In a 48-hour period last weekend, three dogs who are very close to me ended up in veterinary emergency rooms. It was a very weird aggregation of events – but each event was avoidable, and each dog’s owner has taken responsibility for their dog’s potentially deadly accident.
Beware of Wild Animals Around Your Property
The first accident happened to Daisy, my sister’s little 15-pound Jack Russell Terrier. My sister and her husband live in a rural area, where most of the homes are on lots of a half-acre or more. In addition, they live at the bottom of a steep hill, on a court with just five houses on it, and several empty lots. She sometimes allows her little dogs to potty in the empty half-acre lot next door to her house. The lot is, like her own backyard, studded with oak trees, but unlike her yard, is covered with tall grass, and the little dogs enjoy sniffing and exploring the area as they take their potty break.
On this particular day, though, what my sister failed to notice as she let the dogs wander into the lot, was a female deer apparently lounging at the back of the lot. She didn’t see the moment that two of her dogs discovered the deer – or whether the deer spotted the dogs before they spotted her. But she heard one of her dogs shrieking and as she ran in the direction of the screams, saw a large female deer rearing up and stomping down on one of her little dogs.
Like many of us, she was focused on getting to and protecting her dog, and failed to appreciate the danger to herself as she ran toward the deer. She said she was yelling, “Hey! Hey!” and about 15 feet from the deer, fully expecting the deer to spook and run from her, when it, instead, reared up and charged at HER. She screamed and waved her arms and dodged behind a tree, and fortunately, little Daisy took that opportunity to bolt away from the deer. My sister, too, turned and ran and, again, fortunately, the deer didn’t pursue either of them. I suspect that she had a baby resting nearby or some other reason to go on the offensive. My sister didn’t investigate further, as Daisy was still screaming – now in pain, rather than from fear. The deer’s hooves had made one very deep and long laceration along Daisy’s flank, and her face was bleeding, too.
A night in the ER, x-rays, pre-anesthetic bloodwork, surgery (under anesthesia) to close the laceration and insert a drain, antibiotics, and pain medication: $1,600. Nope, they don’t have pet insurance.
Don’t Leave Out Food Leftovers or Dirty Dishes
The very next morning, I received a call from a friend regarding her dog Nova, who was my favorite puppy from a litter I fostered last fall. (I used her and Nova to model for an article in WDJ not long ago, you can see them here.) She said, “I just need a little support. I am at the ER with Nova and scared!” It seems she had made barbequed ribs the night before, and had left the glass pan, covered with baked-on sauce, on the stove top, to deal with the next day. In the middle of the night, Nova had apparently knocked the pan onto the kitchen floor, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces – and she spent some time licking the sauce off of those pieces of glass! There was broken glass – and blood – all over the kitchen floor. My friend didn’t hesitate; she just put Nova into the car and drove straight to the emergency clinic.
The attending veterinarian used an endoscope (under full anesthesia) to examine Nova’s esophagus and stomach, and removed several pieces of glass – as well as several pieces of chewed-up tennis ball. She was incredibly lucky; the procedure took place quickly enough that Nova hadn’t yet vomited (which could have made the glass cause damage on the way out of the stomach and in Nova’s throat), nor had the glass hadn’t started to move through Nova’s intestines. The blood that her owner saw on the kitchen floor was definitely caused by cuts the glass made on Nova’s tongue, but none of those cuts (nor others in her esophagus) were serious enough to require surgical repair.
Total cost: $2100. Fortunately, Nova’s owner has pet health insurance. Since she had another vet visit earlier this year and has already spent the $250 deductible for 2019, she will receive a reimbursement from the insurance company for 90 percent of the most recent bill.
Nova’s owner reports: “I have learned my lesson; my counters are the cleanest in the county and there won’t ever be a mistake made like this again. Also, no more tennis balls for Nova.”
Another Counter-Surfing Case
The same afternoon that my friend was picking up Nova after her procedure, I received a text from another friend! “Ricky ate Chaco’s pain meds. We are at (a local vet clinic).”
While ALL medications should be kept in kitchen or bathroom cabinets – never on counters that dogs can reach – this is especially true of chewable medications. Most dogs won’t eat more than one nasty-tasting pill they find lying around. But the chewable kind tempts many dogs into eating the whole bottle – and that’s what Ricky did. He ate about eight Deramaxx pills, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) that can cause liver damage if an overdose is consumed.
Again, fortunately, my friend discovered the chewed-up, empty bottle right away, and drove immediately to a veterinary hospital, where they administered an injection of apomorphine, which makes dogs almost instantaneously vomit. So Ricky has (apparently) suffered no ill effects, and the bill was a quite reasonable $170 (no insurance).
We’re All Susceptible
Lest anyone think I am judging my friends: I, too, once had a dog eat a whole bottle of chewable medication meant for another dog (I wrote about that in 2013!). The experience made me VERY careful about where I put medications.
Protecting our dogs is an ongoing, complex task, and none of us can prevent every potentially fatal accident. But all of these were preventable – and my sister and friends and I all hope that these stories make you just that much more alert and able to prevent any of these accidents from befalling your dogs!
In case you want to learn about more ways to avoid a trip to the veterinary ER, here is a link to an article that veterinarian Catherine Ashe (who practiced emergency veterinary medicine for nine years) wrote for us last year.
the rauchers are incompetent animal owners, regardless if they are reptiles , dogs or cat’s , which they euthanizie for random reasons.
Its really important to havs a proper dog insurance
This is so unfortunate. As a responsible dog owner, we should always keep a constant eye of dogs when they do outdoors.
Another accident that can result in a trip to the ER—or worse—is caused by a dog’s collar and its tags. I learned this lesson myself the hard way many years ago.
I was a naive first-time dog owner and had two sweet, beautiful “teddy bear” shih tzu-mix puppies. I had taken them out in the back yard and then realized that I had to go back into the house for something. The pups were left alone for no longer than a couple of minutes when I heard a horrible, extremely loud, otherworldly screaming. I bolted back outside to find one of the pups flattened to the deck floor and thrashing about. The tags on her collar had gotten stuck between two boards on the deck, and her thrashing about trying to free herself was just getting her collar twisted tighter and tighter. My fur baby was being choked! She was thrashing about so wildly that I had to literally lay on top of her to keep her still enough so I could release her.
After releasing her, I held her in my lap trying to calm, sooth, and comfort her. But when she was calm enough that I could gently lift her up so I could see her face and examine her, I saw something that made my heart stop. The whites of her eyes were bright crimson red!
At the time I lived in a small town that did not have a 24-hour Veterinary ER. It was after my vet’s office hours, so I called her emergency number and asked her to meet me at her office right away. After examining my pup, the vet said that my pup’s panicked thrashing about and twisting & tightening her collar had caused the blood vessels in her eyes to burst, but they would return to white after a few days, which they did. And thankfully, we were very lucky that my pup did not suffer any other injuries. We walked out of the office with just one short-term medication and a Big Lesson learned.
Since then, I have made it my mission to become as educated as possible and try my best to be a good, responsible pet owner. WDJ has been and always will be a big part of my education, which never ends. I have had dogs for many years now and also volunteer with no-kill animal rescue.
One more thing: It’s important, of course, for our pets to wear a collar with ID tags, but we should always be cautious and on alert because anything can happen in the blink of an eye. In addition to tags getting caught between deck floor boards, a dog’s collar can get dangerously twisted in other ways—just one other of them being when one dog’s teeth get caught in the other dog’s collar while they are open-mouth playing. So let’s all watch over our beloved furkids and keep them safe.
Some folks refer to their pets as “fur BABIES”, “my KIDS”, “mommy’s/daddy’’s little GIRL/BOY”, etc. If one is going to anthropomorphize, please remember to follow up and support our little darlings with the same caution, care, proactivity, preventative, etc. measures we would use with toddlers. Ever read a story about the mom/dad/aunt/nanny who says, “I only turned my back on him/her for a second to answer the phone! How could he/she have climbed into the pool and drowned so quickly?”
Most of us love our precious pets as though they are dear family members. Please, please protect them by using good judgement!
Thanks to those of you who took the time to post cautions.
I first insured Osiris (I posted about him earlier) in May of 2015. I added my youngest cat in January 2016. Since then, for the two of them I have paid less than $2900 in premiums, and this incident cost me the $500 deductible and $1160 in co-insurance. Healthy Paws paid almost $8000 to the hospital. Without the insurance, I would not have been able to keep Osiris alive – I didn’t have $8000 to treat him and wait for reimbursement. Would the hospital have made arrangements? I don’t know – every time I asked about a payment plan during the first couple of days he was in the hospital, they offered me alternatives like applying for another health care credit card (I already have Care Credit, which was maxed out last year with my older dog’s health issues – no insurance on him). Luckily HP was willing to pay the hospital directly and I just had to come up with the co-insurance. I am still ahead of the game with 4 years of premiums paid out, and I am grateful to Healthy Paws for helping to save Osiris’ life.