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.

Mila the Foodie

Mila loves food.

Knowing that, it shouldn’t really have surprised me to come home after work yesterday to discover that she had devised a way of getting into the food cupboard in the kitchen and managed to eat a half bag of dog jerky, the remaining chocolate drops, at least one Tux biscuit and some of her regular food. She even managed to get her nose to the back of the cupboard where some very old (and long forgotten) catnip treats were sitting from back when we experimented with having a cat!

Needless to say, there was packaging everywhere. Bags were torn apart and left on the kitchen floor and the food containers now have large bite marks in them from her (eventually successful) attempts to get to what is inside. Thankfully, our housemate was around to clean up most of the mess, but there was evidence of Mila’s binge still about when we got home. Unfortunately, I was so busy trying to focus on not flying off the handle that I completely forgot to take photos of the scene!

Mila of course, was feeling a little sorry for herself and (I would like to think) a bit guilty. She lay on the couch with her head on her paws, looking drowsy eyed and a little wired as we cleaned up around her, avoiding eye contact with us for fear of getting growled. We kept an eye on her to make sure that a trip to the Vet wasn’t necessary but otherwise, the order of the day was to ignore her and let her think about what she’d done. A bit optimistic maybe, but it gave us all a chance to calm down.

Later in the night, the urgent need to clear her bowels of all that she had eaten got too much and despite the fact that we made sure the back door was open and gave her ample opportunity to toilet outside, we found a larger-than-normal pile of dog poo sitting proudly on the carpet in the middle of the lounge at about 9.30pm. The husband was furious and left the room grumbling about stupid Greyhounds. Trying not to gag from the smell, I was left to clean up the little mountain Mila had left for us.

When we are around, Mila is usually very good with food. She will eat pretty much anything we give her, the odd snack of raw carrot never goes uneaten and her bowl is always licked clean. She is starting to understand that food on the bench is not for her (although that doesn’t stop her from trying her luck) and she is very good at sitting patiently for her food to be prepared and waiting to be called before she bounds off her bed to eat. This morning, she even waited until after I had put her food down, gone back to the kitchen to fill her water bowl, put that down and then called her over before she jumped up to scoff her meal.  We don’t really have problems with her annoying us during our own dinner either (although she does love the smell of oven chips for some reason). A quick “go to bed” sees her trot nicely over to her mat until it is time to get up and play again.

Feeding time at the Zoo

During the day, I suspect that it’s the boredom and loneliness that makes it so tempting for her to “explore” and see what she can find. Sometimes (like yesterday) her missions are successful, other times she gives up and sleeps the time away contentedly. We are learning, although admittedly a bit slowly than we should be, that the path of least resistance is to remove the temptations (food now sits on top of the fridge in the blocked off laundry) and to provide her with stimulating and challenging tasks. Peanut butter Kong is a current favourite and Squeakers are a classic source of hours of entertainment. Let’s hope that we don’t go through too many more boxes of Choc Drops before the message sinks in completely!!