Friday 15 October 2010

The stress of dog ownership!

It has been a stressful week at château Nerdsville. Our youngest dog Eddie (a two year old Pembrokeshire Corgi) became seriously ill Monday night.

We were woken at around 1am by the retching sound of something being sick and the pungent smell of you know what! I went downstairs to discover a pile of white foamy vomit in the hall and a small pile of diarrhoea in the kitchen near the back door and a sheepish looking Corgi.

I wasn't overly surprised as Eddie had been off his food and had already had a slight case of the runs when out for his afternoon and evening strolls the day before. So I let him out into the garden and set about cleaning it all up. We all retired back to bed only to be disturbed again at 5am by the sound of a dog running down the stairs and whimpering. I grabbed by slippers and dressing gown and hurried down to find Eddie in the kitchen again. This time I was also met with two largish pools of what initially I thought was urine but as I mopped them up it was obvious this was water with a dilute trace of blood (and was from the bowels as it smelt of faeces)

Eddie was out in the garden again and I found him squatting releasing a jet of liquid from his rear. This wasn't looking good, but have had dogs for many years and have experienced all sorts of stomach upsets. Given the time of day I decided it wasn't worth going back to bed and decided to sit up in the living room with the patio door open to allow Eddie to quickly get into the garden if needed (and I could catch up on the latest downloaded episode of Dexter on the XBMC).

For a while Eddie seemed okay, then at around 6:30am he ran out again to evacuate another jet of liquid. It was starting to get light and I could see that it was bloody again. The wife who was understandably worried reluctantly went off to work at around 7:30am and I went off to shower and dressed and planned to ring the vets to take him to morning surgery. However when I came down stairs I found another red pool in the kitchen this time it had the consistancy of pure blood, this was now getting serious and I rang the vet and was told to come in straight away.

I had already checked on the internet and my suspicions were confirmed as Eddie was diagnosed with Hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE) This is serious potentially life threatening condition and the cause in most cases unknown but there have been a cluster of cases in and around Nottinghamshire our vet alone had seen three dogs in the last week one of which had nearly died. We were aware of the warnings concerning Sherwood Forest, Clumber Park and other woodland sites but had been no where near them for weeks.

Thankfully following a number of anti-inflamatory steroids, antibotics and anti-emetic injections Eddie has started to make a good recovery, thankfully it was caught early enough so he didn't need any IV treatment. He still isn't back to full health yet, but is much much better.

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