A temporary break from a horse blog to discuss my best friend, my favorite dog, my Velcro, my co-dependent pup.

Hermione.

Last Tuesday she woke me up vomiting bile and acting lethargic. She wasn’t interested in food. I went to work, came home to check on her at lunch, found she was super perky but still not eating so I went back to work. That night, she was super lethargic so after chatting with my vet practice a few times, we took her to ER vet #1.

They did X-rays (inconclusive), gave her fluids, and pain meds and at 2 am we were released.

The ER is boring!

The plan was to follow up with our normal vet in the morning for more x-rays but the ER vet didn’t feel she needed to stay overnight…

Of course, by the morning (all 3.5 hours later), she was groaning and miserable. So, we fed the horses while Hermione lay in the grass looking pathetic and in pain and basically made me cry. Our vet appointment was at 10, but we carted her over the moment they opened at 8:30 to sit in the waiting room and the took us pretty much as soon as a vet showed up.

The vet immediately suspected pancreatitis. The admitted her, drew blood, re-ran x-rays, and called me a few hours later. X-rays didn’t reveal much. Blood pointed to pancreatitis. Continued on pain, fluids, and a long acting antibiotic through the day. That night we were going to transfer to ANOTHER ER clinic (my vet doesn’t have 24/hr monitoring).

So, we picked her up at 7 and took her down to the other ER vet. They weren’t convinced it was pancreatitis and we made a tentative plan to ultrasound in the morning depending on if she was willing to eat. Vet said she’d call me at 6:15 unless something bad happened. No other news was good news.

So, finally around 11pm we left, drove off, left the highway, stopped at a drive thru for food and coffee and found our truck, with BRAND NEW BRAKES (literally, every single piece of the brakes from front and back lines to pads to calipers to parking brake) sliding into the car in front of us. And my husband’s food was on the floor. When I got out, brake fluid was GUSHING OUT. EVERYWHERE. So yeah, there was that. Thankfully there didn’t appear to be any damage to the other vehicle. And the driver was very nice about it. Thankfully. Exchanged info, but (knock on wood) it wasn’t needed.

I called AAA and they said 50-75 minutes. We managed to get the truck to a parking spot (yay for new parking brake). 20% brakes came back. AAA tow truck driver called to say they were low on tow trucks and it would be at least 2 hours (only 2 trucks in Chester County that night and abnormally busy). So, we were looking at 1:45AM. 1:45AM turned in 4AM. I got a ride home to feed the horses, feed the cats, clean litter boxes, feed and grab Marble, and drive back to Erik. And we waited. We eventually got the truck off to Toyota. And got home around 4:30AM.

Defective Caliper. Seriously. WTF?!

And then the vet called at 6:15 to tell me she didn’t want to eat and we agreed on an ultrasound. So much for sleeping.

And then the horse vet came at 9:30… So it’s not like I could go back to sleep either! (routine)

Around 10:30 I got a call that the ultrasound revealed a foreign body in her small intestine. Plus an unhealthy part of her small intestine. Surgery. Thanks to my mother for saving the day, we were able to make the surgery happen. [Somehow while waiting for news about surgery I managed to get my promotion documents submitted…]

She came through with flying colors. The removed a portion of her small intestine (several puncture holes), but were NOT able to identify what she ate…

By Friday morning she was eating chicken at the vet.

We visited on Friday night.

Reunited! We both cried. 

Saturday night she was released to come home.

Heading HOME!

And for the last week I’ve been sleeping on the sofa while my best puppy ever has been living in an x-pen and trying to be the best patient ever. We SHOULD have a follow up with the surgeon on Wednesday and hopefully she’ll get her sutures removed.

So HAPPY!

Anyway, I was holding off on this blog until I felt better about my Hermione. She’s still on antibiotics for another 30 days (well, it might only be 27 now) but otherwise is recovering well. She’s grumpy about no sofa or running around or mostly laying in my lap on the sofa, but otherwise she’s doing well. She doesn’t eat stuff so this whole thing was just strange. She just needs to keep doing better.