Seeing as how my opportunities to come home from work and have a few hours to myself are about to disappear when football starts on Sunday, I figured I’d take advantage of Rick having somewhat normal hours and leave Mallory at school and let him pick her up. I thought I’d come home, take Cooper for a long walk in the woods, maybe fold some laundry and just relax.
Here is how my “relaxing” afternoon went:
- Got home and as I’m unlocking the door, I see Cooper has the contents of our boat bag spread out all over the entryway. A chewed up swim diaper, the wrapper to Mallory’s half-eaten PB&J sandwich from the day before (that I forgot to throw away), the stems from the bag of grapes we ate on the boat the day before, and about 60 little packets of 30SPF sunscreen that used to live in a nice ziploc bag that Cooper must have eaten (the bag, not the sunscreen packets).
- I am so mad at the dog that I don’t even yell at him. He slinks into the corner with his tail between his legs, barely looking up at me. I banish him to the backyard, which for him is a fate worse than death.
- I call the vet and report that Cooper may have eaten about five grapes. They said to keep an eye on him and call back if he seems to get lethargic or starts vomiting.
- I call Rick and tell him what happened. I am trying to decide if I still take Cooper for a walk in the woods, seeing as how I don’t want him to think I’m rewarding him for this poor behavior. rick says to leave Cooper at home and go for a walk by myself, but I don’t walk for me, I do it to wear the dog out so he doesn’t annoy me as much at night. If I put on my walking shoes and leave without the dog? I will be in big trouble. I decide to take him with me but to not talk to him so he knows I’m still mad at him.
- Get to the woods. Cooper is happy but has diarrhea and is peeing often. I don’t pay much attention to it and off we go. I decided to just head straight back on the road and not take any of the side trails. We get about 2/3 of the way through the park, and meet another lady with her little dog. Cooper and her dog say hi and chase each other for a few minutes and then we all continue on our way.
- About three minutes later, I notice that Cooper is lagging behind me. It isn’t very hot out and we were in the shade so I just kept going for a minute or two before I realized it would be best to not get FARTHER from the car, so we turned around. He was walking SOOO slowly, with his head hanging down and then he just laid down. I tried offering him a treat (if you know my dog, you know he will do anything for food) but he ignored the treat. That freaked me out the most. All I could remember is the vet saying that if he started to act lethargic, that I had to bring him right in. Remember that I am about 1+ miles from my car right now; I contemplated leaving him where he was and running to get my car and driving back to get him, which was a great plan right up until I remembered that there are gates at the entrances and I don’t have a key to open it to get my car through. Dammit Jim.
- I call the vet and report what is going on and they said to bring him in right away and that if I couldn’t get there by 6p, to just go straight to the Animal Emergency Clinic (it was 4:45p at this point). I was able to pick him up and carry him for a few minutes but then had to put him down, and he took a few steps and back down he went. We repeated this routine about six times and he kept taking fewer and fewer steps. I was seriously freaking out right about now – how in the hell was I going to carry Cooper all the way back to the car and would we be able to get to our vet before 6? Rick was still in Ann Arbor so there was no way he’d be able to get home in time to help me.
- We finally made enough progress to get near the caretaker’s house – I thought I could leave Cooper on the main road and run to the house to see if they’d give us a ride down the hill or at least unlock the gates so I could drive in. As I turned into the drive to the caretaker’s house, Cooper comes jogging up behind me. What the hell????
- He promptly had a huge nasty runny poop and was straining a bit but at least he was up and moving. I called the vet back and they said we should still bring him in just to be safe. I called Rick too and told him just to meet me at the vet.
- Get to the vet and Cooper is happy as can be. The doctor comes in and draws some blood and feels him up and checks his gums and sticks a finger up his arse and leaves the room. Rick & I were like “um, what is going on?”
- Next thing we know, Cooper’s jowls are starting to get all puffy! I go get the vet assistant chick and she brings in some benadryl and something else and gives Cooper two shots and then leaves again. She & the vet come back and say they think he got stung by a wasp or a bee on our walk and had a reaction to that completely unrelated to the crap he ate.
- We were sent home with two prescriptions and to watch for vomiting.
- A $130 vet bill later, my “relaxing” afternoon finally ended. Phew.