"He's going to be okay!" Said Dr. Dutton. "Phew, really? Thank goodness!" I exclaimed. That's exactly what Dr. Dutton confirmed that Eli was going to be just fine. "I showed him a trash can and he turned his nose away," joked Dr. Dutton. I couldn't help but laugh! It wasn't really a laughing matter, after all the poor thing couldn't poop and all he could do was throw up and make us worry, heavily panting in our ears begging us to go outside all night long because he didn't feel well. What the hell is wrong with our dog? A few days later and $2,000 in the hole, we knew what was wrong. Our retriever had turned into a canine garbage disposal.
Yep, you name it the good doctor pulled it out of our dog. A couple of weeks before, we had taken a ride to the one of those industrial size pet stores. We walked out of there with bones and a really cool dog toy I mean it was awesome! It had two types of rope wrapped around like a braid and then had a tennis ball at the end! Great toy for the pups! Let's buy it! Great toy my ass! If I had an inkling of what was to come in the weeks ahead, we should have just wrote a check to the pet store for the money instead of where it really went!
On our way home we thought we had the puppy toy of the century! They'll never destroy this. This is made of durable rope and plastic! Yeah, our dogs are going to love this toy!! Oh yeah, they loved it alright! They pulled it, the ripped on it, they fought over it, they even had their own version of tug-o-war....yep, that toy was their favorite....did I mention that it only took an hour for them to pull it apart? Yeah didn't tell you that part did I? Well, we picked up all the pieces as they came off, the tennis ball turned into used chewed up AstroTurf and was everywhere all around the house. I must have vacuumed and swept for days to keep up with the mess. My hubby finally took it away from them because they had utterly destroyed it. So it stays in a basket up on top of the fridge where they can't reach it.
One Friday night I just happened to look at the war toy in the basket and saw that there was only a small portion of it left. Thinking to myself, I didn't pick up that much of the chewed toy that there would only be a small piece remaining. I thought about it and figured well, the dogs seem okay, they'll just magically poop out whatever if they ingested small parts of it. We find pieces of all kinds of things out in the yard.
Pant, pant, pant...in my face...it's midnight, Eli wants out. That's strange. He's never done that before. Sean decides to take him out, he comes back into the house and reports Eli has the worst case of diarrhea. On the hour the pup had to go outside. Hot, tired and just miserable. We finally made the decision that he had to go to the vet, our Eli just wasn't feeling good. Got up on Monday morning, put him in the car. Boy was he a happy little camper, we're going for a ride and he eagerly jumped in, not suspecting where he was going. He was even happy to go inside and visit the vet....until we had to leave him there for the day.
The usual x-rays, upper GI tests were done and then they even did a barium which takes hours to see if there is anything in the tummy since the x-ray couldn't find anything like rocks or metal. Finally, Dr. Dutton reports that he can't see it but there was something blocking the barium test. He said to be sure, they want to go in and remove whatever it was. There was a definite foreign body in there! So I gave him the okay to perform surgery on our yellow. I was hoping this wasn't going to happen but he is a young pup and has many years left him, we couldn't bare to think of putting our Eli down because he had eaten something. Check out the pic below, that's what was in our boy!
The surgery went well and 12 inches of incision later, our boy was resting comfortably. I'll tell ya, I'm a better house cleaner now and our trash can stays up on the counter at all times....24/7. Dr. Dutton called to make the report of what they had found and even gave us a picture to hang on our fridge as a souvenir. Thanks Dr. Dutton,...just what we wanted.... but a good reminder to keep a better eye on what the dogs are doing. Not only did they find half of the rope toy and parts of the ball in his stomach, but a large wad of hair from a hairbrush, Hmmm, yes I had just cleaned the hairbrushes the other morning and threw it out in the bathroom trash, a full wine cork with no chew marks meaning he swallowed it whole, pieces of plastic from several bottles, toothpicks and wood! OMG! We're the worst doggy parents ever! How could we have missed all that? How???? The vet laughed, (I pictured him evilly twisting his make-believe moustache as he skips all the way to the freaking bank!) Obviously deserved, since he saved our dog's life. But he said this is your typical Labrador. They are not the smartest of the canine species, they love to chew and get into trouble. Their favorite thing in the world is getting into the trash. Big sigh of relief but not for our wallet. There will be no family vacation this year, but at least our yellow lab is better and healthy and it's okay....we can always stay home and throw a Frisbee at our dogs for fun. Oh wait, I should just run down to the bank and pull out another $2,000 and send it to Wham-O. ;)
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