Theft, Drama and a Greyhound

Yesterday night was shaping up to be pretty much like most other nights this year. The TV was on, dinner had been consumed and I was settled in for a nights study whilst Angela was curled up to watch something trashy on the box.

By now you'd think we'd have learned - it was suspiciously quiet. Too quiet. The silence was then punctuated with the sound of plastic creaking and being torn in the kitchen. Ange raced out and told Lottie off. By the time I got out there, Ange was trying to fish something out of Lotties snout. It turned out that the two pieces of fillet steak I'd put on the bench to defrost weren't out of Greyhound reach after all.

One piece of fillet was gone and the other was already covered in dog slobber.

Making matters worse, each fillet had cling film wrapped around its edges and as far as we could tell that cling film was now sitting somewhere in Lotties gut.

Houston we have a problem

Having cleaned up the destroyed meat packaging and told Lottie off, I realised that having clingfilm in ones gut could actually be quite dangerous, and told Ange.

After spending 5 minutes on Google Ange was worried - Dogs had died from similar causes. Panicked, I phoned up our trusted vet and he confirmed that although the likelihood was low that the cling film was going to pose a danger, we should play it safe and get Lottie to the emergency vet where they'd administer a drug to make her vomit up the steak and the cling film. but time was of the essence.

Racing to the car I phoned the emergency vet, explaining what had happened and that we were on our way.

What goes down must come up

Arriving at the emergency vet they produced a small pill called apomorphine that was placed under Lottie's eyelid (there's a heap of blood vessels on the underside of the eyelid so apomorphine can be speedily absorbed as it dissolves). In true greyhound fashion Lottie was completely calm during the entire process, even when the strange man placed a little white round thing under her eyelid. If only us, her owners were so calm.

Within minutes Lottie wasn't so happy, but we were spreading newspaper on the floor which had the added benefit of distracting her from how increasingly miserable she was feeling and made the invetible clean-up seem like a far less messy experience.

Mere minutes later Lottie was both completely stoned (apomorphine as it name suggests is also an opiate), shivering and feeling incredibly nauseous. We were just praying that there'd be cling film once she did throw up.

Then like clockwork Lottie threw up. Sure enough there was the piece of fillet, barely chewed and now perfectly defrosted, but there was no sign of the cling film.  Lottie was pretty miserable and was now doing farts that'd make workers in a stink bomb manufacturing facility eye's water.

I took her outside the clinic for a quick stroll so she didn't kill the poor emergency vet clinic staff with terminal flatulence.

Heading back inside the clinic the vet concluded that the cling film was not probably in Lotties small intestine which was why it was not upchucked after an apoorphone dose. Now that the cling film was unlikely to be wrapped around anything resembling a piece of steak it was unlikely to do any harm and would probably be passed in 2-3 days.

D'oh!

We headed home worried that our dog still had somewhere in her gut clingfilm. Lottie was in the back of the car now in lala-land as the apomorphine began to wear off (greyhound metabolisms are so fast that this isn't unusual).

After we got home I headed to our neighbours to provide a bit of neighbourly tech support. Ange texted to say that she'd found the glad wrap amongst the wrecked meat packaging we'd thrown out in our panicked rush to the emergency vet.

We'd subjected poor Lottie to the joys of apomorphine for nothing, parted with a sizeable pile of cash to do so worst of all, we both felt incredibly guilty. Lottie however just wanted to sleep. Poor dog

Learnings

If there's important lessons to be learned, they're these:

1) Greyhounds are incredibly sneaky, especially when it comes to food. Even when you think you've placed food out of reach, don't under estimate  a greyhounds giraffe like neck, dexterity with their paws and sheer cunning. If possible put food that you're defrosting in a closed cupboard to avoid stealthy counter surfing.

2) If it is too quiet, check - chances are that your greyhound is either asleep or up to something sneaky

3) If in doubt call the vet - they're the pro's and will always have your pet's interests at heart

4)  Have the number for the emergency after hours vet stored on your phone - you never know when you're going to need it

5) Don't panic - We did and because of it, missed that Lottie hadn't gobbled the cling film, but had instead delicately unwrapped the steak before snarfling it almost whole.