Schedule:
Friday, 8/11, 9am: last DHLPP booster shot, Nemex wormer tablets for the next 2 weeks.
Friday, 8/11, 5pm: drop off at puppy-boarding at Tail-Wagging. Frolicks with other puppies long into the night and early in the morning. Lori reports that she barely got any sleep and shot out of her crate to play in the morning.
Saturday, 8/12, 10am: Mom picks up from Tail-Wagging
Saturday, 8/12, 12:30pm-4:00pm: Swiss’s birthday at Baker Beach. More frolicking with Shasta, a 3-month old Great Pyrenes puppy. Running on the beach with pappa and mommy who are trying not to pay too much mind to the various naked, fat, tan men milling about the end of the beach.
Anyone with this kind of schedule would have gotten sick.
And so she was — as we discovered around 11pm Saturday night. She had been sleepy and lethargic all evening, but we chalked it up to the copious amounts of activity from the night before and during the day at Baker Beach. But then as we prepared to take her out one last time for the evening, I noticed her sitting against the wall, blinking sleepily. Eyes drooping, and frighteningly red — she seemed very groggy and disoriented. She seemed to be trying to prop herself up rather unsuccessfully, and was slowly making her way shakily from the door to her bed under the kitchen table. Once on her bed, she couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Her nose was hot and dry, and she would occasionally sneeze, or hack dry, retching coughs.
A call to the 24-hour emergency All Animals Veterinary Hospital on 9th Ave. and I made the mistake of “admitting” that she had had a set of DHLPP shots on Friday. Chalking that up as the problem, the on-duty person on the other line summarily dismissed the call.
We tried Pets Unlimited next and had better luck — and we were asked to bring Harlow in. It’s definitely a very wonderful thing to be able to provide your puppy with emergency care in the middle of the night where the facilities look as state-of-the-art as some of the better human hospitals around. The nurse(?)/ physician’s assistant who greeted us first took Harlow alone to do a preliminary checkup and then invited us back to a room to wait for the doctor.
After a bit of a wait, wherein we used some tissues to wipe the thin snot coming from the puppy’s nose, and tried to keep her from jumping off the cold steel examining table, Dr. Megan Moser was wonderful. She diagnosed Harlow with a cold and prescribed antibiotics (Clavamox) and a cough suppressant (Torbugesic). In addition, they administered a quantity of water subcutaneously, so when Harlow finally emerged from the ER, she had a fat pouch of of liquid literally hanging off from either side of her little body.
We came home and administered the Clavamox by splitting the pill into two and wrapping each piece in cheese. The only soft cheese we had in our fridge was Couturier Chevre, and that was what she got. Another discovery! She enjoys goat cheese very much. (We’re so proud.) The cough suppressant was cleverly disguised in a sweet karo-syrup, so that went down easily as well. And though she didn’t seem to need to go outside, we managed to lure her out one more time for one last potty, and she came willingly enough with a treat incentive.
And so, after a bit of a scare, and $196 later, she’s definitely seems much better today. She even got her usual spurt of crazy puppy energy (albeit somewhat toned down) around the same time this afternoon. We keep our fingers crossed and believe she’s definitely on the mend.
Puppy is much better.