Hamish - 911

In case I haven't mentioned it before: my fiancee and I have a puppy. A little schnoodle (schnauzer/poodle) named Hamish. (Fun fact: though Kate found the name in a Scottish mystery series, it is also a Yiddish word which means "cozy, warm," etc. Very suiting to his personality.) Hilarious little guy - he's become a member of the family.

Anyway... Hamish got sick a few days ago. I came home from class and (as I always do) assessed the apartment to see if he had caused any damage. (This is the first thing I do when I come home. He's just over a year old, and as such loves to chew/destroy anything he can get ahold of.) Normally, if anything, he's found a tissue, or chewed on a rug... Monday, though, he had gotten into Kate's backpack, which was last used on a weekend trip to Saint Louis. Kate keeps that backpack very organized, and what did he happen to get into that fateful day? The medicine pocket.

I found the backpack largely untouched, surrounded by a mess of tampons and a sandwich bag of headache/allergy medication. It looked as though he had chewed on some of the packaging and plastics, but nothing major. Thank God. I threw everything away and scolded him for digging through something he shouldn't dig through, and I thought that was that.

Oh, how naive...

A few hours later, after his dinner, Hamish was emetic. Then again later that night. I thought to myself, "Okay, he obviously ate something that didn't agree with him. Just give him time, and he'll naturally pass whatever it is."

Again, how naive...

Through the night Hamish seemed okay, but the following day he was lethargic and without much appetite. He would play, but not very enthusiastically. Then when he finally ate some food, he vomited again. Then again while Kate and I were gone for a few hours. I hung in there, though. Surely there couldn't be much left in his stomach. And I knew enough from the hospital to know we should limit his food/water until his stomach could settle itself.

Then when Kate came back from doing laundry, he had apparently been emetic several times. I had to face facts: this did not seem to be resolving itself. We called an emergency veterinary office, and after listing everything in the medicine pocket, it seemed most likely that he had eaten a headache pill... which apparently is toxic to dogs. That explains a lot. So Kate immediately rushed him over, and I soon followed straight from work. After a blood test and X-rays, it still remained unclear whether he had eaten anything toxic, and if he did, how much. The main problem was severe dehydration because of all the vomiting.

The solution, then, was for him to stay overnight with intravenous fluids, which would flush whatever toxin was in his system and hopefully settle his stomach more than water by mouth would. I called throughout the following day to check on him, and gradually he stabilized, but they wanted to keep him just in case anything unexpected happened. Thankfully for him (and our finances - the bill was already around $1100 and would only go up if they needed to do another treatment), the day went without incident, and he was able to come home with me after my evening chemistry class. Since being home, he seems much better. You can tell he's not feeling 100% - he has a lot less energy than usual - but hopefully he'll be back to his old self in a couple days.

So everything worked out... but the question now is: how to prevent it from happening again? Kate and I were always opposed to crates or pens, but that seems the only guaranteed way to keep him safe. Hamish is unusual in that the more freedom he has, the better behaved he is. For instance, when he was really young, we kept him in the kitchen with a baby gate. After he chewed through two speaker wires, a number of pantry boxes, and even put a hole in the wall itself, we decided to experiment a little bit. We kept the gate open, and then found that he actually caused less damage. In time, though, he went after pillows, rugs, and anything with threads. So we took those up and locked them away while we were gone; and we found that he caused less damage. For the most part, he was well behaved. He would greet you when you came home, and spend most of the day napping or at least being fairly tame. Monday was one of those days where the boredom just apparently became too much for him, and he decided to look for something new.

I'm glad Hamish is okay, but I think we have to go with a crate. I'm not happy about the idea - it just seems so sad and depressing - but it's for the best. It will keep him from discovering any other potential toxins, and it will protect our stuff from further chewing damage. What's funny is I just ordered a dog pen to keep Hamish from messing with our Christmas tree, and now it seems I can exchange that for a much simpler solution. Cheers to the little things!