Journey vs. Destination

Beagles don’t live in the wild and I know why.

The first time we took Zoe to the vet for “gastric distress” due to “dietary indiscretions”, we felt like terrible puppy parents. We should have known. Because she enthusiastically wanted to play ball (even as she was vomiting), we thought she’d just eaten too much grass (which she seems to do because she likes to barf).

When the vet used the term “dietary indiscretion”, it strongly reminded us of the politician who belittled his hypocritical immorality by calling it a “youthful indiscretion”. Both terms have this feeling of joyful breaking of the normal rules. This completely describes our beagle.

And Zoe does like to eat things. Really, anything is fine.

Last week, while I was in class, my husband sent me a dog shaming photo of Zoe. If you haven’t seen dog shaming before, you really should follow the link. Dogs are terrible creatures. And putting signs around their neck has really made their bad behavior a lot easier to take. I wrote a post-it note for Bear a few days ago (my first) and it made his annoying behavior humorous.  Which them made it easier to deal with, which is to say, distract them from the badness, interest them in something non-destructive.

So, while we’re read the site for awhile, we’re new to actually shaming the dogs. I think this was C’s first attempt.

Does it look like she’s trying to blow a bubble? It says “I ate Elecia’s Bubble Gum (including wrappers)”

One important thing, though… like they used to say on America’s Funniest Home Videos, if someone is actually in danger, put down the camera and help.

Sugarless gum is poisonous to dogs. It is the Xylitol sweetener. Oh, and before I go on… Zoe is fine. Bear is fine. But it was a harrowing time.

After taking the picture and then perusing the internet, C rushed both dogs to the emergency vet. Where Zoe got to barf, probably even more than she liked. Bear also participated in that part but all evidence suggests he didn’t eat the gum (poor Bear, punished but not even an accomplice).

Does this bandaid make me even cuter?

Zoe did show some of the poisoning signs (low blood sugar) and was in the hospital for 48 hours.  However, thanks to C’s fast action, she was out of the woods pretty quickly and doesn’t show signs of liver damage (yay!). While in the hospital, she wiggled when she shouldn’t have and they broke a needle in her so there is a quarter inch of 30 gauge wire floating around. While that sounds horrible, it is probably not going to harm her.

Harrowing times… but all dogs are home and happy. They haven’t even deserved shaming today. Yet.