WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS – 12.22.2010

There is so much truth to this saying that it’s not even funny.  The last few days have been very hectic in our house, to put it mildly.  When I first started writing this post, it was a long one.  REALLY LONG!  Then I reconsidered my rant and decided to shorten it significantly.


ROUND ONE – On Sunday, Orso stole a raw beef bone from Luna.  He literally stole Luna’s bone from her jaws – a bone that was 6-8 inches in length and a couple of inches in diameter.  Then he swallowed it.  Whole.  No chewing.  No enjoyment.  Swallowed it WHOLE.  I then spent 2 days staring at Orso’s poop to make sure it came out and that we were not possibly dealing with an obstruction.

ROUND TWO – We are leaving town tomorrow for the holidays and we have been engrossed in preparations for the trip.  Part of our preparations was to get Orso ready to stay with Mary Majchrowski of Bravo Dog Training in Plantation for 14 nights of doggie bootcamp.  Luna and Mouse will stay at home with Nichelle – like they always do – but Orso is still too young to be left alone for too many hours during the day while Nichelle is working.  We are happy to know that he is staying inside Mary’s house with her family and that she is an exceptional positive reinforcement trainer, but we were also feeling horrible that we had taken him out of our house, separated him from Luna & Mouse AND from us for the next 14 nights.  Not a happy feeling.  We dropped Orso off with Mary yesterday.  It’s been really quiet around here.

ROUND THREE – I get a call from Mary within hours of leaving Orso that as she was making dinner, she noticed ants in her house.  Following their path, she arrived at Orso’s brand new $60 bag of dog food.  She tells me that when she opened it, there were THOUSANDS of ants in it.  A brand new bag of food!!!  Thankfully, Mary was able to go to PetCo and resolve this issue so that Orso the piglet could eat dinner last night.

Before night’s end, Mary had sent me an email letting me know that Orso was doing really well.  She had started working on slowing his eating by placing large rocks in his bowl.  I’m sure that was entertaining!  She also sent us a photo of our boy hanging out in her kitchen, see below.

ROUND FOUR – Luna overdosed on human vitamins yesterday.  As I am dealing with the dog food issue with Mary, I get an email from home with a photo attached, see below, that Luna had been a very bad girl while we were out of the house.  When he got home, he found Luna on the sofa gnawing on all kinds of caplets, gelcaps and softgels.  She had also had accidents in the house.  That’s when he sent me the email.  My first reaction was one of anger.  How could she do this???  Does she know how expensive all those pills are???  What was she thinking???  As I tried getting home, I immediately realized that we could be dealing with a poison issue.  My anger turned into extreme guilt.  How could I have been so stupid to leave these pills on the counter??  What was going through my head???

I called home and told him not to throw away the pills that she had not eaten.  I knew that I could figure out how much she had actually ingested by working backwards.  I knew how many of each pill I had packed, so calculating how many she ate would be easy.  I rushed home and started doing my math.  Turns out that she ingested over 140 pills, including 8 joint supplements, 38 fish oil soft gels, 8 sleeping pills, 17 multi-vitamins, 51 cranberry softgels and 16 gingko softgels.  HOLY.  FREAKIN’.  CRAP.  I put in an emergency call to Dr. Pane who gives me all the information for the Pet Poison Control Hotline.  By the way, anyone who doesn’t have this phone number should write it down somewhere accessible RIGHT NOW!!!  1-800-213-6680.  After giving the lady at the hotline the exact names of each pill, she basically told me that it was too late to induce vomiting and that she had to go to the vet emergency.  Dr. Pane’s office wasn’t going to have a vet on staff all night so he sent me to an emergency clinic near my house.  I packed up all of the pill bottles, wrote down the pet poison control case number and hauled butt to the clinic.  By the time we got there, Luna was already showing signs of toxicity.  She couldn’t keep her eyes open, was having a lot of trouble walking, she had tremors and was bloated.  The team at the clinic started to work on her immediately.  Thankfully, her vital signs were good and her bloodwork was all normal.  She had an irregular heartbeat, which was causing concern.  Aside from signs of poison, we were also concerned that all the softgels could clump together and cause an obstruction inside her.  It was too late to induce vomiting, so they pumped her stomach with liquid charcoal to absorb whatever her body had not yet absorbed and started her on IV fluids.  Dee Hoult from Applause Your Paws came to clinic to keep us company – thank you, Dee, for being such a spectacular friend. 

After Luna was somewhat stabilized, the team sent us home and told us to try and get some rest and that Luna would probably be OK.  They told me to pick her up before 7am and to watch her all day on Wednesday to ensure she has a bowel movement that would indicate that we are not dealing with any obstruction.  As told, I picked her up this morning and she was her normal self again.  As of this evening, we scored a bowel movement and I don’t think I have ever been so happy to Luna poop.