The danger, and often repeated visit to the Vet, is what he ingests during the episode. In an early episode, he ate a wood base-board. He ate carpet a few times, a wooden dog crate once, and several plush toys. I learned (the hard way) that he could never, ever be left alone outside his crate, no matter how well behaved or housebroken he was. I learned (the hard way) he could never ever have anything in the crate with him. I learned (the hard way) he needed to always be in a metal crate.
His episodes were unpredictable. He might not have one for a year, or even 18 months, but it'll come. The next one might be later that day, next week, or months down the road.
I never figured out a trigger, never found a pattern, never had any way of predicting or preventing it.
Most Vet's would listen to my description of symptoms, shrug, and give trite, meaningless advice - clearly thinking the issue was all in MY head.
My greatest fear was always towels. He once shredded one legthwise, and started trying to swallow a 3 foot long strip! I was convinced that one day he'd choke himself. So, I was vigilant.
Then ... we got Cyrus. Cyrus didn't have any of these issues, but since we always put Clyde in a crate, Cyrus went too. But I thought it'd be ok to give the skinny boy a towel!
Leave it to Clyde! In his most recent episode, he managed to stealthily spit out the Pepcid AC, I gave him, and he acted fine enough in his crate that I left him unattended, thinking the worst was behind us. Little did I know, his episode flared up, and the little booger managed to grab a corner of Cyrus' towel! He pulled it through, and managed to eat about 2/3 of it - which you can see in the picture above, (what the Vet removed during surgery), in the dog bowl.
Poor guy is recovering...
No comments:
Post a Comment