Let me preface this by saying it isn’t Christmas in my house until it looks like an elf exploded in the foyer. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but it’s important to the story.
On Saturday, my husband and I went out to dinner while the kids spent the night at the grandparents’ house. Before we left, I surveyed the mess that is “middle of Christmas prep” with some trepidation. There was trouble everywhere. Breakable ornaments, garland, boxes piled to the ceiling. Most of it is pretty innocuous, but tasty red wax candles can be messy, so I put them up high. Not seeing anything amiss, we left.
We came back several hours later. Someone had shredded a construction paper Christmas stocking. Oh well.
Then I looked more closely. My laptop bag, which normally lives in the hall closet but had been pulled out along with everything else, was tipped on its side like the crime victim it had become. Its contents spread over the floor like entrails.
I examined the evidence: a name badge, a Hilton key, a Newsweek. All chewed. No biggie.
Then I saw it: a gum wrapper.
Oh, !@$!@$.
I don’t normally chew gum, but my ears were bugging me so I grabbed a pack at the newsstand before my flight on the way out to Kansas. I have no idea what kind it was, even. It is possible it could contain xylitol. Xylitol, the toxic substance I had posted about not one week prior as a Really Bad Thing for dogs. I had no way of verifying its presence in this particular gum, as the packaging was no longer in existence. I don’t know how much was left in the pack, either.
In the chaos that was the afternoon, the hall closet had been emptied out. The laptop bag which normally lives there was out on the floor, hiding along with all the other stuff that’s normally tucked away. I didn’t even remember that it was out, or that I had once placed gum in it.
All I knew was that my dogs ingested an unknown amount of what might possibly be a xylitol containing substance, and one of the last things I had read before we departed that night was a story about a Great Dane who died of xylitol poisoning. So I panicked. Fortunately the dogs still looked fine, but hypoglycemia can strike out of nowhere, and for all the raving I do to my kids about not leaving grapes laying around, I just couldn’t fathom explaining that Mom accidentally poisoned the dogs two weeks before Christmas.
This is how I wound up out in the cold at midnight making my two indignant dogs throw up. Neither one vomited a gum wrapper. After watching me perform this with some distaste, my husband retired for the night, leaving me downstairs with two nauseated dogs and a pile of guilt bigger than the stack of boxes. So I went to Level Two.
I don’t know if you’ve ever administered activated charcoal to two less than thrilled dogs while you’re shivering and under the influence of a few glasses of pinot, but let me tell you, it’s not fun. Lesson learned.
Then I had to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep wondering if I had killed one or both of them, so I woke up every hour to check on them. Have you ever done the “Are you dead?” poke on a sleeping dog? They don’t appreciate it. Brody woke up right away, but Koa snores and passes out like a zombie on a normal day, so each time she woke up with a confused “You again? What the heck? I’m fine, really. Stop poking me.”
They got full physical exams on the hour until sunlight, at which time all three of us got up, exhausted but physically fine.
My point is this: everyone makes mistakes, myself included. The vision of me chasing the dogs around the backyard with a bottle of Toxiban at midnight on a Saturday is only funny because it, thankfully, turned out fine. But man, that was not a pleasant reckoning for any of us. It’s stories like this that make me very sympathetic to owners who feel they need to apologize for being human when they have an incident like this- but it’s life. Mistakes happen to all of us.
I’m sure there are those out there who are perfect and never do stuff like this, and to them I say: congratulations. You are clearly handling life with a bunch of kids and dogs with more grace than the rest of us. Now go on and be perfect somewhere else and let the rest of us commiserate about the stupid things we have done and learn from them.
From now on, it’s Juicy Fruit for me. This beats the time Emmett ate a box of truffles on Christmas night with the same result. What’s the worst thing your pet has eaten?
I’m glad to hear they’re OK!
On the day after Thanksgiving some years ago, I burned some double chocolate cookies. I tossed them in the trash, and before I left to visit my aunties, I gave my husband the express instruction that THE TRASH MUST BE TAKEN OUT BEFORE YOU LEAVE. I made him repeat it back to me and agree.
You guessed it, he forgot and the dogs got into the trash. I came home to a trash-strewn kitchen and two quite happy dogs, actually. They very shortly changed their tune when I took them to the vet’s and they got the vomit-and-activated-charcoal routine, too.
They were fine, if covered in black stains, when I took them home. Then, just to punish them more (in their minds, anyway), they got BATHS. 🙂
And a lesson was learned by all. 😀
Ugh, I feel your pain. When Mosby was about a year old we had an issue of mice in our garage. So we laid poison around the edges of the garage to get rid of them (I know, but we had tried everything else and the animals are not allowed in the garage at all).
Well, one day we were all out in the backyard, me, kids and both dogs. I noticed Mosby was very interested in something in the grass. I asked my son to check it out as he was closest. As he approached Mosby immediately grabbed the thing in his mouth and swallowed it whole. But not before my son noticed it was a mouse. I immediately called our vet who told me to bring him right in. He underwent the whole vomit and charcoal routine and sure enough out came the mouse. We don’t know if the mouse was alive or dead when swallowed or how it died when it did but I was not taking any chances.
One of the vet techs laughingly said, “You know you aren’t supposed to feed him mice, right?” Luckily I adore everyone who works there, LOL.
Glad your babies are okay. Hope you get some rest after your long night.
Oh no!! That is scary. Glad he relinquished the mouse.
I’m glad they’re okay! The worst thing my dog has ever eaten was about 20 pork rib bones. We’d had BBQ ribs the night before, and I thought she was safely locked in her house. She broke out, ran all around the house and ate nearly all of the rib bones. I think she only stopped when she got full. I was in a panic over bones shattering and puncturing my dog’s stomach, but I called my vet who said not to induce vomiting. So I gave her a few meals of boiled chicken and cooked rice to help it pass, and kept an eye on her.
She was fine, but boy did she give me a scare!
Ugh, rib bones. Scary. And that brings up a good point too- there are definitely times you don’t want to induce vomiting, if the act could cause more damage than good. Also goes for caustic substances.
Scary!
My rescue (aka cheap) dog was around 8 months old and decided the neighbor’s dog’s collar looked like a tasty treat. My neighbor and I couldn’t figure out where his dog’s collar went until Gunther (my dog) began to throw up 4″ chunks of it.
Off to the vet we went. An x-ray later your could see 6 metal gromets clear as day in his stomach. Unfortunately, the nylon thread would not/could not be digested and he began to refuse water and food as the collar was stuck between stomach and small intestine.
This happened during exams on a Friday. So I missed an exam (rescheduled, thankfully) and took him to a gastro specialist for emergency surgery. Emergency and weekend fees later – Gunther had the collar surgically removed and the recovery was ROUGH. He was around 80lbs at the time and I lived on the 2nd floor of a house. Poor puppy.
All in all, he has made a full recovery. He will be 9 this February. 🙂
Oh, ugh. That sounds unpleasant.
Glad they are ok. I don’t have a dog, but one Easter around 14 years ago my first kitten managed to eat half of a chocolate rabbit while my family and I were at a friends house. I was only 7 at the time so I couldn’t do anything but sit around and hope she was ok. Luckily she was and lived with her sweet tooth until the day we had her put to sleep this past March.
Cats eating chocolate. They didn’t get the memo they are carnivores!
Thank you for writing this! One of my cats, Puce, has been sick this week after chewing on the christmas tree. It’s the first year we actually bother to bring a real one in, so I’m feeling a bit selfish/guilty to have wanted a real tree for the nice smell. It’s just nice to know that we all make mistakes.
Oh no! Silly kitty. Scratch on it, don’t eat it!
My German Shepherd once got a tin can {with lid attached} out of the garbage. He’d somehow bitten down on the lid & it was embedded in his upper & lower gums! PAINFUL! To make things worse, he was trying to get it out with his paws & his paws were all lacerated! We grabbed him & flew him over to the vet’s office. He had to anesthetize him to get it out…then treat all the lacerations. It was horrible.
My three year old shared an ice cream with our dog this summer. You would not believe the diarrhea.
Oh no! Lactose intolerant! 😀
Been there done this Jess. Years ago I mistakenly left a box of See’s candy on the counter. I was sure it was far enough away that none of my then, Springers could get too it. I went to the grocery store, and though back in 30 minutes, or less, Sprite, had eaten the whole box. I completely freaked out, and raced her to the Vet. He induced vomiting, hit her with charcoal, and kept her overnight on IV. I thought I was the worst dog Mom in the world. Needless to say, Sprite lived on until the ripe old age of 13, and I have long ago forgiven myself for being human.
With my current, very “into everything puppy,” Belle, I confine her to my puppy- proofed bathroom if I leave, and all things, including sugar free cough drops, are always kept in drawers she can’t get into. Not that we won’t have some chilling accident, they happen to all of us, but I am doing my best to never repeat that terrifying experience I had with Sprite years ago.
Emmett ate a box of chocolate on Christmas. Such a stereotypical thing to happen.
When I was in High School we adopted a sheltie mix. Shotzie was a goat. Right before Christmas she ate an entire bowl of Hershey’s Kisses (in festive Christmas foil) that my mother had conveniently left on the coffee table. Being somewhat novice dog owners we just watched and waited. No issues for Shotzie; but over the next few days a miracle happened – Dad came in and said, “Look, Shotzie decorated the yard for Christmas!” Yep, sparkly Christmas poops! Shotzie lived a long good life but she never ate Christmas Kisses again!
Sparkle poops! HA! At least they were easy to spot.
And here’s one more. We got a pure-bred Siberian Husky when I was four. we lived in NH, in a relatively rural area. Randy and his buddies (two black labs named, Mischief and Trouble) liked to gallivant in the woods and kill wild life (mind you, we did not encourage this – they were expert escape artists – don’t even get me started on the pedigree Golden they knocked up!). In his long life Randy ate 22 porcupines. He only had to have surgery once, because he ate the whole thing. Usually we just had to pry quills out of his snout. I remember my mother straddling him on the bed with pliers.
WOW, that wins for weirdest ingestion.
I was making breakfast one morning and stepped away from the counter for a second. My dog decided my freshly cooked bacon, along with paper towel was a good thing to ingest. My Vet suggested watching her to see if any problems developed since he guesses the paper towel might not be whole. He was right, nothing ever developed, but I learned real quick, my medium sized dog sure could stretch and I wouldn’t leave anything out. My dog also tried snacking on a $20 bill during the same time, so she never got left alone a lot.
A money eater! Noooo!
My cat Sophie tasted the expanding foam insulation I had sprayed around the pipes inside the bathroom wall after I’d finished a little plumbing work. Who would think a cat would be interested in something that hissed and fizzled as it expanded and dried, and smelled so strongly of acetone it burned my nostrils in that cramped space? I stood up and stepped onto the landing to stand upright and stretch after being a pretzel for too long and big fluffy Sophie marched in, hesitated and did the expanding-accordion-cat-stretch with big eyes at what was making that noise in the closet. Before I could move, still trying to get the blood to flow to my feet, in she went and I heard her announcement meow and she came back out with expanding foam all over her lips and nose. I wiped it off, combed it out of her fur and called Poison Control and the emergency vet who both told me that I could observe her for changes in her personality in case she started acting odd. Sophie was always odd, how to tell? As it turns out, she was fine, even though I know she’d licked it and ingested fumes.
Oh my gosh! That is scary!
Okay, this brings up a big question. Anyone with more knowledge on the subject than I have, please feel free to chime in. There is a C.E.T. AquaDent water additive made for helping to keep your pet’s teeth clean, and xylitol is clearly listed in the ingredients. I have contacted Virbac, and they assure me there is no danger at all to my pet’s health when using this because if you administer the dosage correctly, there is no issue with toxicity. I find this confusing, given the fact that xylitol is a Very.Bad.Thing in the dog world. Anyone have insight? And does anyone have a preferred water additive that is equally effective and that their dogs will actually drink? Thank you!!!
I went through the same thing. I just stopped recommending it. What if you don’t administer the dose correctly? Who wants that liability?
Hmm, I never thought about it from the owner’s point of view that they are embarrased and feel the need to apologize. We’re not judging, it happens! You didn’t SHOVE the prozac/tampon/DeCon/underwear/chocolate/gum/ibuprofen down your animal’s throat! Lol.
All I ask is that when you call, make sure you have the mg dosage, the estimated number of pills, or what kind of chocoate and how much, or the type of rat poison, etc… ’cause you better believe while you are on your way with your dog, it helps your vet and vet tech in researching in the books or calling Posion Control, and readying the antidote/charcoal/apomorphine.
🙂
SO true. Bring any packaging in- oh geez, the rat/gopher/ant stuff especially.
One of my cats, Souixsie, likes to play with her food (dry kibble) before she eats it & one night I woke with a horrible headache & stumbled half asleep into the bathroom & grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen – yes the generic ones area about the same size & shape of her dry kibble – in the semi darkness, I dropped several. Of course Souixsie had followed me into the bathroom curious as to why I had kicked her out of bed in my struggle to get out of bed. She immediately pounced on the fallen pills so I flip the light on & start yelling and run to the bed for my glasses which are on the side table. Did I mention I am pretty close to completely blind with out them? So by now my boyfriend is up too because of the lights and my yelling. I snatch up the confused & slightly scared cat & frantically look for the fallen pills… not even sure how many I dropped!! Can’t find a single one. My boyfriend looks and he finds one but I am certain I dropped more than that! SO I call the emergency vet & they tell me to use a medicine syringe (no needle) to and give her hydrogen peroxide as this will made her vomit. So…. we hold her down & force whatever amount the vet told us down her throat & she is by now so upset because I am upset & forcing vile liquid down her throat that she vomited & pooped (runny poo…. ewewee) all over us & herself. I think I stayed up the rest of the night forcing her to let me hold her to make sure she was ok. Next day I found 3 pills under the vanity – so chances are she didn’t eat any of them at all. 🙁
Poor kid did not follow me into the bathroom again for a very long time!
Oh, but you did the right thing. Ibuprofen- scary! Poor kitty learned a lesson there!
This morning Bama my shepherd/pyrenees lapped up some cod liver oil. I did talk to the vet who said that he only swallowed enough to be yucky or have loose poop. I figured they were having a good laugh.
I can’t imagine voluntarily eating cod liver oil. 😀
Madee has consumed the following: several rabbits, which of course gets a trip to the vets for deworming meds; a bag of peanuts, the outcome from which was not pleasant (can we say chunky peanut butter?); a bag of chocolate macaroon candies; a rag (threw it up quite quickly); a bar of soap (really nauseated after that, but sweet smelling vomit); almost an entire raw roast of beef … she munches on tree bark this time of year which usually meant the 3:00 a.m. upchucking; many other things … she is after all, a lab!
That does indeed sound like a lab! Ha!
Scary! Things do happen. I’m soooooo glad everything turned out okay 🙂 Luckily, my pets have not eaten things they shouldn’t (knock on wood).
Lucky you! My dogs are such scroungers.
So glad Brody and Koa are okay, if not highly annoyed. 🙂
Dakota likes to eat spiders and flies, which are problematic for her. Within seconds of ingesting a fly she will vomit profusely. It’s quite disgusting.
The spiders are a bit more problematic. When we first moved to SF we had a deck at the back of our apartment that sat under a tree that was apparently infested with spiders. No matter what we did, they always somehow found their way into our apartment. About a week after we noticed this happening Dakota got very sick. She was lethargic, wouldn’t eat, was vomiting clear liquid. We took her to the 24 hour vet up the street from us and they were stumped. I didn’t put two and two together and so the vets did xrays, ran blood tests, everything. Despite nothing in her x-ray showing this to be true, one (new) vet told us that she must have a string wrapped around her stomach (bowels?) that would require surgery and that she might not make it. I was so upset because I used to play with them with string. I thought, “I killed her!” (I’m very dramatic like that.) A couple of hours later the new vet left and our regular vet came in. He looked at her blood work, her x-rays and then did a full exam on her. I don’t know what he saw but he told us they’d keep her on fluids another day and that she’d be able to go home the next day. We asked him about the string and he was confused why we’d think that. When we picked her up the next day he told us, “she likely ate a spider.” Doh!
To this day if I see her stalking a bug, you can hear me screaming, “Dakota! No. Get away from there! Damn you cat!!” as I run toward her hoping that I beat her to the punch.
Spiders! Ugh!!
I’m a hydrogen peroxide kind of girl, myself, and used it on the occasion that my Puli ate a rather large chocolate Easter Bunny under the bed. Disinclined to share it with me, she dug her twenty toenails into the carpeting which left distinct groves behind as I dragged her out to administer – yum! hydrogen peroxide. It took two doses but she produced the desired results, and by golly, she’d eaten a lot of the rabbit. Strangely enough, she developed an aversion to brown bottles from that point on.
For some reason I read this as, you left a chocolate Easter bunny under the bed, and I wondered why you would do such a thing.
I was at work when I realized my corgi almost certainly could get at a mostly-full bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. (I was NOT the one who left them within her reach….)
I dashed home, to find the bag torn and empty, and the dog feeling like she’d had enough to eat, for once.
The vet gave me activated charcoal, and asked me if she’d eat it, if it were mixed with canned dog food. “Oh yes,” said I. So I mixed up this dish of black goo, and presented it to her. She took a sniff, and said it smelled good, but she really wasn’t hungry just then.
I’d forgotten, when I assured the vet she’d eat it, that she’d had 5000 calories worth of chocolate already that afternoon……
So she lay by the dish, guarding it from her “sister,” who was dancing around saying SHE would eat it!!!!!!!
Eventually we gave up, and picked up the dish.
As others have said, we can make this into a funny story, because no harm ensued.
She was uncomfortable from being too full. She tried lying this way, that way, another way, but couldn’t find a position that worked. Even belly up just wasn’t good.
The next day she was fine.
Did that put her off eating chocolate? Hah. Not a chance. Luckily she never got the opportunity to eat that much of it again; I’m sure she would have oinked it down without a backwards glance.
I love that even though your dog was stuffed she still had to guard the food. In case she changed her mind.
My dog Dizzy once chewed open a little sewing kit. Got home to find pins, needles and thread everywhere. No idea how she got through that one unscathed. Just yesterday I came home to find that miss Cinder had chewed open a plastic container of drawing pens. She didn’t chew any of the pens open where the ink is, she just chewed the plastic clicker part off of every single pen!
Silly pup! Must have liked the clicking.
Candi, my beloved black lab/border collie/husky ‘blend’, ate 2 pounds of dark chocolate covered cherries five days before Christmas. She was 3 months old, and was supposed to be my Christmas present – but my Dad gave in and I picked her out in October. He had left the box of chocolates on the table, and she pulled out a chair, jumped up, and ate it. Off to the emergency vets with a very bloated puppy. Thank goodness I didn’t hear about it until after the fact. She was fine. She had a garbage-disposal stomach, which is apparently a lab thing. Candi passed in 2005. She was 16 and enjoyed life every day. It’s apparently raining in here, so I’m ending this post.
Aw… (((( )))) I hate rainy days.
Aw… (((( )))) I hate rainy days.
On the guilty human front…..
Years ago I had a 10 mg loritab in my hand and dropped it. I heard “bounce bounce bounce” and then nothing. Turned my head and my 13 lb shih tzu was sittin there looking at me. After looking for the pill for 10 minutes and not finding it I panicked over the “what if?” and rushed my dog to the vet, beyond hysterical, where they made my poor baby- in the vet’s words- “throw up everything but her name”. Neither they, nor I, ever found that errant pill. And I cried for three days. But my dog had home-cooked food for three weeks after that! I felt like the.worst.mom.ever.
I don’t remember that story!
Dory got a bottle of generic benadryl. I didn’t realize anything was wrong – she had the first seizure on the way back from a trip to the park so we went to the vet immediately. She had a second seizure at the vet’s office and of course they asked if she ingested anything. I said no since I had no clue. When I returned home, I found a chewed bottle of the benadryl and could only find 60 of 100 pills. I realize how lucky I (and she) was and still feel guilty about it to this day 1 1/2 years later.
Oh goodness! And benadryl is a hard one to OD on.
Oh goodness! And benadryl is a hard one to OD on.
I am so happy that your babies are ok and I also hugely appreciate your honesty/candor. It makes me feel better to read that even a VET makes mistakes!!!
I think I have TWO “worst” things that my almost 5 yr old dog has ever eaten
1) part of a plastic CD case
2) part of my cell phone
Thankfully BOTH times he was fine!!
Once again THANK YOU for this post!
Your dog is pretty darn good! 😀
Your dog is pretty darn good! 😀
As a vet student, I was more than mortified when, after a lovely dinner out with my parents last Christmas, we arrived home to find that our Newfie (who’s really a Lab in Newfie fur) had gotten into the Christmas stockings. Her take included a pack of sugar-free Trident and 2 bonus-size boxes of Mike and Ikes. After doing a mad Internet search to see if Trident contained Xylitol, I found nothing. Because Xylitol isn’t toxic to humans, companies aren’t required to list it as an ingredient. So I called the 24-hour clinic, where they told me to keep an eye on her and bring her in if I thought she was showing signs of hypoglycemia. And that that her additional snack of the Mike and Ikes probably counteracted whatever effect the Xylitol may have. Lab in a Newfie coat. With colorful, fake fruit-colored poop.
Well, at least he was considerate enough to top off with some glucose. lol!
Well, at least he was considerate enough to top off with some glucose. lol!
I had just posted an article a couple years ago about all the flowers that are poisonous to cats. Within a week Abigail was nomming on Lillies that were given to me as a gift…. oopsie. She was fine and everything turned out okay but…. HA! some expert!!!
Oh, the lillies are sneaky, aren’t they?
Oh, the lillies are sneaky, aren’t they?
Roommates Bloodhound Trixie is a goat. So far no emergency vet runs but she has eaten the Sheetrock from the wall, chewed unopened cans of tuna: how she didn’t break a tooth is beyond me, and at least 3 bras that I know of. Glad your dogs are alright and nice to know that vets are human too. lol.
Unopened tuna! That is dedication!
Unopened tuna! That is dedication!
My brother’s golden holds the family record for ingesting an entire ACE bandage. He didn’t discover it until it had sliced up his entire GI tract from the stomach to the anus. The dog lost several feet of intestines that night and a few more about a year later.
Oh my goodness! That is terrifying. Poor thing.
Oh my goodness! That is terrifying. Poor thing.
anyone who claims perfection is lying to themselves 🙂 my MIL gave my husband a stone to carry in his pocket as a reminder of “who is without sin, cast the first stone”; thanks for sharing; glad it ended up with laughs on not tears
my dog got into insulation once….
I may have to take a stone myself. Good idea.
I may have to take a stone myself. Good idea.
I love the sentence about the poking (are you dead?) on a slepping dog. Many is the time I’ve done that for one terror or the other. Fortunately it always resuted in one live pissed off pup!
And well worth the irritation!
And well worth the irritation!
And here I thought you WERE perfect. Welcome to the human race! I’m glad everyone is fine.
That sound you hear is the tinkling laughter of everyone who’s spent more than a day with me. 😀
That sound you hear is the tinkling laughter of everyone who’s spent more than a day with me. 😀
Maybe I’ve just been lucky?! (It sure as heck not that I have my life put together!) So far neither dog has gotten into anything too terrible. Felix once ate like a third of a jar of peanut butter that my hubby left out…no bad side effects. He just smelled delicious – like a peanut butter cookie all night.
Ah, at least he has good taste. 🙂
My 1-yr-old lab ate a plate of fried onions that had been left on the counter for two minutes while I was in the basement putting laundry in the dryer. I had heard that onions weren’t good for dogs, but didn’t know if that meant poisonous or just unhealthy. When I called the emergency clinic and said she had eaten about 3 cupsful, they said to bring her in immediately as onions cause red blood cells to rupture in dogs (hemolysis?). Who knew? Luckily, they were able to make her vomit and give her charcoal before she digested too much of it. Another time she ate an entire loaf of bread, including the bag. Made for an interesting cleanup the next day!
Oh goodness! Why do they always eat the toxic stuff?
Yikes! Glad they’re ok!
One of my friend’s (well-adjusted) boxers ate a hefty amount of her mother-in-law’s Prozac once. To this day, she doesn’t know which one. Still makes us all laugh to think about. A cry for help, perhaps?
My cats (thankfully) haven’t gotten into too much. Lucy is obsessed with plastic bags and curling ribbon, so I just try to keep it out of her reach. I have to store Christmas gifts in the closet or in my trunk. No one really likes opening their presents when they have to untie shredded, drool-soaked ribbon…
Prozac- well, at least he was happy. 😀
When my two eat something they shouldn’t, it’s never anything truly edible, even by Human standards. My little girl, a 50lb mutt, has a fascination for my fiancee’s ear plugs and my hair elastics. My Newf on the other hand … nerf darts were the easiest, those passed through. He spent his second birthday having a Boston Terrier sized Cuz ball (you know, the soft rubber with the feet and the ears ….) removed from his stomach endoscopicly at the local emergency hospital.
Then there was the best thing the two of them didn’t actually eat. I was at work (in a vet’s office!) and the Fiancee had folks over working on sewing projects. Someone carelessly left a “pin tomato” on the coffee table when they went out to lunch. Sure enough, they got home and the tomato’s on the bed, pins scattered everywhere. 3 x-rays and two annoyed dogs later, everyone was still in tact with nothing shiny floating about in their innards.
My point of view is this: it’s all fun and games when you can laugh about it afterwards, but while it’s happening you’re likely to burn out your adrenal gland…
Brody loves earplugs too. And yes, in the moment it’s not particularly funny at all.
my husband the dog-hypochondriac just sent me your blog… We have two dogs, one who is always sick (lucy) and one who is always causing trouble (mortimer). Once, mortimer ate an entire large box of raisins that he got out of the cupboard and off the shelf, so we rushed him to the Vet ER to have his stomach pumped. he was fine… for 24 hours, until he climbed on the counter, chewed open the bottle containing lucy’s allergy medication, left the container on the ground but ate all the pills… Back to the Vet ER to have his stomach pumped, for the 2nd time in 48 hours…. lead stomach that one…. (needles to say, everything is up in high cupboards now, requiring step ladders… that much he hasn’t figured out!)
Oh no! Twice in two days!!
Well maybe not the worst thing but Chauncy (Labrador) ate a $100 bill. I had come home with 7 $100 bills and put them on the kitchen table for my husband. A few hrs later he asked if I had counted the money because there was only $600.. The money has been scattered on the table and two bills had been on the floor. We looked but no money so we assumed one of the dogs (3 Labs) had eaten it.. We confined them all to the yard and sure enough we found the $100 dollar bill in 6 pieces. Hosed it off, dried it, put in in a plastic bag and the teller at the bank laughed so hard I thought she was going to pass out.. Other than the fact it was torn it looked the same..
Another Christmas story–my pug/shar pei mix ate half a bag of whole coffee beans that he pulled out from under the tree. No harm done, but Oscar was hyper to begin with and all that coffee didn’t help the situation!