Saving Emma. . .

My poor, baby Emma gave us a bad scare this week.  We’ve been incredibly busy with work and school so I’ve been dragging the dogs and the kids along with me to the shop every day so I can multi-task as I attempt to accomplish everything that needs to be done.  On Wednesday, the dogs got into the trash at the shop, making a big mess and eating things they shouldn’t.  Shortly after that, Emma started to throw up but I just chalked it up to the trash incident.  She continued to throw up for a couple of days but it didn’t worry me until Friday morning when I let her out around 5 a.m. and she laid down in the grass and wouldn’t get up and come inside.  My gut told me something was very wrong so I loaded her up in the van and took her to a vet emergency clinic.  They took an x-ray and found a golf ball-size obstruction in her small intestine that was, in all likely hood, an actual golf ball.  She seemed to be in a lot of pain (understandably) and was quite dehydrated by this time. . .

After a thorough exam, the doctor at the emergency clinic told me to go straight to my regular vet for a follow up appointment and, quite likely, exploratory surgery. . .

It was all a little confusing and I didn’t realize until later just how serious it was.  Our regular vet was out of town until Tuesday so we ended up going to another vet that was nice enough to squeeze us in.  I dropped her off at 11:00 a.m. on Friday for a 1:00 p.m. surgery.  It was really hard to leave her there.  I had a hard time concentrating on anything for the next 24 hours until I could see her again.  (It didn’t help matters that I also have a nasty cold and haven’t been sleeping well!!)  She made it through the surgery just fine and, amazingly enough, the doctor didn’t find the obstruction so assumed she somehow passed it before we brought her in.  I can’t imagine what that must have felt like!!  She was still in pretty bad shape and needed plenty of meds and fluids in order to recover.  We picked her up at 2:30 on Saturday and she was pretty glad to see us.  She even got a pretty new bandana for being such a good patient:

She’s going to be pretty sore for a couple of weeks and we still can’t get her to eat very much but she’s definitely on the mend.  

The whole experience made me realize just how attached I am to this sweet pup. . .