Sick poodle is sick. Very Sick. For real.

After a full day of us saying we were not taking the Skeeter poodle to the vet ONE MORE TIME for eating something she shouldn’t and having an upset stomach, we took her to the emergency vet at around 1:30am, last night. As we drove, as we sat in the waiting room, as we sat in the exam room, we thought we were idiots for doing this AGAIN. She ate something. She has a tummy ache. They’ll give her fluids and anti-nausea meds and we’ll have spent $1K and lost 6 hours of sleep and if we just waited it out, we’d have had those 6 hours of sleep and the $1K we were about to shell out… But this time, when the doctor turned on the x-rays and said she ate something, and this doesn’t look good either… welp. Turns out this is not like those other times. It’s not like that at all.

It looks like she swallowed a penny. And they’re pretty sure it’s a penny due to the exact size and measurement of the penny. (I am still skeptical about this, coins have never been her thing — so while I can see her eating pretty much any damn thing… coins? Huh. That’s just… weird.) And apparently pennies are particularly toxic to dogs because they’re made of zinc. So letting her try to poop it out was not an option that was even suggested.

They tried to make her vomit to see if she would clear it that way. This dog is the least vomiting dog EVER and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work. I was right. They dosed her with the morphine mixture TWICE and no vomit.

So we left her there and the emergency vet said she wanted to consult with the internist at 7:30am about whether they could retrieve the item through endoscopy or whether she recommended abdominal retrieval. We got home at 5:30am and the phone rang at 7:15…

She was resting comfortably, they had done another set of x-rays to see if anything had moved — her intestines looked better (did I mention they were all weird? well they were… another reason for not suggesting we just let her poop it out) but nothing in the stomach had moved even a millimeter.

The internist asked that they try to make her vomit again… using hydrogen peroxide this time. They dosed her twice with that, no vomit. (THIS DAMN DOG!) The internist is concerned about the penny but she’s equally concerned about all of the other things in Skeeter’s stomach since they haven’t moved at all.

So, because the intestines look better — we’re waiting eight hours and will do another x-ray to see if any of the contents of her stomach have started the move through the GI tract. If not, she’ll have full abdominal surgery. If stuff has started moving, they’ll probably go in and try to retrieve the penny through endoscopy (unless of course the penny has moved into a place where it can’t be retrieved through endoscopy.)

So I’m glad we took her to the vet for another stomach ache and foreign body ingestion check. I’m glad we lost six hours of sleep. I am hopeful that she’ll be home again in a day or two and I will try not to complain at all about the recovery period issues we’re going to face.

Damn, poodle.