Tuesday, December 4, 2007

She Wanted to Be Like the Dryer

As you may already know, Zach and I had an exciting weekend. Our little dog, Sydney, was sick the entire time with what we thought was the flu. After her symptoms kept up until Sunday night, we decided to take her to the animal E.R. and have her further checked out.

Several x-rays later, the doctor found that there was something stuck in her intestines. They ended up giving her an IV and let us take her home at 1:30 a.m. Sunday night/Monday morning so that she could have emergency surgery first thing in the morning.


Since the vet let us know that her condition was life-threatening, we didn't get much sleep with her between us where Zach & I could stare at her all night long. The next morning, we rushed to our fabulous vet, Dr. Latimer at Sugarhouse Veterinary Clinic, and were on his doorstep as soon as the office opened. He checked Sydney out and we did more tests to make sure that surgery was necessary.


It was, and he ended up operating on her late Monday afternoon. Fortunately, everything went well, and he ended up extracting (what we think was) a long sock from her intestines. Why she would eat an entire sock, we have no idea. Dr. L said that it was string-like, which is the worst kind of foreign object for a dog to have stuck in them, since it wreaks havoc on their intestines as they work to pass it. He said that she only would have had another day before things would have been very, very bad and un-operable.


About 5' of her bowels ended up being wrapped around this 18" piece of fabric. Luckily, the doctor was able to remove it with only two incisions to her intestines (he thought originally it would take 4 or 5), so that was great news.


Zach, Parker and I are missing her terribly since she'll be in the hospital until Thursday. We can't wait for our little Sydney to get home and we all feel so lucky that her problem was caught in time. I thought about taking a picture of the "foreign object" which the doctor saved for us, since it isn't every day you get to see a $2,000 sock. But, it turns out, even $2,000 socks are pretty disgusting once they've been living inside an animal for a few days.

The little sock eater tonight at the hospital.


6 comments:

The Miller Family said...

Yikes! How scary for you and your sweet girl! I'm glad she is getting better! Dang pets are so expensive!!! Ben had a dog once that would eat people's riding gloves at their stable. His mom would always wash them and return them to the rightful owner, but they were never interested in getting them back.

Daybreaking Dickersons said...

Poor baby. I'm hiding all my socks from Oscar.. and Finn.

Kate Rosenvall said...

Poor little Sydney. What a little stinker. I just hope it wasn't one of Zach's tube socks from back in the Disneyland days....that would be a shame :) I'm glad to hear that the surgery went well and that she will be home tomorrow!
P.S. What a sweet picture of her!

Cichelli said...

That sock costs almost as much as my sacks o' silicone that I'm getting for Christmas...

Sarah said...

Poor Poor puppy! But I will tell you that Brandi's dog has eaten 3 pair of very expensive Victoria's Secret underwear which her mother-in-law has found puked up on her living room floor. Yes, dogs indeed eat underclothing, and it quite possible makes them sicker (more sick?) than when they eat chocolate.

Teri said...

I am so glad she gets to come home tonight. I bet Parker has been worried sick about his sister.