Our first visit to the Vet

Another food related post...

On Saturday morning, we decided to do a spot of last minute Christmas shopping. We were only going to be away for about an hour to pick up the last of the presents for the big day – and maybe grab a coffee in town. It was a good opportunity to practice a short break for Mila to hopefully help her with getting over some of her separation issues.

We are getting pretty good at hiding forbidden foods in places where they cannot be reached by long noses. The Christmas chocolate stash is in a cupboard high up off the ground – which would take some serious acrobatics for Mila to reach (although I wouldn’t put it past her trying).

However, one thing we didn’t consider was the stash that our teacher housemate had been given on the last day of school for her wonderful work during the year. Sitting, very temptingly, in her room was a giant Toblerone, a box of wrapped chocolates, and beautifully decorated baking given to her by her kids.

So – you can see where this is going. We all left the house for our morning in town – and somewhere along the line, Mila smelt something delicious and (undeterred by the closed over door) burst into the bedroom and ate the goodies. All of them. Wrappers, foil, cardboard and everything.

Our flatmate arrived home to find the aftermath lying in a pile on her floor and texted us straight away. Chocolate is not good for a dog at the best of times, but in that amount – let’s just say that we are lucky that we were dealing with a 30kg dog and not a 5kg one.

When we got home, Mila seemed fine – but we called the Vet anyway to see what we should do. They recommended that we bring her in to “clear out her stomach”, so off we went. When we got down to the Vet, the nurses explained the procedure to me and led Mila away out the back to a place where she could safely be sick. Apparently, to induce vomiting in chocolate eaters they place a tablet under the eye of the dog which dissolves and makes them feel sick. I have no idea how the mechanics of that work, but it sounds weird. I should mention here that Mila is a Drama Queen. Anything that causes her mild discomfort is the WORST thing that has ever happened in her life. So, we are sitting in the waiting room – and all we can hear are yelps and cries coming from out the back. After 10 minutes, Mila and the Vet come trotting back in, Mila a little unstably, and we are reliably informed that a lot of chocolate had come up (along with the wrappers, the glad wrap, the tin foil and ribbons) and that she will be a little bit drowsy for the rest of the day so a “plain” dinner that night would be best, but we should otherwise be good as new. $90 later, we were out the door and ready for home.

I know it sounds cruel (and I did feel sorry for her) but after the drama of the Vets, getting home and watching the drugs wear off was the funniest part of the day – I couldn’t help but take some photos. Mila obviously had no idea what was going on – so she curled up on her bed, tucked her head between the cushions and fell into a drunken sleep. When she woke up about an hour later, she had forgotten all about taking it easy and proceeded to jump down off the bed and face plant into the floor. After some pats and a few circles of the lounge, we seemed to be right as rain again, but still a little bit slow.

Poor girl recovers from the side effects of the drugs. If you look closely, she is trying desperately to keep her eyes open - but is failing miserably. It's okay, she's back to her normal self now!

So, it was an interesting introduction to the Vet (and they tell me that they see A LOT of it at this time of the year). While I would like to hope that we have learnt our lesson when it comes to chocolate and sweets, something tells me that Mila isn’t quite so quick on the uptake. While I was brushing my teeth this morning, she stole a nicely wrapped lamington from inside its plastic bag in my handbag...hmmmm.