Tuesday, March 22, 2005

limpy

I've mentioned before that Murray has a tendency to dump kibble from his bowl onto the floor and eat it from there. Either that, or he carries kibble elsewhere in the house and eats it in a secondary location.

On Sunday night, I made them an extra yummy dinner and put it into their bowls. I went about finishing up dinner for us (enchiladas, yum!) while Murray proceeded to paw out the kibble, scatter it across the kitchen floor and then they would both munch away. I didn't pay much attention until I looked down to see Murray swaying around the kitchen like a drunken sailor. He would take a step, sort of fall over, then try to compensate for his falling and fall the other way. I knelt on the floor to watch him a little better and he definitely looked drunk. I called him over and he fell over himself coming to me, even while trying to eat up some of the kibble on the floor.

I FREAKED. All these awful thoughts of a stroke or him being paralyzed or having some sort of brain damage passed through my head and I swooped him into my arms as I figured out what to do. I tried to calm myself down and take some deep breaths before I started screaming for the hubs to come into the kitchen.

I carried my little drunken brain damaged puppy into the living room and while trying desperately to remain calm, told the hubs that we needed to take Murray to the vet IMMEDIATELY. I told him what he had been doing, so he suggested we put him on the floor of the living room and get him to replicate. I did, and sure enough, more of the walking while falling over ensued. I started to get a little teary at the thought of what awful thing could be wrong with my poor pup and I reached out to pick him up. As I lifted him up into my arms, his little paw brushed against my shirt and a piece of dog food that had been wedged between his toes fell out.

My drunken brain damaged dog that paws kibble off of his plate got a piece of dog food stuck between his toes. He didn't like how it felt, so in his attempts to avoid putting his foot down he scared the shit out of me. Not to mention almost causing us to rush him to the $10,000 a visit emergency vet who would have ordered 8 blood tests and a CAT scan to determine that there was a piece of kibble stuck between his toes.

We are switching over to wet food from here on out.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

We had a similar experience with our dachsund. We came home one night and the sides of her mouth were swollen and rock hard! Oh my god! She's got cancer! Or something! Oh no! I shoved my finger back in her mouth but I didn't feel anything, so we rushed her to the emergency vet. Only to find out she'd gotten into a bag of rice cakes and they'd cemented in the back of her mouth.

Glad your pup's ok!