Our first visit to the hospital.
Up until this weekend we’ve successfully made it three years into our marriage without a trip to any kind of hospital but our streak is now over.
Saturday we had to make our first trip as a family to the hospital. Animal hospital, that is.
Let me introduce Sadie and Denver. Hampton’s real biological mom and dad. Make sure not to mention it to Hampy because he has no clue he’s a dog.
This past weekend we were dog sitting for Jessica and had these two cuties plus their sister Ayla {lab/chow mix}. We had a house full of dogs but they were all so well behaved, we didn’t mind.
Let me just start off by saying that Hampton has a very sensitive stomach. For this reasons, we’ve only changed his food twice in his whole life and we rarely feed him anything other than his food and treats. This post may go into more details than you want to know but I promise to give you the very short, non detailed version of it.
When we got home from work Friday, we discovered that Einstein {who has a stomach of steel} had gotten into the bag Jessica sent with the dogs which was full of Ziploc baggies of food (gallon size for Ayla) and rawhides. In Hampton’s kennel we found one of those gallon size Ziploc bags with a tiny handful of food left in it and a half eaten bag of rawhides {which was full when Jessica bought it to us}. We could only assume that Hampton ate the majority of it and by how bad his stomach was tore up Friday night, we were right.
Now, since he does have a sensitive stomach, I’m not the type to rush him an hour away to the animal hospital every time he gets into something. This has happened before and we let it run it’s course and he’s always been fine. But that all changed late Friday evening when I found drops of blood on my floor and by Saturday morning, there was blood in his bowel movements. I’m sorry if that is too much information but that was the least grossest way I could think to put it.
Anyway, moving on from bowel movements. We were up with him a good bit Friday night, letting him in and out so we called the animal hospital Saturday morning. They said since we had seen blood, we need to bring him in for examination. My biggest fear was that he had eaten like 5 or 6 rawhides and they would be impacted into his stomach and he wouldn’t be able to pass them. So we loaded his kennel up into the car and headed to the animal hospital.
I just knew it was going to be something serious and we’d have to leave him over night for testing or something. I had already prepared myself for the worse and even brought my makeup in case I started crying.
Thank goodness it wasn’t what I feared! The vet felt around his stomach a good bit and didn’t feel anything that would cause concern and said it was a good sign that Hampton was eating and drinking. Just to make sure though, he offered him a treat to see if he would take it and Hampton gobbled it right out of his hand. Fatty.
The vet said if the rawhides were impacted, he would be vomiting and wouldn’t be interested in eating anything.
This is the point where I let out of huge sigh of relief and my stomach unknotted. I’m a nervous Mama. I can’t help it.
The vet said the upset stomach was from such a drastic change in his diet and the blood was most likely from Hampton straining. So he gave us two medicines for Hampytown- one to settle his stomach and an antibiotic just to be on the safe side.
When we got home, Hampton made sure to act extra sick so he could get a little more lovin’ from everyone. He even snuggled up with Sadie and Denver in his kennel. He never shares his kennel.
And by Saturday night, I think everyone was extra tired from the days events. Denver not excluded.
