You Know It's a Bad Day When. . .

. . .Your Dog Throws Up IN Your Bed!
Yes, you heard me right. --In My Bed. Last week, Koda, my 2-year-old miniature American Eskimo was sick.

He kept coughing and sounding like he was choking, he wouldn't eat anything, and the choking sound was quite disturbing. After listening to him struggle through the night, we figured that something must be stuck in his throat; and not knowing how to extract said "something," my husband took Koda to the vet.

The vet's diagnosis was that Koda's had--a cold. He said that dogs generally do not get things stuck in their throats, and since he was coughing and had a slight fever, it must be a cold. We paid $68.19 so a vet could tell us that our dog had a cold! We got doggy antibiotics, doggy cough suppressants, and an appointment for a follow-up visit at the end of the week to see if he had improved.

That night, as per the vet's instructions, we hid one of the doggy antibiotics in a piece of a hot dog so Koda would "take" his pill. Coughing and choking persisted throughout the night, and early the next morning, Koda was fed another hidden-in-a-hot-dog pill.

I was still in bed, trying to wake up and get excited about another day at work. Koda was also on my bed, because that is where he likes to be, and because I don't try very hard to make him stay off.

Anyway, Koda started having another one of his coughing episodes which ended up not just sounding like he was going to throw up, but he actually threw up IN. MY. BED.

By this time, I was wide awake and extremely "grossed out." (Good thing he was on Gene's side of the bed.) Trying not to add to the problem, I choked back my own urge to vomit, got the dog off of the bed, ran downstairs to grab a bunch of paper towels, ran back upstairs, and sopped up the warm stuff that was soaking through my sheets and onto my mattress pad. I then threw the whole wad of soggy paper towels in the toilet and flushed it away.

I got the all the sheets in the washing maching, and called my husband to tell him the news of the day. His first question was, "Did he throw up his Pill?"

How should I know? I didn't examine it that closely. I did notice that one of the "chunks" was definately a piece of hot dog. Well, then he asks, "Did you look inside the piece of hot dog to see if the pill was still there?" Are you kidding me? I wasn't thinking about searching for hidden pills when I was cleaning up the mess. I was, in fact, trying not to look at the mess at all.

O.K., so we decided that we don't know if the pill stayed in the dog. By the way, Koda felt really bad, and he was hiding downstairs under a chair with his ears down. He knew he had done a bad thing.

I decided not to give the dog another pill. If that is why he threw up, I wasn't going to encourage a repeat performance. I rushed to get ready for work, then put Koda in his "house" and left for the day.

After everyone had returned home from school and work that evening, Koda seemed all perky and not the least bit sickly. No more coughing or choking. He was eating and drinking and running around like nothing was wrong. Not even acting like he had--a cold. So, Gene says. . ."I wonder if he really did have something stuck in his throught??? Did you happen to notice anything in his vomit that might have been stuck in his throat?"

I am not kidding! He really asked me, again, if I had examined the content of my dog's vomit.

The moral if of this story (if there is a moral to this story) is . . . When you clean up your dog's vomit, you should analyze the contents very carefully; and if you are not going do the analysis, you should probably save the wad of paper towels in a plastic bag so your husband can do his own gross analysis.

On a lighter note, Koda has been just fine since that dreadful morning. We did not give him any more hot dog pills, nor did we take him to his follow-up appointment with the Vet. We think he had something caught in this throat--but we will never know for sure. . .