It's been a week, and the puppy is still alive. In her typical CIA/Super Spy mode, Special Agent Sydney has survived another ordeal. Amazingly, I believe she's on life 3 or 4 by now. There was the poisonous mushroom of Christmas 2005 that left her vomiting for hours. That was two years ago, and for the most part, she recovered fine. That was nothing, apparently, compared with her most recent harrowing brush with death.
Warning: raisins + dog = death
Grapes and raisins are poisonous, when ingested by dogs in unknown quantities. One, ten, seven-hundred, it doesn't matter, because the vet cannot tell you how many can kill the dog. Some unknown factor in these products (skin, juice, pesticides, etc.) causes kidney failure in dogs.
Imagine our surprise when we arrived home from a short 2 hour excursion last Monday to find the dog had devoured 6 boxes of Sun Maid Golden Raisins (box and all). We knew they were bad for her, but were shocked when various sites said to call the vet or poison control immediately. Having Sydney's vet less than ten minutes away, and since they have an emergency room, it seemed logical to call there first for immediate attention.
No sooner did I explain the problem, before they told me to hang up and call poison control. Seriously?! They're the vet ER, and they wanted me to call the poison people. So I did, and here's what I was told:
"You need to induce vomiting. Get a turkey baster, fill it with hydrogen peroxide, and shoot it down her throat twice. If she isn't vomiting after 15 minutes, repeat that. After 30 minutes, call us again. However, if and when she does vomit, we need you to not let her eat her vomit (UM HELLO?!), search through it, and count the raisins, then call back for more information." At this point, totally grossed out, I received a direct line to the specialist with whom I had just spoke.
So, that's what we did. Together, we got the dog to drink peroxide, and vomit. Of course, all that came up wasn't just raisins and boxes (though I did count 326 raisins, and the face of the Sun Maid from 5 of the 6 missing boxes). No, Syd also vomited up two pieces of charred bread, because the FIRST site we looked at said to give her that, because the carbon in severely burnt toast would neutralize the toxins from the raisins. Needless to say, the dog vomited 9 times (GROSS), had tears running down her face (ACTUAL tears), and I had to pick through all of it wearing June Cleaver's yellow kitchen gloves (GROSSER still, but at least I didn't need to wear her pearls too. That would've been just weird).
After watching my dog upchuck a day's worth of food, cry, and as the wife and I pet her and told her it was okay, I called back poison control. Imagine my extreme consternation (read: pissed off beyond all belief) when they told me to find a vet ER and take her there at that point.
Sydney and I rushed off to the ER. There, the doctor put me into tears, when she told me that Sydney would need 3 days of observation and then might still need to be put down for kidney failure. The vet left to call poison control, I called S (the wife, not Auntie S), and told her that Sydney would have to be kept for observation, and to come down. Not good, considering she is/was due in two weeks.
A few minutes later, the vet came back and told me, she was wrong. The possible amount of toxin still in her system was below poison control's lowest lethal dosage recorded (which was good and bad), and that if I wanted, I could take Sydney home, but that 3 days of fluids and observation wouldn't hurt, because we still had to be aware of signs of kidney failure. I told her I wanted to wait until Sydney's Mom was there before we made any decisions. The thought of not having her for 3 days at this point was a bit upsetting.
As we made our way back to the waiting, room, Sydney spotted and ran to her Mom. The vet told her what she had told me, but also that poison control is usually very proactive, and if they're not recommending observation, then things must be okay. She also stated that if Sydney were hers, she would take the dog home.
That was music to our ears. We just had to check her poop, make sure she ate and drank, urinated regularly, and all that fun stuff, in case things took a turn. We went home, fed the dog some nasty charcoal paste with her food, and got her Pop to come over the next day while we were at work.
I personally spent the whole night waking up regularly, whenever the dog shifted or breathed slightly different. At 4:00 she wanted to get up and go out, and did her business. I slept the next hour until my alarm like a baby. She was playful when her Pop came the next day and things have been good.
Over the past week, she's lived the life of Riley. She's sat on the couch, hopped into our bed, played loudly without being told to stop, and basically done whatever she's wanted. We were just happy to have our puppy still. We couldn't imagine what life would be like without her...or worse, how things would be for The Kid without a big sister.
One week later, everything is fine...so fine, that Sydney is now napping on the couch as I write.
