Saturday, January 31, 2009

One Sick Puppy



Someday when I have children I will remember this time. I spent a few hours last night in the Pet ER. My sweet puppy has gotten some sort of trachea infection and kennel cough. Needless to say he just about scared me to death waking me up in the middle of the night with a hacking cough. It started yesterday when I got home from work. He started coughing and I thought maybe he had swallowed something. After a few minutes I started to worry and considered how I would be able to administer CPR or the Heimlich maneuver to him. After about 15 minutes he stopped and seemed ok. So I figured that whatever it was had been swallowed. Flash forward to 2:30 AM - he starts coughing uncontrollably. I decide that it's now serious enough to warrant a visit to the ER. $250 later they tell me he's fine. OUCH!!!

All I can say is...unless you are going to actually get shots, never go to the pet store when it's "low-cost vaccination day." We didn't know anything about it and wandered in last week to buy a new toy. So there were all kinds of unvaccinated dogs all waiting to make my sweet vaccinated puppy sick. Such is the risk we take ~ however if I ever see that sign in the window again I'm going to turn around and go home.

2 comments:

  1. I used to have two maltese, later in life one of them moved into a diabetic state, and required insulin shots. People never understood why I would go through everything I went through for her. Administering the shots, making sure she was on a 12 hour feeding and shot schedule. Basically putting my life on hold for her. I told them ... they'd do no less for their own children, and if they didn't get it ... they probably shouldn't procreate, or have pets either for that matter. I was pretty mean about it. LOL In hindsight. Whoa is me!!!

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  2. Kennel cough is the worst! It sounds so terrible - that choking cough sounds so uncomfortable. My lab had it even though he had taken the bordetella vaccine!

    Thanks for following my blog! Are you currently in Memphis? I lived in Knoxville for a short while. I loved it there!

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