"Smells Like Brownies" or How to Spend $600 After Almost Killing Your Dog

First, a little bit of background. Our dog Buzz is a 50 pound Australian Shepherd mix. We think he's about Katy's age, so that would make him 7 or 8. He was named after Buzz Lightyear, but we didn't do that. He came with that name when we adopted him 6 years ago from the local no-kill animal shelter. We decided to go for a mutt this time, seeing as how Buzz's two predecessors (one disobedient inbred AKC-papered Lab after another) brought us nothing but grief.

Our first dog, Boo Radley, was a 100-plus pound black Lab, who found it necessary to bust through our fence and get hit by a truck on the highway before he reached the age of two. His remains are supposedly resting comfortably in a pet cemetery in Lubbock, Texas.

Our second dog was a yellow Lab named Rex. Soon after we brought him home, at the age of about eight weeks (even though his parents were what they call "hip-certified"), one of his hips popped out of joint. The vet said it was the worst case of hip dysplasia he had ever seen. After losing Boo, we were not about to give up on another dog. (Mind you, this was before we had kids, so we had no perspective about how the value of an animal's life declines once you have a human child's life to value.) So of course we took Rex to an orthopedic vet in Austin who charged us about $3500 to fashion and install some new and improved titanium bionic hips. Not long after Rex healed up, he used those damn hips to run away from us at every opportunity. As soon as we would let him out of the house, he did nothing but try to dig under the 6-foot fence, climb over it, gnaw his way through the wood, or tear away enough boards to squeeze through. The puppy Prozac we dosed him with did nothing to make him realize that he owed his powers of locomotion to us, not to mention his life. The electric fence wire we installed acted as more of a challenge than a deterrent. Then he would simply howl as he gnawed at the fence with a mouth full of splinters, leaving his signature bloodstains behind. Anyway, after the kids came along, Rex took a back seat and was none too pleased with the lack of attention. When Katy was a baby, right before we left New Mexico, I had occasion to meet quite a few of our neighbors when they would return Rex to our door thinking they were doing us a favor. Most of them would say, "You missing a dog?" "Not really," I would always say, "but thanks anyway." After we moved, I tried to give Rex away, but I forgot to include a no return policy. It wasn't long before they brought him back. The next time I gave him away, I did it while the kids and I were staying at my parents' house. I removed his tags, left no forwarding address, and promptly took off. If Rex were still alive, which he surely isn't, he would be almost 14 years old. I only know this because he was born the night that O.J. Simpson got away with murder. I'm sure Rex's remains amount to nothing more than a couple of titanium hips that some Boy Scouts will find one day while hiking through the woods of East Texas.

This brings us to dog number three. Katy was two years old when we went to pick out a dog. She was terrified of every one we put it in front of her. We were about to give up when they told us, "Well...there is one more dog you might consider." They told us Buzz had been there for about two years and no one wanted him because he was so standoffish. (And I think also because he has one brown eye and one blue eye, so people thought he was either defective, vicious, or just hard to make eye contact -- and therefore communicate -- with.) As soon as we put Katy on the ground, she ran up to him, put her arms around his neck, and said, "This is my dog." Mike and I looked at each other uneasily, asked if there was a return policy, and decided to give him a try. When we brought home, he was terrified. He acted as if he had never set foot on carpet before. He rejected treats as if he felt unworthy of them. It was obvious that he had been abused. (To this day, he trembles at the sound of gunshots or fireworks, and at the sight of -- of all things -- fishing poles.) So it took a while for him to warm up to people. But since then, he has been the perfect pet. He rarely barks; he's not a crotch-sniffer; he doesn't chew on things; and he's too smart to run away. He usually curls up in a corner and sleeps most of the day. The only problems we have had (aside from the time he brought me a bloody headless rabbit carcass), have been his odd habit of throwing up in Katy's bed, and the few times he has found it necessary to leave a big dump in Luke's floor. We have solved that problem simply by shutting the kids' doors every time we leave the house.

So here's the story of how I almost killed Buzz.

In accordance with the obscure Murphy's Law for military wives, Uniform Code of Military Injustice § 13.666, events such as this are required to take place during every deployment of any duration. This code section mandates the following:

(a) Each child must suffer from a stomach bug or flulike symptoms over the course of at least two consecutive weeks;

(b) Some sort of kitchen mishap is required to occur; (In my case it was a dripping faucet and replacement thereof.);

(c) At least one large appliance must malfunction; (Here, it was a water-heater-overflow incident and its attendant $100-extra water bill.); and

(d) One more dramatic and costly event caused by any seemingly innocuous act that in hindsight appears to be quite negligent must occur.

My military-wife friends can rest assured that I will now be working tirelessly to repeal this archaic law just as soon as I return from an extended spa vacation that I plan on taking not long after Mike's jet lands anywhere in the contiguous United States.

At the end of every school year, I put together these big plastic bins with goodies for teacher gifts. So there were four open bins sitting on our dining room floor. They were filled with things like beach towels, bath products, lotion, candles, sunscreen, cookies, notepads, pens, and anything else a hard-working teacher might enjoy for the summer, including an oversize bar of expensive dark chocolate.

Last Tuesday night at about 5:30, I took Luke to his Boy Scout meeting. He was going to ride home with a friend. Katy and I came home at about 7:00. I went about my business, watering plants and tending to the garden like the dutiful, longsuffering military wife that I am. Katy soon noticed some wrappers in the guest room floor. My first thought, of course, was that one of the kids must have left some food trash out and Buzz got into it. When I took a closer look and saw that these were wrappers from the chocolate bars, I freaked out. The bins looked untouched. It was as if someone had broken in and handed the bars to him, or he grew thumbs and found a way to dig those out and pick them up (all four of them) while leaving everything else undisturbed. I never in a million years would have imagined that he would (much less could) do such a thing. He did not seem the least bit ill, and if Katy had not found the wrappers, we may not have realized that this had happened that night until he probably would have tossed it up in Katy's bed or left a pile of chocolatey diarrhea in Luke's floor.

I immediately called the emergency vet. They gave me an 800 number for a pet poison control advice line and told me I needed to follow their instructions first before bringing him in. After sitting on hold with them a little bit longer than forever, a veterinarian answered the phone, and, after asking what the problem was, told me that there was a $60 charge for their service. So of course I gave her my credit card number so I could get information that I probably could have Googled myself if I hadn't been in such a panic. She told me that the amount of chocolate he ate for his weight was probably less than half the dose that definitely would be lethal. But I certainly wasn't going to take any chances. She told me to give him three tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. She said that he should vomit in about 10 to 15 minutes. Well, Katy and I got tired of waiting for him to throw up. I even gave him more peroxide, and stuck my finger down his throat. After all the vomiting this dog has done, I never dreamed that I would want to see him hurl as much as I wanted to see him hurl that night. I even went so far as to consider guiding him to Katy's bed where he would feel most comfortable about puking -- but I didn't. I decided to go ahead and start heading for the emergency vet hospital. Katy and I lined the back seat with towels and hit the road. (Now that I know how much he threw up, I'm glad he waited until we got to the hospital.)

We got there at about 8:30. The clerk and the technicians seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, as if dogs overdose on chocolate all the time and they always see overreacting owners. Well, as I checked him in, they informed me that there was a $300 charge just for walking in the door. What was I going to do? Say "Oh, well then, nevermind," and leave? They took him to the back to check his vitals and do whatever they needed to do. I was shaking and terrified. I was kicking myself and feeling a horrible mixture of guilt and fear, not unlike what I felt when Luke had his motorcycle accident. I was getting that anxiety attack sort of post-traumatic stress feeling that I get every time I see an air-evac helicopter. My head was spinning, and I thought I would be the one to throw up first. I kept it together for Katy's sake, but she was absolutely amazing. This girl is an incredible little human being. Right at first, when we discovered what had happened, she panicked and started crying, but as we rode to the hospital, and as we sat in the waiting room, she was all smiles, perfectly calm, and reassuring me. She said, "Mom, I know he's going to be fine. I feel it in my soul. Buzz and I are like this." She held up her twisted fingers then gave me a big hug. I wasn't sure I believed it at the time, but turns out she was absolutely right.

After we had waited for about an hour, they said he still hadn't thrown up. I started raising hell when I realized that they hadn't given him anything else to induce vomiting, and had just been observing him all that time. I insisted that they make him throw up immediately, because obviously I had not given him enough peroxide, and the caffeine and toxins had been in his system now for probably about three hours. The vet told me that chocolate camps out in their stomach for a long time and does not travel into their intestines and into their systems for several hours. I said, "I don't care; I paid $300 to walk through the frickin' door. The least you can do is make my dog puke!" After another half hour or so, I sent the receptionist back to check on him. Apparently, as soon as they gave him some injection, he barfed all over his kennel. They said it looked like gallons of chocolate syrup. The receptionist came back smiling and laughing. I thought, well that's a good sign. She said that somebody came in there without seeing what had happened and said, "Smells like brownies. Who brought the brownies? Where are they?" The vet and another tech confirmed this story later and said that it indeed smelled like someone had just baked a fresh batch.

So at this point, they told me they needed to give Buzz some IV fluids, some activated charcoal, and monitor his heart rate. Overnight. The vet said that his heart rate was a little elevated (about 140 when 100 is normal) when we first came in. I told her that his heart rate always goes up when we bring him to a vet or kennel or even to the groomer. I explained that he's a bit skittish and shaky even in non-emergent situations. After he vomited, she said his heart rate had gone to 180. I said "Well, maybe that's because he just upchucked. Or is it because y'all let the caffeine and toxins stay in his system for an hour longer than they should have?" She said that in terms of absorption time, we brought him in very early, and considering how much he threw up, and that he hadn't had any diarrhea, the majority of it had not hit his intestines and spread to his system. I said, "Then it should be safe to bring him home, right?" She said that there was no way we would be able to replace his fluids with just water at home, and that she would be uneasy about letting him go without monitoring his heart rate for a few more hours. Of course she said that if it were her dog, she would leave him there. (I thought, well yeah, you work here, hello?) So she brought him in to the little examining room to see us, where he seemed perfectly fine, wagging his little nub of a tail, a little bit shaky, because of course he was in a veterinary hospital. Katy and I gave him lots of hugs and kisses and told him we would be back early in the morning.

So Katy and I got home at about 11:30 that night. Luke ended up spending the night with his friend and wearing his friend's clothes to school the next day. We had to pick Buzz up before 8:00 the next morning, so Katy and I got up and left a little bit after 6:00 a.m. Wednesday. Of course, they said he did fine all night, his heart rate got back to normal and he didn't have any diarrhea, which was a great sign. The only problem was that he would not urinate for them even though they knew he was full of fluid. I told them that he could hold it for days and that he doesn't like to pee when he's nervous or on a leash or when anyone is watching. The final bill for the pet E/R came to about $400. Honestly, I thought it would've been a lot more. They had faxed his records to our vet, and told me that he needed to finish his IV bag there. I wanted to just bring him on home, but then again, there I was with this IV bag and thinking well, I really would like for our own vet to make sure he's okay. Plus he still had the IV cath port in his leg that I wasn't about to try to pull out at home.

So I took Buzz directly to our vet's office. When I left him there, I thought it would just be for a few hours so he could finish the fluids and for the doctor to look at him. I took Katy on to school, got her there on time, then ran by Luke's school to bring him his yearbook for signing that day and to reassure him that Buzz was okay. Then I went home and tried to pretend it was a normal day.

Buzz ended up spending most of the day at the vet under "observation." The doctor did some sort of test and decided to flush him with one more IV bag. He said it took that dog forever to finally pee, but when he did he peed forever. They were able to get him to eat and then make sure that he didn't have any diarrhea. So I guess that extra day of vet care was worth the $130 I was popped with. Doesn't everyone want to pay $130 to know that their dog doesn't have diarrhea? Really, a bargain at twice the price.

So other than a shaved ankle, Buzz appears none the worse for wear. I just recently emerged from self-flagellation mode. Katy just smiles and says, "I told you so, Mama. He's fine." I can't wait to get a flashback when the bill comes so I can pay the $600 those damn candy bars cost me. If Mike had been here, one of us probably would have been home and this never would have happened. So really, I should blame him for being off in Iraq. Come to think of it, this is really George Bush's fault. Good thing he's sending us that tax rebate.