Doug, the Sickly White Dog, has been increasingly sickly. He was feeling pretty peaked when he went for some dental work . Gwen the assistant even commented he was not looking in top form and had lost weight. I commented this might be because he is Bulimia Dog and has puked every day for a week.
The dental work led to some antibiotics. Two days on the antibiotics and I had a different dog. Formerly, Doug would wake me up at 6:30 by whining his Little Whiny Song. Now he was waking me up at 6:30 by barking: "BITCH! Get UP!"
And he was kicking Mac's tail all over the house and snarfing down food. Antibiotics stopped, two days later, Sickly Doug was back. Started antibiotics again, puke dried up, Feisty Doug returned.
This led to some more lab work. It looks like he might have Addison's disease and might need some special medication. I mentioned this to mom, who said:
"He'll become horny."
"Huh?"
"Kennedy," she said. "JFK had Addison's. I think they said the medicine is what made him horny."
I sighed, " Some woman at work said her dog died from Addison's."
"You never know what might happen," Mom reassured me. "Doug might be driving past a grassy knoll and be shot by a lone gunman."
He hasn't been definitively diagnosed with a special Presidential Illness, but currently Doug's on dose three of the antibiotics, and a new dose of anti-spasmodic for his belly, and has figured out all of our pill-giving tricks. Pill hidden in peanut butter/ cheese / Vienna Sausages? Doug's not buying it. Pill poked down back of throat? Doug horks it up, gums it, and I find little white pills adhered to his lip-fur days later. Pills ground up with a mortar and pestle and sprinkled on the moist dog food? For a week Doug took minuscule nibbles of his food and spat out the bits contaminated with pill powder.
Now for the past two days he has stopped eating his dog food. I serve it, he looks up and sends me the psychic message: "Don't think I'm falling for some type of invisible pill you have in there."And of course, my puppy-whipped husband has decided we should feed the dog anything that will give him calories. So today Doug - and of course, Mac - have had:
1) A breakfast of Vienna sausages.
2) For luncheon, shaved mesquite-smoked turkey.
3) A mid-afternoon snack of peanut butter licked off Gary's fingertips.
4) Smoked turkey flecks mixed into dog food. Doug used great tongue contortions to worry out the turkey and leave the dog food.
Finally I convinced Gary we could grind up the pills, mix it with something palatable and water, pull it into a syringe like the vet suggested, and fire it into the back of Doug's throat. I am sure Doug will soon adapt and begin projectile vomiting the medicine right back in my face.
Comments