The good: life full of adventures and surprises.
The bad: life too full–feels as if the last time I blogged was Christmas eve blogging the reasons for brown-sugar hard sauce.
The most dramatic event in my life this past week occured Wednesday morning just after I woke up–my little white Westie dog Marianne took one look at me and started moaning and yipping. I don’t need a Dog Decoder to know what this means:
“Something is wrong–so fix it, right now–waaaaa, I’m so unhappy!”
A trip outdoors–and rarely have I been so un-toothbrushed, uncombed, and generally half-asleep for our morning walk–did not make her feel better. My vet recommended me to an emergency vet who could see Marianne exactly at 9. (So I tried to set Feedster’s Feed of the Day before leaving–and that’s another crazy story…)
Cut to $200 of vet consultation and dog-tummy x-rays later. Marianne’s tummy contains a big bubble of gas and a large, smooth-edged mass that puzzles the vet. On the other hand, she is clearly feeling much better after throwing up, peeing, and pooping all over the floor.
Still with me? I drove her home, worried about the mysterious “mass” in her little fur tummy. Then I noticed–her dish full of breakfast dogfood was still in the fridge. Then I realized–my kindly husband had not forgotten to feed her. No, letting me sleep, he had given the dog a full bowl of….
BROWN SUGAR HARD SAUCE!
Marianne had wolfed down an exciting breakfast of butter (mostly) plus brown sugar and brandy. So the large smooth-edged mass in her tummy was:
BROWN SUGAR HARD SAUCE!
Well, as my husband explained, it looks just like dog food….
Heh–well, my dog feels fine now.
And, in other good news from the real life that keeps me from blogging, at this Thursday’s Dave Winer mtg:
- The always-amazing Jay McCarthy showed us how he blogs–when he’s not busy working or going to college.
- IRC friend I got to meet in real life: Jack Hodgson (Gone East)
- Berkman blogger who kindly consented to be the first guinea pig for my “busy smart person interview”: Steve Pomeroy (StaticFree).
4 responses so far ↓
1 Elayne Riggs // Jan 24, 2004 at 9:01 am
Thank goodness it was just something she ate! My cat had to be cleaned out entirely on Monday, he had days-old constipation and they took so much out of him he’s pounds lighter now! Alas, he’ll have to be on medication for the rest of his life now…
2 The Children's Liberation Front (actually, Yule) // Jan 24, 2004 at 10:50 am
Surely he didn’t give Marianne the brown sugar hard sauce on purpose, did he? Was it a mix-up, grabbing the wrong thing from the fridge early in the morning?
You know there’s only one cure for this? Sleeping in to a civilised hour! I suggest at least 8:20, if not 9 a.m.!! By that time it’s really light out and possible to tell the difference between dog- and human-food!
(Glad to hear your pooch better now!)
3 Elaine of Kalilily // Jan 24, 2004 at 11:20 am
I know that Marianne’s plight isn’t funny, and neither is having to shell out $200. But I really did laugh out loud because you wrote it so funny!
And I think I’ll email Elayne about going through something similar with my cat until I started using SwheatScoop cat litter. Most cat litter leaves undigestible residue between the cat’s claws, which she then licks off and ingests. Result: major constipation. SwheatScoop is made out of wheat. Haven’t had a problem since.
4 Betsy Devine // Jan 24, 2004 at 1:08 pm
Yule, I agree that sleeping until a civilized hour is great. And the fact my husband is an early bird lets me do just that. In our house, we efficiently make two bowls full of dog food at dinner time–one for the dog’s dinner, and one to go into the fridge and wait for breakfast. Of course, the fridge has other bowls of food in the leftover queue, but dogfood looks pretty distinctive. So Frank came across a bowl full of mushed up brown stuff and assumed it was the brown breakfast the dog was dancing around his ankles waiting for.