Huge eye-opening scare tonight.
I took a ~five month-old dog off family members hands. Weird situation, they wanted my exact dog, personality-wise, temperament, everything... and they didn't get it. Two months of ####ting and pissing all over their house, spending 8 hours/ day in a crate while they were at work, then chewing up their house in the evenings. They were done. And I've been looking to adopt a second dog after my old guy died in January.
Anyway, he's almost six months old now. Tonight I put his food bowl down, then went to turn my barbecue on. I had two people over for the basketball game. I was going in and out of the house, and suddenly wondered where the younger dog was. I saw a pile of dog food which I thought was poop and I was winding up a big loud "NO!" until I saw my dog lying on the floor, his eyes closed, no movement whatsoever.
I picked gim up and I shook him a bit, panicked a lot, and I saw his tongue was almost white. So I'm shaking him and patting him on the side and I have no idea what to do, and one of my friends tries to look in his mouth, and stuck her finger down his throat and pulled out a bit of dog food, then a bunch of blood followed. I carried him to the kitchen and saw colour came back to his tongue, his eyes were open a bit and he was wheezing. Then someone drove us to the animal ER, I didn't even think to put my shoes on!
Longest. Car ride. Ever.
I get to the ER, they took them right away. Had me fill out a form. One check box that it could cost at least $600, another box allowing them to do CPR, and I don't even remember what the third box was. I was thinking, 'that's why I'm here, guys.'
About 45mins to an hour of sitting at the vet, worrying, and making a few jokes about hearing the 'ka-ching, ka-ching' sound of a cash register with every minute that passed, the vet finally comes out and says he's doing pretty well. But they were monitoring his oxygen.
The theory is he inhaled some food, but he couldn't find any reason for the blood. So the thought was something could have been nicked by a fingernail. Two things to look out for are some kind of pneumonia due to food getting in the lungs, and fluid around the lungs. He's been coughing a lot since I brought him home several hours ago, and he's breathing incredibly noisily. But I'm really hoping we're in the clear. Vet also recommended one of those dog food bowls that makes them eat slower, and switching to four or six feedings today instead of two.
So glad I found the dog right away. If I left him for even a few minutes longer, he'd be toast.
I guess as a bonus, instead of the $1300 bill I was expecting, The vet only charged me $125+ tax for an exam (Trinity Hills 24Hr)
My dog is not allowed to eat by himself for the next 6 weeks. I read tonight that if a dog needs CPR, there's about a 6% survival rate.
edit: "The dog." He actually does have a name: Murdock.
