Doodle Doings

More often than you would imagine if you are a breeder!

Last week Marley, who is hopefully due with puppies on 2/16/10, threw up some bile when her stomach was empty in the morning, so I am hoping it was morning sickness!  I’ve started giving her a small meal in the morning in addition to her usual meal at night, and that seems to be working as she has not thrown up since I started the morning meal. Of course, the other dogs do not understand why Marley is suddenly getting special treatment.  The look they gave me when I fed her in the morning was partly confused, partly affronted.  So I started tossing them each a half dozen bits of kibble and they seemed fine with that.  Luckily my dogs can’t count, as Marley is getting way more than 6 pieces of kibble!

There are other occasions when puking has been a happy thing.  A long time ago I remember walking into the kitchen one evening and finding an empty coffee bag on the floor.  This was at a time when money was in especially short supply, but we had splurged and bought a bag of chocolate flavored coffee beans.  Not a bean was in evidence, however.

I had two dogs at the time, a 16 year old Lab named ‘Ben’, and a 12 year old Lab named ‘Shady’.  Shady NEVER took things off the counter, and Ben had a history of that kind of thing, so I knew Ben was the culprit.  I freaked out.  That much caffeine would cause cardiac arrest in an elephant; I was sure my aged dog, who had cancer and was a shadow of his former self (his normal weight was 65 lbs and he weighed about 45 at this point) was doomed.  I called poison control at Children’s Hospital and asked what to do, and was told to give him hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting.  I had no hydrogen peroxide.  I ran 3 blocks to the corner carryout and grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide off the shelf, dashed to the cash register, and found a line of 6 people waiting to check out.  I pocketed the bottle without paying and ran home.  Per the instructions from poison control, I gave Ben 2 tablespoons  of the H2O2, which caused lots of foaming, but no vomiting.  Another 2 tablespoons, more foaming, no vomiting.  Panicked,  I opened his mouth and just started pouring from the bottle.  Sure enough, up came the coffee beans.  They looked the same as when they were in the bag, he apparently had not chewed at all but had gulped them whole. It briefly occurred to me that I could rinse them off…….but no…..bad idea…..into the trash they went. It was actually a lucky thing that it was beans and not ground coffee he had consumed, as ground coffee would have allowed much more caffeine to be absorbed into his bloodstream and he likely would have died before I made it back from the carry-out.  I have never been without hydogen peroxide in my cupboard since that day. And I did go back to the carry-out a week later and paid for the bottle I had shoplifted.  The clerk looked at me like I was nuts.

I’ve used it more than once on my dogs since then!  Another time I was unloading groceries from the car on to the kitchen counter when a neighbor came to the door.  I talked with her for a few minutes, and when I went back into the kitchen there was a bag on the floor, and a naked set of grape stems.  Completely stripped, not a grape left.  Grapes can be very toxic to dogs; in some dogs, even a few grapes has been known to cause kidney failure.  There were three dogs in the kitchen, all looking at me with innocent expressions.  I went from one to the other, sniffing their mouths to see if anyone had ‘grape breath’.  No good.  Grapes don’t leave much odor on the breath!  So I again grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a few minutes later I had three puking dogs.  It turned out that only ONE of the dogs had eaten the grapes, and I felt really bad for making the other dogs puke when they really had done nothing to deserve it. Ah well.  Such is the life of a dog.