February 1, 2007

It was not a good morning. Sarah woke me up for work, and said “It’s time to get up, go out and have some breakfast and when you finish I have something to show you.” I knew it was regarding the dog.

After I ate, Sarah got out one of our extra containers that used to have parmesan cheese in it. Inside was a big piece of poop with a very long white something in it. She asked me if that was a worm, and I said that it is really the only thing it could be, it was really white and very long. We were upset, and thought maybe this was related to the growling. Sarah promised she would come home at a decent hour to get the puppy down to Banfield to check him out, and hopefully get him on the wellness plan.

Sarah was with him today though everything, she got Lori to watch the classroom and came home to be with at lunch, and when I got home they were gone to the vet. When Sarah got back shortly after me, the puppy was very sleepy, and Sarah was very upset, monotonously petting the dog in the same way and her eyes were bloodshot. I asked her what they said, and she said “Well, we have a very sick puppy” as she started to choke up.

She had taken the stool with her, and they confirmed that he had tape worm, and they did some tests on the stool and said that he has some bacteria that is consistent with parvovirus. This is a very serious disease that will eat away the intestinal lining, killing a dog in a matter of days. But don’t forget the worms, normally you won’t even see them, they just get eaten up by the acid, but when the case is advanced enough they can come out in his stool. So, we had a ton to think about. The parvovirus test at Banfield would be available during the day tomorrow, or not until Saturday. They didn’t have many of the test left, and it made things even harder. He could die so quick if it wasn’t caught early, but it was hard to just take the day off or work to get this test done, we didn’t have any sure answers.

We had gone through scenarios in our head of what could have happened. Even though he was eating less, he had started this weird habit of sitting to the side of the trash, looking up and whining. Even though he had made it into a seemingly too high paper recycle box, we knew there was no way he had gotten into the trash. We couldn’t figure it out, but figured it had no bearing on what was going on with him. (It wasn’t until later that we figured out he knew that his food sat up on the rolling shelf, and that he was looking up thinking about getting something to eat.)

He slept some more tonight, they had given him an oral medicine to help with the worms, so we are hoping he feels better tomorrow. We started putting chicken stock in his food to help him eat it, and even then he didn’t eat all of it. He must feel just terrible, and we felt horrible that he was having such a hard time. We did get some play out of him tonight, and treasured it that much more knowing what he was going through.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Column 13 – Part 2
• February 2, 2007
• February 9, 2007
• February 5, 2007
• February 7, 2007

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