Oh What a Night

It wasn’t a fun one, in fact it was quite scary.

Last night we broke out the grill for the first time in a while. David cooked up some yummy chicken breasts. I went outside one time and found Moose going to town eating the old ashes and crud in the catch tray under the grill. I shooed her off and didn’t think anything else of it. Round two of having a lab puppy, you learn to not sweat a lot of what they eat because they eat everything. Rocks, sticks, grass, bugs, charcoal ash, remotes, you name it.

Well around 10:00 me and Remi were chilling on the couch watching Pioneer Woman’s cooking show (love that lady) and we hear Moose hacking down the hall. Although it didn’t sound like her regular hacking. It was a sound of trying to upchuck without anything coming out. And it went on long enough, probably 1 minute or so, that I started to get super worried because it didn’t seem like she could breathe. You know how that is when you’re trying to throw up, you can’t catch a breath until something finally comes out. Well, I even picked her up and did a Heimlich on her because it just sounded like whatever she was trying to get out, was stuck.

That did nothing. She kept doing that awful upchucking sound and finally got a little something up. Very little. This continued on for several more episodes and she kept throwing up from then on, but then the piles were huge liquid ashy stuff. Sorry, TMI I know.

I started to get even more worried and she’d turned to eating lots of grass out back to settle her stomach. Then she of course threw up a heaping mound of grass. So then I wouldn’t let her go outside because I knew she’d throw that up again, so instead she was crawling around whining trying to eat the carpet. She was doing the strangest whine though, not an “I’m bored and want attention whine, but one that sounded like she was in pain.

It was breaking my heart because I didn’t know how to help her.

She kept doing this swallowing thing too and was just sounding so raspy. At this point it’s about midnight and David is up too. It was off and on sleep and watching her until about 2:00 AM when it just seemed to still be getting worse.

I then googled about dogs eating charcoal ash and of course that’s not a good thing to do. I kept seeing stuff about a lot of it being toxic and then I realized this might be more than just an upset stomach. We called the two 24 hour emergency animal clinics and ended up taking her to the one closest to my house. We just wanted to get her checked out because she was having such a hard time breathing and we didn’t know if anything had gotten in her lungs.

We took her to the place and long story short, there wasn’t anything they could really do for her. They checked her vitals and felt around but she seemed okay from the outside. They offered x-rays and blood tests but by this point, she seemed to be doing better. We were there for about an hour and by the time we left, she seemed to have gotten it out of her system and was herself again.

Maybe she needed a change of scenery? Who knows. But it cost us a $120 field trip at 2 AM to make her feel better, which was worth it. We got home around 3:45 and were exhausted. David had to be at work at 7:30, but I decided to call in to go in later around 10 so I could keep an eye on her. She was her perfectly fine self this morning and I’m so glad she’s okay.

 

Tired Mommy and Daddy! And gosh she looks huge there!

She finally decided to get some sleep.

Now onto the semi-funny part of this story.

So we’d now been up for about 4 hours in the middle of the night. When we got home I went to let both dogs out back for one last potty before bed again.

I turned on the light and opened the back door for both of them to shoot out of the house faster than the ladies wanting the good sales on black Friday!

They went after a possum! David was in the bathroom and I yelled “David!!! Help!!!” because the last thing I need is the dogs getting bit by a possum with rabies. That is, if possums can transfer rabies. Nobody thinks those things through at 4:00 AM. We ran out after the dogs and I screamed at them to come and pulled them back enough and picked them up to find the poor little possum playing dead. He was just out enjoying the evening and all the sudden the light flips on and two big black blobs come all up in his business. And I’m sure I woke up all the neighbors with my hollering.

Then we all went to sleep and that was the end. Needless to say I didn’t get my run in this morning…

Crazy town I tell ya!