Husband and I are pretty anxious right now to find out how our dog is doing at the vet. We had to take him there Thursday after three days of constant hurling after meals. The vet did x-rays and found him to be constipated and dehydrated. There is the possibility that he has an upper intestinal blockage of some sort, perhaps from the shards of an Icelandic lamb horn, or the Kong Wubba he chewed and destroyed over the weekend, or a mixture of both. He hasn’t had anything different to eat for the past couple of weeks. He has been drinking water like crazy, though. He typically doesn’t swallow what he destroys, so we can’t think what would have plugged him up.
It is hard to tell when a terrier is under the weather, as they typically don’t let you know they aren’t feeling well until they are half dead. Even before we took him to the vet he wanted to tug, steal things, and go for walks. They are giving him special IV’s to hydrate him and get his digestive system flowing, as it were. They will do surgery if that doesn’t work. I refuse to take as on omen that the flock of vultures on the local butte were circling our home as I wrote this.
What health issues have your pets had? How can you tell your pets or human companions aren’t feeling well?
Trail Baboon 
Kidney failire in two of our three cats.
My wife “wears her health on her sleeve,” so I always know how she’s feeling. No pets anymore. When I’m not feeling well I get quiet and a bit morose.
Chris in Owatonna
**BSP* Hey folks, if you’ll be in the St. Michael area tomorow, the Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime will be having our first group book fair at the St. Micheal City Hall tomorrow from 10-3. A panel discussion between four crime authors starts at ten, then you can browse and buy books from 35 SinC authors. I guarantee you’ll find something you’ll like because our authors write in quite diverse styles–cozy, detective, thrillers, psychological thrillers, romantic suspense, LBGTQ+, etc.
I know we authors will have a blast hanging out together, so come and join the fun and discover some great new authors you perhaps don’t know who live in the commuity. **END BSP**
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Husband’s colds are unmistakable. He has sinuses the size of the Carlsbad caverns, and the noises they produce are sometimes deafening
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The Birds are very healthy. It stresses them and me out when they get their annual vet checkup. I’ve learned to watch for clues to a sick bird. Since Budgies are a prey species, they will always hide how they are feeling. Knowing each one’s normal behavior is key to recognizing the abnormal.
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I can tell Husband is on the mend. He ihas grand plans for baking bread today and making Vermont baked beans from scratch. He also wants a gnocchi, asparagus, and leek dish for supper. Luckily we have shelf stable gnocchi in the larder.
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I only let our children stay home from school if they had fevers. I didn’t realize that for several years we had a defective thermometer that never got above 97.9 degrees. I unwittingly sent our children to school when they should have stayed home. They were not amused when I told them about the thermometer.
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My bassets were especially good at hiding pain from me – until it really was a crisis. Frenchies will yelp at acute pain, but otherwise seem much the same. Last summer when we found ourselves at the emergency vet with Sugar having to make the horrible decision no one wants to make, that vet said she was not surprised that our exam a month prior had shown a clean bill of health. Only symptom prior to that crisis was a couple of accidents in the house over the weekend – unusual, but wouldn’t have pegged it as a “that is a symptom of your dog having tumors that will have you at the ER vet in less than a week.” Funny little creatures, dogs.
Renee – I hope your pooch is on the mend and home with you soon!
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Thanks. No news as yet from the vet.
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One of our cats had kidney disease, had to have Science Diet’s K-D catfood. But we were really lucky in that none of our cats ever had major health problems, and were able to die peacefully at home when the time came.
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My kitty Zorro had crystals at a fairly young age and we put him on the special diet. When the kitten came along, I just could not keep him out of her food and eventually started giving him half the science diet and half the kitten food. And he was fine and I eventually switched him to all regular cat food. At that point when I told the vet she said oh yeah sometimes when they get older, it gets better.
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Pippin developed severe bladder stones and had surgery to remove them in January 2019. He’s been on prescription diet ever since and I’m careful about feeding him. A couple of years ago he began having severe bouts of colitis and diarrhea. It happened on and off for over a year. He would get me up at 2 a.m. because he needed to go out RIGHT NOW. After the first couple of accidents I learned that he meant it. We were up and outside in a -40 degree windchill once. I was unhappy.
My vet is my neighbor and has been so helpful. We have worked on Pippin’s problems and settled on what seems to work best. He has to have a lower fat diet than he was getting, so he’s now on prescription diet that is moderate calorie. He’s getting an antibiotic twice daily and if he gets colitis symptoms, I am to stop that one and start a different one. Pippin also has severe allergies requiring daily medication. He’s also extremely anxious for me but others say that he’s fine with them. I know he hates it when I kennel him and leave, but I’m a human and I can’t stay home all the time. I think he might have been better if I had gotten him a puppy a long time ago.
I don’t think I will have any more pets after he is gone (he’s going on 15). I say that now, but they really are good companions.
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I hope things turn out well for your dog, Renee.
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Thanks! The vet says he is doing great, and has eaten and “voided” and hasn’t hurled. We will probably be able to pick him up this afternoon. Amazing what an IV with Ringer’s Lactate can do for a guy.
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I am sure the vultures are disappointed.
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Kyrill is home, on 3 medicines, and the vet thinks it could have been virus which he could have picked up at a boarding kennel. No foreign object has been excreted.
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Glad to hear he is home and going better!
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I only had one dog with severe issues. When he was eight, it was clear he was having some kind of issues and the vet diagnosed it as Addisons. He could have brain surgery or he could be on some kind of meds and have to have his blood checked every other week for the rest of his life. so All making the hard decision about what to do, thinking how do you explain to a dog why you’re torturing him every week and a half with blood tests, his kidneys failed. Apparently that happens occasionally with Addisons. So between the kidney failure and the Addison’s, I had to make that hard decision. It was rough with an eight year old dog.
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The other pet emergencies I had, of course happened on a weekend. One of my big white fluffies got an infection between his toes. He had been limping a little, but I couldn’t see anything wrong and it didn’t occur to me to check between his toes. He whacked it on the dog door at 8 o’clock on Friday night and bled all over the kitchen. Emergency vet.
Fluffy #2 managed to get the cocoa tin down off the counter and had all the class symptoms … again on Friday night. Gotta love the emergency vet.
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I took Sammy to the vet once when I had him outside on leash, and he decided to chomp on and swallow some daylily foliage. Stella d’oros have foliage that is somewhat grasslike, and he loved to eat grass. Daylilies are not actually lilies, they are a different species. Lilium species plants are very toxic to cats, and hemerocallis is thought to be toxic also, though maybe not quite as toxic as lilium.
Sammy’s trip was to the U of M teaching hospital. They gave him something to make him throw up, and pushed fluids to speed up the progress of any toxins through his kidneys. Sammy never liked the car ride to the vet, but once the car trip was over, he was very chill about being at the vet’s office. The lab techs could hold him down and draw blood and he would just purr, because he loved the attention so much. The lab techs and the student vets adored him.
He spent some time under observation, but the vet quickly decided he was not showing any ill effects, and sent him home.
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Our cat will be 18 this fall and has been healthy as a horse her whole life. Now that’s she’s a senior kitty, she seems to be hard of hearing and sometimes forgetful.
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