For some obscure reason, I'm very tired tonight. Oh wait, I know why: I spent a good portion of last night up with a dog with severe gastrointestinal distress.
It amazes me that Ben has made to age 10 with the complete lack of sense he exhibits around what he puts in his stomach (I was tempted to say "complete lack of sense around food" but really, the problem is mostly non-food items that end up in his stomach).
The story: Our washing machine was particularly thorough yesterday and in the middle of its spinning cycle the container of doggy supplements that Ben takes for his arthritis that was on top of it fell down onto the floor. Somehow in the process the top of the container got knocked off.
Did I notice? Nope. Did Ben notice? Yep.
I had the sense to investigate his disappearance and halted his binge through the doggy supplement container, but only after he had made it halfway through. That's right: less than 60 of the 120 bits of goodness were left, and it had only been opened a few days ago. Keep in mind the max serving a day for a dog his weight is about 5.
He did fine for a few hours until he started to drink a lot of water. Not a huge surprise because the supplements definitely smell salty (they're more like little doggy cookies than pills), and we had already experienced the playdoh effect first hand (in which he begs for water, we have to ration it every 15 minutes or so to prevent him drinking himself to death, and he pees all night long).
But then, when we were going to bed, he started needing to go outside to be sick and do his business. Urgently. A lot. At this point I googled if it was possible to overdose on those tablets, and one vet said it wasn't, because the animal just pees out the excess. Another vet said you should get them to throw up and then give them activated charcoal to absorb and toxins.
Well, the throwing up part had already been taken care of very thoroughly be Mother Nature so I did the activated charcoal bit (soaked in a little applesauce apparently makes them very pleasing to the doggy palate). Not sure it really mattered, as everything came up again within the hour.
Ben and I had lovely quality time on the couch last night, dozing in between letting him out every 20 minutes or so and getting him more water until the worst had passed. Ah, what good times... and I hope they won't ever be repeated. Please, Ben?
