Flashback Friday: Jager's Accidental Overdose

I've managed to let the past two Fridays slip by with nary a Flashback, and I just couldn't let it happen again! So, here is another Jager story for you.  As you may remember, Jager finds just about everything edible.  Her credits include chapstick, an unused pregnancy test, clorox wipes, and 20 PB&J sandwiches.  However, her most infamous - not to mention most dangerous and expensive - incident occurred two years ago on this, the Friday before Thanksgiving. 


On that Friday, Jason and I had gone out to dinner after work.  We arrived home to pools of dog vomit all over the hallway and living room.  It was like a crime scene unfolding before our eyes.  With each step we saw another, and another pool of vomit.   We quickly realized that she had gotten into something, so we began scouring the house for evidence.  I don't remember who discovered it, but one of us got to the bedroom at the back of the house first, and there it was - an empty bottle of Ibuprofen.  It was a large bottle of 200mg gel caps, one of the 80 count ones and it had been a little over half full when we left that morning.  We figured that she had consumed somewhere around 50 caplets - a total of 10,000 mg of Ibuprofen.  Yikes.

We called animal poison control and were told to monitor her for stomach ulcers and kidney failure.  At first she seemed her usual, peppy self, but by Sunday morning, she refused to go outside, would hardly leave our bed and was peeing all over the house.  We did some research on-line and found out that Malox could help dogs with potential stomach ulcers, so we went and got some.  And here's the funny part - our dog, who eats literally everything, balked at the Malox.  She clamped her lips closed, and when we forcefully opened them and poured in the MAlox, she shoved her tongue to the roof of her mouth and forced it back out again, spitting out showers of chalky, white Malox. Then she ran away with her tail between her legs.  To this day, shake a bottle of Malox in front of this dog and she runs for the hills.  And they say dogs have no memory.

Anyway, we finally took her to the vet on Monday morning.  Before we set out, we determined that she had a budget of $500 - that's all we could afford to pay.  When the vet examined her he found that she had extreme kidney failure and bleeding stomach ulcers.  And, even though she had been drinking water vociferously, she was severely dehydrated because the ulcers kept her stomach from absorbing the water she drank.  He admitted her overnight and gave her IV fluids and antibiotics.  The total - $580. Ok, we figured, we can handle that.

The next day, however, the vet called back to say that she could not keep food down and would therefore have to stay another few days - probably until Thursday, but since that was Thanksgiving and they were closed, they would keep her until Friday but not charge us the extra day.  The total for the remaining four days - $500.  Well, here's the thing.  At this point, we had already invested over $500 into our dog.  So if we brought her home early, we had the possibility of losing not only our dog, but also our $500!  So, we dug deep and paid the additional $500.  

Yep, that's right, we spent over a $1000 on our dog - we are those people.  But the thing is, she is part of our family, and at the time, we had no children.  We realized then, though, that if we had had children, we would not have been able to make that choice.  Lucky for her, we could, and we did, and she has now made a full recovery (though her bladder control was never quite the same). 

Fortunately, we've since learned our lesson.  We do a "Jager check" every time we leave the house, just to be sure that we haven't left anything tempting.  And we've learned to expand our definition of what is edible, because with a dog like Jager, you just never know.

Flashback Friday: The Doggy Garbage Disposal

Hmm, I guess this is "post about my animals" week here at the Wells Family, because this Flashback Friday is about the exploits of my dog Jager. Jager is a mix of several breads, but her primary breads are Lab and Rhodesian Ridgeback. She is high energy, extremely friendly (some might even call her aggressively friendly) and more or less a doggy version of a vacuum. This dog eats anything and everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING. I've often stared in wonder at dogs who pick at their food, leaving some for later. This is not my dog. She wolfs her food down the moment it is set in front of her, and no amount seems to be enough. She also has a non-discriminating palate - she has consumed such things as chapstick, Clorox wipes, and even a pregnancy test (unused). But this post is about one particularly absurd instance of consumption.

It occurred in the summer of 2006 while Jason and I were working at camp. Jager was living there with us, and my general routine was to walk her from our tent up to my office where I fed her and left her for the morning. On one particularly hectic morning, I took her up to the office and didn't have a chance to feed her right away. What I didn't realize at the time was that our bag lunch from the day before was still in the office. About twice a week we got bag lunches (or as we called them, crate lunches since they were served in milk crates). These usually consisted of some carrot sticks, a few apples, and an entire bread sleeve full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. These were not ordinary bread sleeves - no, they were the sleeves that housed institutional-sized loaves of bread, usually around 35 slices. So a full sleeve of PB&J sandwiches included about 20. Now, this was also the end of the summer and we could hardly bear the sight of a PB&J, much less eat one. (Imagine if you had been served PB&J on cheap, dry, wheat bread twice a week all summer long.) So that sleeve from the previous day's lunch was pretty much untouched, and contained the full 20 sandwiches.

You can probably see where this is going. When I returned to the office, I fed Jager and was dumbfounded when she barely even picked at her food. Then I saw the crate and what was left of the sandwiches. All but two were gone - eaten in their entirety. Jager was moping around and licking her lips, so I shook my head at her and gave her some water. She finished that and wanted more, so I gave it to her. In my naivete, I probably gave her five or six bowls of water, not realizing that I was only compounding the situation. Jason had been off running some errands, and by the time he returned, Jager's poor belly was twice it's normal size. He, knowing much more about the dangers that can befall the overeating dog, immediately fear bloat (a condition in which a dog's stomach turns over on itself) and rushed her to the vet's.

By now, we're both worried that she has this awful condition that costs $1,000s to reverse and isn't even guaranteed. We knew we didn't have the money for the procedure, so I think we were both preparing ourselves that we may be saying goodbye to our beloved dog.

As it turned out, she did not have bloat, which an x-ray confirmed. The vet did, however, need to clear her stomach, so they induced vomiting. Upon her arrival at the vet's she weighed in at 93 lbs. After she vomited, she weighed 74 lbs - that's right, she consumed 19 lbs of PB&J and water. Fortunately, the x-ray and vomit-inducing medicine only cost about $200 - a far more affordable price than we had anticipated.

For a while, this was Jager's claim to fame - she was the dog who ate 18 PB&J sandwiches. But don't worry, because a few years later, she topped it. That's a story for another day, however.

Baby Down!

Last weekend, Jason, Cy and I drove up to Seattle so that all of our Washington-dwelling family could meet our newest addition. Jason's cousin John and his wife Sandy were kind enough to host us and a little gathering on Saturday. They have two boys, a 5 year old and 2 year old, and twin girls on the way. On two different occassions, John held Cy, and we all got a taste of how his youngest boy would react to new babies - jealous! As soon as John picked up Cy, his little boy began frantically insisting "Baby down, baby down!" until John handed Cy back over to one of us. I suppose the reaction is fairly common for little ones.

Well, last night we encountered the dog version of "Baby down". For the past several weeks, Jager and Cy have pretty much just been co-existing. Jager sometimes tries to lick his feet, and at times even seems a bit protective of him, but really hasn't shown much interest in general. Last night, we decided that maybe they should interact a little more. Afterall, both are part of our family, and we want Cy to be comfortable around dogs. So, put Cy on the floor, and had Jager come over and lie down next to him. That went all right, so we tried propping Cy up on Jager. That seemed ok for a few minutes, until Jager suddenly got up and walked away. Jason was holding Cy on the ground and I was sitting on the couch. Jason tried calling Jager over to lie on the floor next to him, and she promptly turned around, came over to me, and sat down. As Jason kept trying to get her to come over to him, she became more and more insistant on my attention. First she put her head on my lap and nudged my hand. Then put one paw in my lap. Finally, she put both paws in my lap and pulled herself to standing, practically getting in my lap. No matter what Jason said, she would not go to him, and she insisted that I pet her.

I guess this is her way of saying, Enough about the baby, pay attention to ME! She hasn't gotten hostile, for which I am grateful, but I am curious to see if this behavior will subside, or if she will keep insisting "Baby down". Has anyone else had luck getting their pets to interact with a new baby?

Who's really in control here?

Our dog Jager has started to take some liberties as of late.  She is a five year old Rhodesian Ridgeback mix who (as with many dogs) seems to think that, if she is not human, than she at least deserves to be treated like one. Although very hyper, she is generally well behaved.  She has started to actually follow directions when we tell her to go lie down, and she dutifully stays out of the kitchen (at least when we're home).  One of her rules is that she is not allowed on the furniture unless invited up.  Quite often, she will beg with big cute eyes until we invite her up, especially on the bed.  Once up, she successfully takes over the entire bed and flops around in pure doggy bliss until we get tired of flailing paws and send her off.  Usually she obeys right away, though sometimes she seems to think that if she curls up at the end of the bed, makes herself really small and looks at us with big pleading eyes then we will let her stay up.  I have to admit, sometimes this works for a little while longer.

When we're both awake, she almost never gets on the bed without an invitation.  Lately, Jason has been getting up before me and Jager has taken this as an open invitation to take his place.  I don't usually mind because she stays still and keeps me warm, so I let her stay.  She must have discovered that if she is quiet and stealth enough that she can get on the bed without us noticing, because the other morning Jason and I woke up to her curled up on the corner of the bed...neither of us had noticed her get up, though Jason did briefly think he had nerve damage when he woke up and couldn't move his legs...  See what I mean about liberties?

Well, tonight she topped it all.  Another one of Jager's problems is that she sometimes pees in the house when we are gone - in fact, we have lost many a rug to her daytime exploits.  Because we are gone so long, we don't like to keep her in her kennel all the time so we have taken to placing pee-pads in her favorite spots and she is now trained to use them should the urge require.  Up until tonight, she has politely reserved their use for daytime.  Tonight, however, as I am sitting on the couch working some things, I look over as she unashamedly squats on the pads and pees...right in front of me!  I yelled her name in shock, and she didn't even look worried.  

So, while our dog seems well behaved, I'm beginning to think that she listens just well enough for us to think that we are in control, when in fact she wears the proverbial pants in the household.  Hopefully we train our children slightly better...