Because she can...

I love my dog.  She is amazing, sweet, smart, and everything in between.  This week, however, she decided to "try my patience" a bit.  I have to start out with a little background as usual....

Chad and I went to San Antonio a last week for 3 days.  While we were gone, we left Emma with my in-laws.  She loves it over there.  They have a yard and let her roam the house at night (she likes to sleep on their tile floors - and we keep her in our bedroom at night at home).  Chad and I went over to pick her up last Sunday to bring her home.  Chris (my amazing mother-in-law) mentioned that Emma hadn't eaten anything that afternoon (although there was food in her bowl) so we expected her to be hungry when we got home.

When we got home, we put our normal 3/4 cups in her bowl.  Several hours later, she still hadn't eaten anything.  I need to add here that Emma is deep into her teething process.  Most of her front teeth are gone and the back ones are starting to get loose (dogs loose teeth from front to back).  Sometimes their teeth can bother them so bad that they don't want to eat.  Thinking this might be part of the problem, I put a little bit of water in her food bowl to soften it up.  Oh my gosh!  I have never seen that dog eat that fast (or that much in one sitting)!  10 minutes later, she throws up.  Not a lot, but some.  Puppies can get sick for a number of reasons - one being eating too much too fast. Bingo!  She started acting normal after she got sick, so I thought nothing of it.

On Monday, I decided to not wet her food.  She was fine all day - and then she got sick before bed.  This time it was much more, but still all food.  She had never thrown up that much before, but I still wasn't concerned.  She was acting fine and "everything else" looked just fine...

Tuesday.  I'm sitting on the couch working on my Adobe Flash practical for class (yes, the same class that I am writing this blog for).  Emma is passed out on the other side of the couch with a pillow positioned under her head.  Suddenly, I hear her heaving.  I grabbed her to put her on the floor, but before her paws were on the carpet, she threw up bile on the floor.  Okay - now I was a little worried.  She had not eaten a drop of food or had a sip of water all day! She had also slept most of the day - and wasn't interested in plating.  I was debating whether or not to call the vet, but first I needed to call Chad.  He thought I should call the vet as well and that if they thought I should bring her in, then I should.   And wouldn't you know the vet told me to bring her in just to be safe...

Three hours and $110.00 later, I find out that Emma just had and upset stomach.  No obstruction, no parasites, no viruses - just an upset stomach.  We think that her eating all that food on Sunday night just kind of threw her system off a little bit.  Who knows?  The vet gave her an injection to ease the nausea and sent me home with a box of pills that I could give her should it start acting up again.  I have not given her one pill yet.

As explained in my last post - Emma has a "traveling" problem.  Because she's not "100%" we got her for free (we won't have the option to breed her or show her - which we never planned to anyways).  With that being said - I struggle with spending hundreds of dollars on a dog I got for free.  Please don't think I regret taking her to the vet!  I am glad I was more safe than sorry!  I would do it all over again even if I knew how much it was going to cost me before I left my apartment - it's just a little frustrating sometimes.  :)

Since then, Emma has not gotten sick once and has slowed down on the wet food intake.  She's now 15. 8 lbs. now at 21 weeks of age (I have no idea if that's normal or not). My baby is growing up!  Hopefully we won't be going back to the vet for any unexpected visits until we get her spayed in a month or so...

 Until next week...

God Bless!

-Shelley