Sickly Sidney

As I have written about before in Sid the Sloth, my dad and Sharon got a new puppy.

My car has been trying to kill me for a long time. It does this thing where it jerks into not shifting gears, and often this occurs on the highway, or while I am driving on crowded streets. It is quite dangerous, and because of all the jerking my car has been doing, I got a crack in my radiator that turned into a split. I needed to get my car fixed, and seeing as the car shop is farther away from my dad's house than walking, I have to have a ride back home.

So I went to my dad's house on Monday afternoon with all the intentions of getting my car to shop, having dinner with my dad and Sharon, and spending the night so I could get my car the next day.

Instead I went to the doggy hospital.

Sid had that morning gotten into slug poison. He didn't eat a copious amount of it, mostly because he is ridiculously finicky, and instead probably swallowed some pellets by accident. That small amount was enough to cause widespread effects across his systems. Six hours after he had digested the tiny amount of slug killer, he was a slobbering, shaking, confused mess. Basically it was really scary.

My dad at first thought he had peed all over himself, and blamed me for the mess since I was "too lazy to let him out." In reality, he looked tired when I had gotten upstairs, and since he didn't immediately ask to be let out I figured he didn't have to pee. Instead I went and made popcorn and waited for dad to get home, which upon his arrival, it was made obvious that Sid was anything but tired.

When we realized that he needed to be taken to the doggy hospital, dad pulled him out of the kennel and carried him downstairs. I followed with dad's wallet and keys, helped him get into the truck, and we went to Petsmart which was also the vet's office. Sid was immediately admitted, and Dad and I were left waiting in Room 2.

The vets gave him IV fluids trying to rehydrate him, and then had to also administer Diazepam because he had a seizure. It was almost a half hour before the vet came to talk to us. She explained that slug poison was basically the deadliest stuff a dog could get into. Not only did it severely dry the dogs out, but the slug poison also had a second component to it that attacked the nervous systems of slugs, and consequently, dogs. So basically Sid's little puppy systems were shutting down because the big system, the nervous system, wasn't really in control anymore.

And Sid having a seizure was a bad sign. The vet told us his chances weren't good.

We had to transport him to a different vet clinic, because the Petsmart there wasn't an overnight clinic. So we loaded him back into the truck, now wrapped in a blanket, and drove to the emergency vet clinic. When we finally got there, (after I got us lost...) we passed him off to the new vets, and waited in yet another room marked with a 3.

It was a little while before the new vet came in to give us a very dire diagnosis. Basically he had a fifty/fifty chance. And even after he got better from the initial effects of the slug poison, he might not be the same. She told us he could be temporarily blind, suffer from seizures the rest of his life, and/or not have the same brain function or liver function. It was really upsetting to think that our ten month old puppy might not wake up tomorrow.

With heavy hearts, and a signed paper of DO NOT RESUSCITATE, we left the emergency clinic and went home.

Sharon was pretty freaked out and called the clinic every two hours the whole night. Every call ended with Sid having relatively no change. It was of course a good sign he wasn't getting worse, but really we wanted to hear he was getting better.

Finally around six in the morning we got the good news that he was on the mend. The slug poison had passed through his system, and we got the go ahead to pick him up around four that afternoon.

I was super relieved, and happy. Not only because Sid was going to be fine, (at least until his liver tests came back), and he didn't seem to be blind in any capacity.

My dog Dash was also happy to see his little brother come home. The whole night before, he moped about like Sid was really dead, and I could see how he just became a younnger dog when Sid made it home and was not in fact dead. And even though Sid wasn't 100% yet, he eventually did bounce back.

A few days later, he came back with excellent liver tests results. We were home free! Sid was a healthy dog.

He apparently didn't learn any lessons though because a few days later, he chewed an air conditioner hose.