An Illrador :-(

Thursday morning started very early for us, with Kira whining to be let out in the garden at 3am. I imagine this is a bit like being a parent. You get woken up by an unusual noise, your subconscious registers what it is and gets the feet going before the conscious mind has caught up. I was physically out the bedroom door before I was really awake. It's very unusual for Kira to make any kind of noise in the night so whatever was causing it was fairly serious. Sure enough, when let out, she emptied the contents of stomach and came back in looking a bit sorry for herself.

Now having a Labrador, she will "snack" when out for a walk if she finds something she thinks is tasty, so this happens from time to time. It's not something that causes too much worry, but I did spend the rest of the night on the sofa in case she needed to go out again. By the time the sun came out she seemed fine and was bouncy on the morning walk, chasing a ball with her normal gusto.

Unfortunately it being a week day we had to go to work but Andie came back to walk her at lunch time and again she seemed fine. I managed to get back at 4:30pm to be greeted by a depressed Labrador and some very watery vomit by the back door. When let out into the garden she added diarrhoea to the list of symptoms. At that point you start thinking about a visit to the vets. I debated this with myself for 30mins, but what swung it was not physical symptoms, it was the very depressed Labrador who followed me round the house and tried to hide under the bed. Our collie often hides under the bed. Any fireworks and all you can see is a black and white bum sticking out from the underside of the bed, but not the Labrador and yet here I was looking at a very sad black nose poking out from beneath the bed. After that she tried to sit on my feet while I sat at the desk. Definitely time to call the vets. That was 5 o'clock, by 5:20 we were in the vets and Kira was having her stomach poked and prodded. At this point she obliged by demonstrating her diarrhoea. So an anti-nausea injection, a course of anti-biotics, a recommendation of a rice & chicken diet and £62 lighter we left the vets.

Back home, some sofa time was prescribed. The seriousness of the situation was confirmed by Kira's reaction to suppertime.

This is not the normal reaction of a Labrador to the supper call.

She also seemed to be a bit chilly so she was blanketed.

A chilly Labrador

Fortunately dogs bounce back more quickly from these things than we do so by Friday evening we were back to a bouncy Labrador who was hinting that supper would be a wonderful idea.

So what was the point of this rambling? Having been down with food poisoning myself earlier in the year I struggled through 3 or 4 days before crawling into the doctor. And yet as soon as one of the animals is ill they're straight to the vets. Why? Me suffering is through choice (or stupidity), their suffering is not and we want to relieve it as quickly as possible and sod the expense - that's what credit cards are for!