sick as a dog

When the alarm went off at oh-dark-thirty this morning, it had already been a long day. We had to haul Finn off to the emergency vet at midnight after he'd been vomiting and showing signs of being really uncomfortable (pacing, lying down, getting right back up, repeat). When we took him outside and he started chowing down on the grass like he was competing with a lawnmower, we knew it was time to go.

Exams and vitals showed that he was certainly uncomfortable, and showing signs of nausea (good thing the vet knows what dog nausea looks like), but otherwise healthy, so the leading candidate was a GI tract obstruction. So off to the x-ray room he went. The images revealed that he hadn't swallowed anything that'd be detectable on an x-ray, and that he had a lot of air in his intestine, which the vet told us, indicates that he may have ingested something small and long, like string, dental floss, etc. which causes the intestine to bunch up and get air pockets. We can't think of where he got ahold of anything like that, but we can't say that it couldn't happen. Anyway, for now we're in wait-and-see mode, serving the dog a bland diet and seeing if there's any recurrence of the vomiting/discomfort. He's kept everything down so far today, he certainly has an appetite, and he's as playful as ever.

If I hadn't been handing over the Visa card at 2:30 this morning, I wouldn't have believed there was anything wrong. Silly dog.