They Took My Baby!

Right now my Theo is in the doggie hospital! We're not exactly sure what's wrong with him yet, but it all started yesterday. He threw up in the morning. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure what it looked like because he had eaten it back up before I even knew he had done it. Gross! But I figured he had just eaten his breakfast too fast, no big deal. He was fine while we were at the dog park and during lunch, but then on our way back home he puked...all over the car. Gross! I should also add that he had been crying pretty much all morning. When we were at the park and he was distracted by other dogs and people he was fine, but before and after he was definitely doing more than his usual share of being a cry baby. I couldn't understand why, but I wasn't all that surprised when he threw up. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there.

After we got home I took him outside where he had (warning: the rest of this post is not for the squeamish) the soupiest diarrhea I have ever seen. It was like his butt was a melted milk chocolate dispenser. Next I figured we needed to settle his stomach, so I tried giving him some pumpkin. He wouldn't eat it. I even put a little on my finger and held it right up to his mouth: no go. That's when I knew something was really wrong. He's always hungry! Then he started to throw up again. I called the ER vet and they said to go ahead and bring him in.

Now yesterday was just "one of those days" kind of days. Everything that could go wrong did. Right when all this was going on, Husband also discovered that our kitchen sink was leaking water everywhere. Lovely! Go big or go home, I guess.

So I packed Theo into the car and hurried over to the vet while Husband stayed behind to deal with the cleanup (heh, sucker!). I wasn't very impressed with the vet (He kept saying "we" when talking about Theo, such as "We're not feeling well, our stomach is upset." It was creepy.), but there's limited options on the weekend. The vet told me the full list of all the possibilities and then asked me which I would like to do. Well how the heck do I know? I'm not the one with a degree! I basically told him that I didn't want to run all those tests if he didn't think they were necessary, since the only symptoms he had were loose stools and vomiting (he didn't find anything unusual in the exam). So they gave him some fluids, some medicine for the vomiting, and gave me some medicine to give him for the diarrhea. And $168(!) later we were on our way home. Nothing much to report on yesterday after that. He pretty much just slept the whole day (pictured), and late last night I fed him some boiled chicken, which he was able to keep down.

Then this morning we woke up like normal and I fed him some chicken and rice, which was the doctor's orders. His attitude and appetite were good, but he was still crying quite a bit. He tried to poop a few times and nothing came out. Then finally something did come out, but it wasn't poop. It was blood. Not a bloody stool, just blood. I didn't waste any time calling the vet again. He said that even though it was scary, blood wasn't anything to be worried about unless there were other symptoms, like more vomiting, and that I should give him some pepto-bismol. While I was out at the store he threw up. Ugh! So back to the ER we went.

This time we all agreed to run the gambit of tests (most of which involved shoving something up his already sore bum, but guy). Theo was even good enough to demonstrate what his vomit looked like to the doctor: yellow and foamy. Gross! The test for parasites and parvo came back negative (he has his vaccinations, but the vet still wanted to rule it out), and the doctor told us we needed to leave our Theo with them for more tests. They took my puppy! And $630(!!!) later, Husband and I were on our way home with one less member than we had entered with.

We've since heard that the xrays showed no bowel obstruction, and his lab work came back normal. Hopefully this means he doesn't require surgery, but it also means there's still nothing tangible that's wrong with him. At this point it looks like he just has some major gastrointestinal irritation, and Theo just needs to get the better of it already! Hopefully an afternoon of fluids and rest (which is exactly what he had yesterday) will make him all better. I don't like my Theo being sick like this one bit! I'll keep you posted on his progress.

PS: Due to all this hoopla, I wasn't able to post things in the correct order. Theo went to his first Corgi meetup yesterday before he got all sick, so I'll be doing a post on that later as well.

PPS: Tons of new pictures up on flickr. Check 'em out!