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 our daughter’s age, so that would have made him seven or eight years old when I almost killed him. He was named after Buzz Lightyear, but we didn’t do that. He came with that name when we adopted him six years before from a local no-kill 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 Labrador Retriever, 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 dramatically once you have a human child’s life to value.) So of course we took Rex to a special orthopedic veterinarian who charged us about $3,500 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 six-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 our daughter was a baby, right before we moved out of state, 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 reply, “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 the first victims brought him back. The next time I gave him away, 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 about 20 years old. I only know this because he was born the night that O.J. Simpson (allegedly) got away with murder. June 12, 1994. 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. Our daughter was two years old when we went to pick out a dog. She was terrified of every one we put 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 our daughter on the ground, she ran up to him, put her arms around his neck, and said, “This is my dog.” My husband and I looked at each other uneasily, verified that there was a return policy, and decided to give him a try. When we brought the dog 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. (He would tremble at the sound of thunder, gunshots, and fireworks, and at the sight of -- of all things -- fishing poles.) So it took a while for him to warm up to people. But once he did, he was the perfect pet. He would rarely bark, never sniff crotches or chew on things. And he was too smart and grateful to run away. He would usually curl up in a corner and sleep most of the day. The only problems we had (aside from the time he brought me a bloody headless rabbit carcass), were his odd habit of throwing up in our daughter’s bed, and the few times he found it necessary to leave a big dump in our son’s floor. We solved that problem simply by shutting the kids’ doors every time we left the house.

So, long story longer, here’s the story of how I almost killed Buzz at a most inconvenient time:

Most military wives know the obscure Murphy’s Law that encourages all household hell to break loose every time the husband goes away. In accordance with 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 moderate to severe stomach bug or flulike symptoms over the course of at least two consecutive weeks. (This is standard operating procedure.)

(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. (This time, it was a water-heater-over-flow incident and its attendant $100-extra water bill.)

(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 began working tirelessly to repeal this archaic law as soon as I returned from an extended spa vacation that I took not long after my husband’s jet landed somewhere in the contiguous United States.

I was just hoping that his deployment to Iraq in 2008 wouldn’t bring on the scorpions, rodents, injured children, electrical or cable outages, car problems, or major appliance malfunctions. Of course, worrying about them all but ensures that they will happen, even if you knock on wood. Or worse yet, something you never could have imagined happening threatens to make you question, for example, where one could find an exact replica of your pet so as not to arouse suspicion in your spouse when he or she returns from an extended time away.

Again, long story short (by the way, I hate that phrase because it really just makes the story three words longer—so does the phrase “by the way” by the way) when no one was looking, Buzz ate four huge bars of dark chocolate. I had always heard that chocolate was like poison to dogs. He did not seem the least bit ill, and if my daughter hadn’t found the wrappers, we may not have realized that this had happened that night until he tossed it up in my daughter’s bed or left a pile of chocolaty diarrhea in my son’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 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, 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 toss his cookies as much as I wanted to see him toss his cookies that night. I even went so far as to consider guiding him to my daughter’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. I lined the back seat with towels and hit the road.

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. My head was spinning, and I thought I would be the one to throw up first.

After I 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. Holy shit, I thought. I could do this at home for free. I insisted that they make him throw up immediately. I wanted my money’s worth after the $300 cover charge. The vet told me that chocolate camps out in their stomachs for a long time blah blah blah and does not travel into their intestines blah blah blah 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 someone came in the back door 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.

They then 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 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 increased further. I said “Well, maybe that’s because he just upchucked.” She said that in terms of absorption time blah blah blah, we brought him in very early, and considering how much he threw up blah blah blah, 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 take 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 and blah blah blah for a few more hours. I was thinking, I wouldn’t even go through this crap for my kid, much less a dog. Of course the vet 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 an emergency veterinary hospital.

The next morning, they said 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. They finally agreed to let him go with a full bladder. The final bill for the pet E/R came to about $400. They had faxed his records to our personal vet, and told me that he needed to finish his IV bag there. Holy shit, another bill for this.

So I dutifully took Buzz directly to our vet’s office. He ended up spending most of the day there “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.

Those damn candy bars cost me about $600. If my husband hadn’t been deployed at the time, this probably never would have happened. So really, I should blame him for being off in Iraq. Come to think of it, it was really George Bush’s fault. But the president gave us a tax rebate that year, so I guess he actually did pay for it.

The next time our dog ate chocolate (in the form of three boxes of Girl Scout cookies) I just looked the other way and crossed my fingers. I figured the money we saved could pay for a pretty fancy funeral.