Paula from Chester Basin Animal Hospital I had one of those heart-in-throat moments Friday. Hubby phoned me at work to say that Fiz, our red toy poodle, got up on the table and ate the remaining dark chocolate covered cashews he’d been snacking on before he took them all out for a pee, probably a dozen and they weren’t small. Fiz is calculating. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that she saw daddy was having a snack, nosed the door to get back into the house right after her pee because she planned to target the dish. Daddy was still outside waiting for Henri to finish his whizzing all over the garden while she was helping herself to death by dark chocolate. She was on the last one when daddy came back into the house.
Fiz is a very different kind of dog. Very intelligent, fearless and adventurous. She loves the vacuum cleaner when it’s in use and would sit on top of it if we let her. Loud noises do nothing to frighten her off inside the house, although she’s as skittish as a mouse in a roomful of cats outside. She likes to sleep on top of the sofa back and jump up on the dining room table in our absence, basic cat moves, although tricks taught by daddy because he used to put her on his desk while he worked on the computer. One perch is as good as the next so she helped herself to the dining room table, the perfect vantage point to see us coming up the road to let the others know that mommy and daddy are home!
There’s no denying she’s a big daddy’s girl. When hubby is home I barely get any attention, she gets all the scratches and cuddles from him….what purpose do I serve other than to annoy her with eye and ear cleaning. I’m dropped like yesterday’s news but that’s okay, I have three others who think I’m #1.
She’s spoiled and indulged more than the other three, not so much by me, like I said she’s daddy’s girl and in this lays the problem, instilling bad habits of being up on tables. I’ve preached it’s dangerous. Jumping off a three foot table edge is only asking for a broken leg and those don’t come cheap. I hear horror stories that a $3000 plus fee is nothing to fix a break, especially if there are complications. I’m against table sitting for a lot of reasons but I’m just white noise….blah blah blah!
I think its common knowledge that dogs and chocolate don’t jive. After a quick call to the vet to find out how to induce vomiting, then a call home to make sure there was hydrogen peroxide in the medicine chest, I hit the road. Hubby was ready with towels and I filled a syringe and shot 3 cc’s down Fiz’s gizzard. There was a lot of licking and swallowing but no vomiting so I gave her another shot. Much the same, a lot of distaste for the bubbly liquid being force fed but stubbornly holding on to that darn chocolate. Another squirt of 5 cc’s of the peroxide yielded no reaction so another call to the vet and we were in the car heading for Chester Basin Animal Hospital. I know stomach contents take time to digest and metabolize so I wasn’t freaking, actually I was amazed at how calm I was. I could see that hubby was upset so I didn’t say “I told you so or berated him but deep down I wanted to scream all manner of nasty things. All those times I warned what could happen, don’t let coffee or sweets lie around, only the night before I had pointed out he’d left a chocolate bar on the table. All I get are looks like I’m a two-headed pain in the arse and as irritating as a buzzing mosquito. Dogs have the mentality of a two year old human, needing constant surveillance so nothing foreign goes in the mouth and all potential problems are out of reach. I’m constantly in a state of stress, thinking about what can happen next; protecting my pups from all the dangers I’ve read about and experienced. I lost a precious poodle to a black widow spider bite on my watch, I know the dangers. I know what is toxic to dogs and keep an eye out for it. Maybe I’m fanatical but how many times have I saved them from things just like this! The pressure of it all is huge but how can I let go and relax when there’s so much at stake?
We arrive at the vet clinic after what seemed like a very long and silent drive and they put this little patch in the corner of her eye, something called Apomorphine, Ophth Insert, to induce an immediate, convulsive reaction. Within seconds she was chucking up mounds of chocolate, gooey fluid the size of hamburger buns with pieces of nuts floating in the gelatinous liquid like buoys on the sea. Over and over she hurled as a belly full of brown came out of her. She puked until last week’s breakfast purged on the pile. The heaving was violent and she was clearly in distress, I felt so bad for my baby but I held it together and held up her ears to keep them from sweeping through the mess on the vomit soaked blanket. The smell of chocolate wafted up from the counter. I hoped the smell would attach itself to the awful memory of this moment, maybe create an aversion to the taste of cocoa in future.
The retching caused petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes so they were red, especially the one that held the small disk, that one looked like it was straight out of a horror movie. After she finished being sick, they removed the little patch.
So all’s well that ends well. A hour after it all you would never know there was anything wrong, other than a smelly mouth and sticky ears from the back-splash. She was bright eyed and bushy tailed once again and thirsty as all get out. I try not to think of all the “what ifs” and force the thoughts away as not to obsess. It just goes to show how quickly a disaster can happen to test how fragile the life of a precious pet can be.
Fiz is a very different kind of dog. Very intelligent, fearless and adventurous. She loves the vacuum cleaner when it’s in use and would sit on top of it if we let her. Loud noises do nothing to frighten her off inside the house, although she’s as skittish as a mouse in a roomful of cats outside. She likes to sleep on top of the sofa back and jump up on the dining room table in our absence, basic cat moves, although tricks taught by daddy because he used to put her on his desk while he worked on the computer. One perch is as good as the next so she helped herself to the dining room table, the perfect vantage point to see us coming up the road to let the others know that mommy and daddy are home!
There’s no denying she’s a big daddy’s girl. When hubby is home I barely get any attention, she gets all the scratches and cuddles from him….what purpose do I serve other than to annoy her with eye and ear cleaning. I’m dropped like yesterday’s news but that’s okay, I have three others who think I’m #1.
She’s spoiled and indulged more than the other three, not so much by me, like I said she’s daddy’s girl and in this lays the problem, instilling bad habits of being up on tables. I’ve preached it’s dangerous. Jumping off a three foot table edge is only asking for a broken leg and those don’t come cheap. I hear horror stories that a $3000 plus fee is nothing to fix a break, especially if there are complications. I’m against table sitting for a lot of reasons but I’m just white noise….blah blah blah!
I think its common knowledge that dogs and chocolate don’t jive. After a quick call to the vet to find out how to induce vomiting, then a call home to make sure there was hydrogen peroxide in the medicine chest, I hit the road. Hubby was ready with towels and I filled a syringe and shot 3 cc’s down Fiz’s gizzard. There was a lot of licking and swallowing but no vomiting so I gave her another shot. Much the same, a lot of distaste for the bubbly liquid being force fed but stubbornly holding on to that darn chocolate. Another squirt of 5 cc’s of the peroxide yielded no reaction so another call to the vet and we were in the car heading for Chester Basin Animal Hospital. I know stomach contents take time to digest and metabolize so I wasn’t freaking, actually I was amazed at how calm I was. I could see that hubby was upset so I didn’t say “I told you so or berated him but deep down I wanted to scream all manner of nasty things. All those times I warned what could happen, don’t let coffee or sweets lie around, only the night before I had pointed out he’d left a chocolate bar on the table. All I get are looks like I’m a two-headed pain in the arse and as irritating as a buzzing mosquito. Dogs have the mentality of a two year old human, needing constant surveillance so nothing foreign goes in the mouth and all potential problems are out of reach. I’m constantly in a state of stress, thinking about what can happen next; protecting my pups from all the dangers I’ve read about and experienced. I lost a precious poodle to a black widow spider bite on my watch, I know the dangers. I know what is toxic to dogs and keep an eye out for it. Maybe I’m fanatical but how many times have I saved them from things just like this! The pressure of it all is huge but how can I let go and relax when there’s so much at stake?
We arrive at the vet clinic after what seemed like a very long and silent drive and they put this little patch in the corner of her eye, something called Apomorphine, Ophth Insert, to induce an immediate, convulsive reaction. Within seconds she was chucking up mounds of chocolate, gooey fluid the size of hamburger buns with pieces of nuts floating in the gelatinous liquid like buoys on the sea. Over and over she hurled as a belly full of brown came out of her. She puked until last week’s breakfast purged on the pile. The heaving was violent and she was clearly in distress, I felt so bad for my baby but I held it together and held up her ears to keep them from sweeping through the mess on the vomit soaked blanket. The smell of chocolate wafted up from the counter. I hoped the smell would attach itself to the awful memory of this moment, maybe create an aversion to the taste of cocoa in future.
The retching caused petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes so they were red, especially the one that held the small disk, that one looked like it was straight out of a horror movie. After she finished being sick, they removed the little patch.
So all’s well that ends well. A hour after it all you would never know there was anything wrong, other than a smelly mouth and sticky ears from the back-splash. She was bright eyed and bushy tailed once again and thirsty as all get out. I try not to think of all the “what ifs” and force the thoughts away as not to obsess. It just goes to show how quickly a disaster can happen to test how fragile the life of a precious pet can be.
Not so happy now, and refused to look at the camera. The bucket to the right filled with her chocolate contraband. Resting now on a clean blanket probably thinking, what the crap just happened?
The medical vomit miracle that saved our Fiz!
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