Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Poor Puppy, Again. No Really, Again.

Jack has done it yet again. He is presently at the vet getting IV fluids and antibiotics, pain relief, and no food as a result of him, once again, eating that which should not have been. This time he really did it tho and he is not just an uncomfortable little pig, he is in a spot more serious.

We had cooked some fried chicken the other night, outside, where we could get the grease good and hot with the propane tank and, avoid the ole kitchen fire in the house. The resulting chicken was excellent and we gave absolutely no thought about leaving the hot grease out there to cool while we ate the birds. This was a bad plan in hind sight now.

The next morning Jack came bouncing into the house with Marley and Heidi to all get their a.m. doggie chow. He was in great spirits and was very excited to see his bowl. After they had finished all went out to do what they do best after eating. I spent about another hour inside piddling at whatever, and they went outside and headed out to the barn.

My first glance I saw of Jack was too familiar and I knew he was hurting again, tail low, ears down, and he was reluctant to come with the crew on our journey to feed the horses. Bad sign, again. I went ahead and gave him a baby asprin and some of the pepto stuff and let him crawl into the tack room to lay on the cool floor to let things work themselves out.

My thoughts were first on how in the heck could we have a repeat of last weeks stomach issue, and what the heck was the source of the problem now? I had thrown the guilty chewed up plank away just yesterday. I was wondering now that maybe he was getting into maybe a poison or something toxic.

 When I got back to the house and starting looking around it was very quickly ,very obvious what the problem was and where it was now. Jack had helped himself to almost half of the now cooled off grease in that pot left outside, almost a half gallon was now missing, and was sloshing around Jack's digestive system. After last week's worry over him eating the splinters and all that I figured that grease was a good thing if you have to over eat something, like he is prone to do. A bit of lubrication of the innerds couldn't be too bad, right?

By 4 in the afternoon when I went back to do afternoon feeding rounds at the barn, it seemed the day's resting had worked for him and that he was good to go, tail was back up and eyes were bright. He didn't come up to the house with us later but this wasn't too unusual because Jack always likes to make sure all the horses' spilled grain gets cleaned up and any of their poop has to have a quality control sampling. It is a rough job but Jack is willing to heed the call. I totally figured him to be fine and dandy, and gave a chuckle of relief to this silly boy once again hurting his poor tummy with his zealous appetite and really figured he had dodged a bullet this time.

This morning proved my call to be quite wrong and Jack was back in pain with another bloated belly and running a fever, so off we went, again to the vet for some help. The vet had heard the series of events surrounding this culinary escape and said the concern now was whether this was a case of just belly ache, a GI issue alone, or had the pancreas become overactive by having had to attempt to process the near half gallon of vegetable oil. If blood work showed that was the case, Jack would be in a much more serious situation. It did, and he is.

Jack's temperature was near 105 degrees, his white cell count was sky high, and his amylase was also very high , all indicating a serious pancreatic over reaction, resulting in major inflammation, and major pain for the pup.  So Jack was outfitted with a catheter in his newly shaved right leg, given some of that good dope he got last week, was put into a small kennel box to keep quiet, and hooked to IV fluids to help hydrate. He will spend, at least tonight there at the vet's clinic. Hopefully this crisis will subside and all will be fine for the boy. In the morning will tell more. Fingers are crossed on this one.

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