A Very Good Dog

A lot of you know what happened to Ava last fall. We had a very sick dog on our hands and we weren't getting any answers from our vet as to what was going on. Worse yet, our favorite blond girl had to spend 36 hours in vet care and away from us and her home. It was tragic.

We try to block those bad days from our memory. I still feel bad that I let her stay overnight in a cage with a e-cone around her head. I know she barely slept that night (and Av, it's it's any consolation, I didn't much either.) and her anxiety over being away from home only added to her distress. Sometimes when Ava curls up in a little ball between us, I have an overwhelming sense of guilt that I denied her of that one night when that's probably just the medicine she needed.

As you can see, it still weighs heavily on my mind today. I've never seen a dog so sick.

So you can imagine how our hearts dropped yesterday when it looked like history repeating itself.

It all started in the morning. (Hmm..sounds familiar. It started like this last time.)

I was getting dressed upstairs and I could hear the hum of the SpotBot (more on that little invention later...it's worth it's weight in gold.) downstairs. The SpotBot only makes it's appearance when there is dog pee or puke involved. So, I yelled down to Tim, "What happened?"

"Oh, someone puked by the door." he responded casually.

No biggie. The SpotBot is like our little slave. We plop it on top of the stain, hit a few buttons and for the next five minutes it automatically cleans our carpet. Like I said, worth it's weight in gold.

We didn't think much of it until I came home that night to discover four red piles of more bile and puke in the dining room.

Still didn't panic. Our dogs puke occasionally for no reason and are just fine. I chalked up the red color to Puperoni and beef flavored milk bones not settling well. Whipped out the SpotBot and ignored it.

Then, Tim left for a meeting back at the college and I settled in for the night of working on some things in the office.

Then I heard that god-awful sound. The wretching. The sound before the vomit. The pre-puke hunching up. The warning that I have 15 seconds to grab Ava's collar and get her to a solid hard floor surface so as not to ruin any more carpet.

I got her to the foyer on the wood floor...and there it was. Yellow bile. But this time mixed with fresh blood and dried blood. That's not good. And I panicked.

No. No. No. No please. No. I can't leave her behind. I promised her I wouldn't do that again. No.

I called Tim. Looks like it's time to go to the vet.

Tim left his meeting and came and picked me up and we took Ava back to the vet that treated her last time; the same vet we swore we'd never let have another dime again. We had to go there. They were the only place that was open. On the way over, Tim and I formulated our game plan. No vet was going to take advantage of us again. We agreed: no unnecessary treatment; no hospitalization; no surgery.

As we pulled up to the vet's office, I got that sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew how this went last time. And so did Ava. She was wired and anxious and skidding all over the wooden floor in the waiting room. She looked at me like, "Um, Mom, I hate it here." Yeah, girl, I do too.

Forty-five minutes of waiting in a vet's office makes you question things. You hear dogs barking in the basement below. You hear people begging the receptionist to work with them on their bill. You see people crying. Anybody who's in a vet's office at 9 o'clock at night isn't there for a regular check-up. They are there because something's not right.

When we finally did see the vet, Ava appeared normal. She acted normal. Behaved like her normal self. The vet gave us two options: do x-rays and lab work or put her on an anti-nausea med and inject her with fluids and no food/water for 12 hours.

Yes, please, we'll take the second option!

So with that, we took our girl out of there and it felt like we had successfully escaped from jail. Or at least paid our way out of jail. Thank God for my ever-planning husband and his emergency fund...which we should rename the Ava Fund because that's what we use it for.

Twenty-four hours later, our girl looks like she'll be fine, but we'll keep watching her. She may forever be our fussy dog that needs to take a Pepcid everyday and has to have a special diet fully funded by our emergency fund.

God lover her. This is the reason I'll never get a new car. Ava's taking up all our savings!!