Well, yesterday was technically a holiday, so I decided that I’d take the day off. We had been trying to figure out how to get Diane’s dog Rx from Aberdeen to Howard Lake in time for A.) Diane to leave for Alaska (Rx is a big pain for Mark to handle,) and B.) for Rx and Willie to mate again, as its been a year since their last litter and we are excited to have another one. We knew that Diane was leaving TODAY, in the afternoon, and also knew that Rx and Willie need to mate sometime today, tomorrow, or even Thursday or Friday. After pondering our options, we decided that we’d meet Mark in Summit and he could bring Rx. That way, he’d only have to drive one hour there and one hour back, and Diane could stay at home and keep packing for her trip. We didn’t mind driving 3 hours there and 3 hours back. We like to drive, and its good quality time together to talk.
Yesterday was also the day of Wicket’s surgery. So, we dropped him off at the clinic at 9, and left immediately for Summit. We were supposed to meet Mark around 12:30, and we hoped that we could be back to pick up Wicket by 4. That’s pretty much what we did – except that we stayed and talked to Mark for about 45 minutes and so were a little late leaving Summit with Rx. However, we got to the clinic before closing time to pick up Wicket. He had a bandage on his foot and was a little big groggy, but was still glad to see his family plus his cousin Rx.
We got home a little after five and started to settle everyone in. Having Rx here is more of an adventure than you’d think. Usually, adding one dog onto three dogs really isn’t that big of a deal – once you have a pack mentality and you have it under control, you can add another dog or two and it shouldn’t change things, really. Except that Rx is a little bit special in a couple of ways. First of all, he is an intact male, meaning that he likes to pee all over the house because we have both Willie and Daisy, who are intact as well. Secondly, he’s very chaotic, for a dog. He is rather jumpy and quite spaz-y. So, adding him is really like adding two or three more dogs. He needs to wear a doggie diaper in the house, and also needs to be tied to his bed when he sleeps, because he gets too jumpy and crazy in the middle of the night and in the morning. He really does better with the structure and routine that Diane has at her house – we’re a little too much of a “go with the flow” situation for him to handle well.
Anyway, we had the diapers figured out, and he was snuffing his way around his new house without any major problems. I brought Wicket up to the office with me so that he could lay down, and did about an hour’s worth of work on the computer, since I hadn’t been home all day. Around six I shut down my computer and turned off the lights, and brought Wicket with me to go downstairs for the rest of the evening.
When I got to the living room, I saw that the dogs had pulled some stuff off of the kitchen table. As I bent down to investigate it, I saw that two of the things they had pulled down and taken to the living room were two small plastic bags that had held Wicket’s medicine. The blue pills, which were antibiotic to prevent infection, where still in their baggie. But, the other plastic bag, which had held 9 pills of a pain medicine called Rimadyl, was torn in half and completely empty.
I knew that Wicket had been with me the whole time – so that left our two other dogs, Willie and Daisy, and Diane’s dog Rx. I know that Rx likes to eat anything he can get his face into – without even chewing, but I also knew that Daisy, who happens to be Rx’s daughter, likes to eat as much as she can too.
The first thing I did was to try to call the vet where we had gotten the medicine. There was no answer at that clinic, so I called the number of the 24 hour vet in Eden Prairie. They suggested that the best thing to do would be to call the Animal Poison Control Center – which is a toll free number attached to a paid service. You give them the situation and the information about your animal, and they tell you what course to take, what types of things to do, and how the poison could affect your pet. So, I called there and told them what had happened. They ran a few worst case scenarios (if Willie, Daisy, or Rx had managed to eat all 9 pills) and told us that the best thing we could do is induce vomiting in all three dogs and see if we could find any of the pills.
Now, let me tell you, THAT was quite the interesting encounter. We had to give all three dogs a spoonful of hydrogen peroxide, which makes them throw up. Then, we had to make sure that they didn’t eat any of the throw up, and THEN we had to go through the throw up to see if we could find any pills.
I was in the living room, in charge of watching for a dog to throw up, and then picking up the dog and making sure the other dogs didn’t try to eat the throw up. It went a little something like this. Daisy threw up first, and I picked her up and called to Tony to come get the throw up. He was in the kitchen going through it when I said ‘Oh, Rx is throwing up!” and so he came back with another rag while I tried to keep Rx AND Daisy from eating this pile of throw up. No sooner had he taken that puke to the kitchen, then Willie was throwing up on the rug by the front door. I went to pick her up, only to see DAisy throwing up again by the TV. Rx followed, of course, and then Willie ran off into the porch to puke some more on the couch out there. Meanwhile, we’re trying to keep injured Wicket from eating any of the puke, or getting into the hydrogen perixode-soaked food that we used to make them puke. I finally put him in the kennel.
I’m pretty sure that we had at least 8 dog throw-ups to deal with, all over the living room floor. It was not pretty, and it was not fun. I gagged several times. In the end, we didn’t find any pills, but the poison control center agreed that if they had puked that much they had thrown up any pills they might have eaten.
We went to bed pretty early, last night. I did not, in any way, feel like cooking. But Tony made corn meal muffins for us. And we attempted to relax. We got up this morning and went to our Vet in Waverly. She told us that we had done everything exactly right, and that in her opinion there was nothing to worry about when it came to our dogs.
How’s that for GROSS?
