Around this time last week our dog managed to put herself into quite a bind… You see, she’s a 75 pound black lab who likes to eat things. Sure, most of the time she restricts herself to things that could at least be mistaken for food, but sometimes she takes on more than she can handle.
Since having the baby, we’ve seen this behavioral malady worsen. Fact is, she likes eating the baby’s stuff. Bibs and burp cloths, unfortunately, became favorites, and one particularly thick and wooly burp cloth just couldn’t make it all the way through her digestive process…
She has done this sort of thing before, mind you, so it didn’t really phase us at first. In fact, she ate a sewing needle (2 inch length) a couple years ago and managed to pass it after about a week. Well, starting Saturday, Shyla started throwing up repeatedly. She stopped eating, and this went on through Sunday — every time she drank some water it came right back up — until Monday when we had her checked out by a vet.
My wife and I had, by this time, talked at length about the situation and had come to the conclusion that we might have to euthanize her. Understandably, I have a problem with that, but I couldn’t take the idea off the table… call it a last resort I guess. Regardless, I had serious reservations about even considering it and to this moment I still feel a certain amount of shame about it…
After consulting two different vets, she underwent surgery to remove the “foreign object.” She returned home today, and while I won’t pretend she is acting entirely normal, I feel a lot better knowing we did everything in our power to help her.
Poor, pitiful Dog… Welcome home…
I want to make sure I make mention of my wife’s parents, who very graciously took on the up-front cost of the operation. Without their help, I’m really not sure what we could have done for her…
I’m hopeful that in the coming days I’ll be able to report steady progress in her recovery. For whatever it is worth, we’ve made some changes around the house in preparation for her return in hopes that we can eliminate her access to the laundry baskets and the inedible things therein that she might think about eating.
I hope you are well, friends. I will post again soon.
Hickersonia 