leaves and tossed it out onto the snow and she quickly devoured them too.
Now, granted when it comes to my animals, I am a bit of a worrywart. I remarked to my husband that I didn't think what she was doing was normal even for a furry vacuum like her and of course he told me I was just being the worrywart that I usually am and even I really wasn't sure that wasn't the case.
After what seemed to me to be forever, our dog was ready to come in.
To make this part of the story short, as the weekend progressed, our dog remained her normal sing song, I love life, what adventure are we going to have next self, but she wouldn't eat and when she laid down she would moan and shift and clearly couldn't get comfortable. For the older readers, the best example I can give you of what was going on is this:
Guess which one is me and which one is my dog?
On Monday morning, I called the vet and said that I was convinced that she had some kind of blockage or something and could he fit me in. Now, because I tend to overreact as far as my animals are concerned and I have a great vet who does not take advantage of me, instead of saying "Bring her in", he asked "What makes you think that?" After explaining, he agrees that he should have a look at her.
I called my husband to see if he could leave work early and come with me because after getting an appointment, I spent the morning looking up her symptoms on Google and scared myself half to death. (Darn that Google!!) He agreed and at 2:15 we hopped into my carbon footprint and we were off, Nervous Nellie, Mr Borderline Annoyed with his wife and their little dog who watched out the window in eager anticipation.
We got to the vet and the dog springs out of the car, heads into the vet tail wagging and eager to meet anyone who happens to be in the waiting room. The vet comes out and says "Well, she looks great." Now, at that moment I could feel the eyes of my husband boring into me as he's calculating the cost of this visit so I respond with a small smile, "Yes she does. She's the happiest sick dog ever!" This illicts some muffled snorts and chortles from others (especially the husband and wife teams) in the waiting room who are watching the little mini-drama that just walked in.
We go in the little room so the vet can give her the once over. Other than a little fever (which leads to a blood test), she is, for all intents and purposes, acting just fine. The vet doesn't feel any blockage but suggests that we do an xray to be absolutely sure.
He comes back in with the xrays pops them up on the light screen and it turns out she essentially had ate enough sticks, weeds, leaves, carrots, spinach and heaven knows what else that she now had effectively built a birds nest in her stomach and it needed to come out because there was no other way to know what really was in there.
So Tuesday, I took her back for surgery and this happy-go-lucky dog clearly didn't let the previous days drama effect her attitude, bounds into the vet's office once again. We switched leashes and in her eagerness to inspect the office, she led the vet back to the back area. I went home thinking that I was going to pick her up on Wednesday morning.
About 6:00, I get a call asking if I would consider not having her spend the night there if she didn't settle down because even morphine would not stop this dogs outgoing nature and she was in her cage wagging her tail and trying to make friends with the other patients. I admit it, I burst out laughing. I didn't mean to, I just couldn't help myself. The vet was going to give her a valium in one last attempt to calm her down and get her to rest and call me back if it didn't work.
I picked her up at 8:00.
By 11 P.M. she was bugging me for food.
At 3:21 A.M. she had to go out, which now means having to get dressed and go out with her on the leash since she can't get her belly wet and I sure don't want her eating anymore sticks and what not any time soon.
The rest of Wednesday she rested, ate a little and snuggled with our cat who has appointed herself the charge nurse.
Today, after breakfast, she went and climbed up on the couch rolled over and looked at me with those big brown eyes and said, "now rub my stomach will you so my life would be perfect?"
What a dog, what a dog!
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