Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this lovely Wednesday? Things here are okay. Dad’s trying his hand at a hydroponics garden for herbs and lettuce and stuff. He got one for some herbs recently and when they sprouted it made him happy, so he decided to build a bigger one. There will probably be pictures in the future when it’s all set up and things start growing. He used to have an herb garden out back, but the trees blocked all the sun and they died out. It’ll be nice to have fresh stuff again! Plus it means he has to use the stuff, which means more cooking. Huzzah! Anyway, today, we’re here to relive the trauma of Sunday, January 26th. I would’ve written about it last week, but… book review. Here we go.

The culprit (pictured above from when we first got her): Sophia.

Background: The previous few nights, Sophia woke multiple times and needed to go out, which isn’t unheard of, but is unusual for her. Since she spends her nights in a crate, Dad had to keep getting up to let her out. By Saturday night, he was sleep deprived, so when she cried to be let out, he decided to just let her roam. If she peed in the house (which is why she gets crated), whatever. Then, he went back to bed.

The scene: Sunday morning. Dad walks into a bloodbath. The white leather couch is covered in blood, along with the throw pillows. It’s all over the floors; living room, hallway, kitchen. The back patio has splotches of red with raspberry jam looking clumps. Dad looks for whatever poor corpse our dogs have destroyed to no avail. But Sophia is laying in his chair obviously worn out. An inspection reveals blood on her nether regions. She moves around fine, not showing any signs that she’s in imminent danger of dying. She’s just bloody (though not actively bleeding) and lethargic. After a mini heart attack, Dad cleans up and gets me out of bed. We decide I’ll stay up all night and we’ll take her to the vet first thing on Monday because we can’t afford the emergency pet hospitals around here.

The verdict: Dad and I are sure she perforated something, but she’s still alive albeit lethargic on Monday morning. After an hour of trying to get through to vet (apparently their phone system was down), I emailed them on the off chance they’d see it (they don’t check their email often) and got lucky. They said to bring her in at 11:30, so we did. After a bunch of questions and a couple of blood tests, they came back in and nonchalantly told us she had Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis which was probably precipitated by a bout of Pancreatitis, though we couldn’t figure out what she would’ve eaten to bring that on. They gave her subcutaneous fluid because she was dehydrated and sent home some antiemetics (not because she was vomiting, but because it would soothe her stomach), antibiotics in case a bacterial infection was contributing to it, and some probiotic to help with her gut life. And they said and did all this like it was the most common thing in the world. So, she had a severe tummy ache and decided to traumatize us with it.

By the end of that day, Sophia was mostly fine again. Now, other than still taking the antibiotics, she’s back to her usual piss-on-the-floor-if-left-unsupervised self. So yeah, that was fun and expensive. Let’s not do it again, please.