Sunday Dog Blogging

Regular readers will know that our beautiful doggie, Genevieve has been feeling poorly for awhile now. She isn’t her regular perky self, and we’ve been experimenting with different treatments to try to help her. We’ve had a ton of tests done, put her on pain meds, thyroid meds, and meds to help keep her from peeing on the floor. The thyroid seems the most likely to me, and she was on the meds for about 5 days, but we pulled her off this weekend.

Why, you may ask? Well, yesterday Ted woke up to discover dog vomit at the top of the stairs. He cleaned it up, but later I took Gen out, and she was vomiting some more. She wouldn’t eat, seemed extremely lethargic, and had really bad diarrhea. Off to the vet for Gen. The vet ran some blood tests, gave her an IV to rehydrate her, gave her a shot and some pills to help with the nausea, and sent her home, telling us that the results would be in on Monday. We couldn’t think of anything she might have eaten that would make her THAT sick, although Maya had dropped a bowl of cereal on the floor on Friday morning, and Gen might have gotten some spoiled milk by licking walls and so on. There was no glass on the floor. Quite the mystery, right? All part of the same problem that’s been plaguing her for about 2 months now, or something new? She didn’t seem well, but she seemed a bit better, so we went to Ted’s company party, the biggest party of the year around there, an hour away. A couple of hours later, Lura (Ted’s sister, who lives in our complex), came to check on her, and she was not doing well AT ALL. She was foaming at the mouth, twitching, unresponsive, having trouble breathing, all of that really scary stuff. Lura called us and said, “Come home now”, so we did, fully expecting that we might find a dead dog when we got here.

Lura said that she had turned a corner about 10 minutes before we got home, though she was still not doing well. But no more frothing, no more twitching, that sort of thing. She wasn’t vomiting any more, but we discovered a spot where she had had diarrhea the night before…behind the TV, on top of all of our fancy wiring. (No poop in this picture, don’t worry…but that’s where she did the deed, and yeah, that was NOT fun to clean up)

She also had diarrhea two more times last night, but did consent to eat a bite or two of chicken and rice. This morning, she’s feeling better, though certainly not her normal self. Not even her normal self as of late.

So this afternoon, I was in the kitchen making pasta sauce out of some tomatoes that I got from the farmers’ market, and I decided to make some lemonade. Went into the freezer to get the frozen concentrate, and saw the plastic bag of tulip bulbs, and some connections finally met together in my brain. Here are the facts, that I had neglected to share with you until now, because I hadn’t thought of them myself until much further in Gen’s illness.

1. Thursday, I did a bit of gardening. We have containers of flowers on our front patio. I went out and bought some flowers to plant, and one of the pots I was using used to house some lovely yellow tulips. I dug up the bulbs and put them in a bag in the freezer. I remember hearing that you could freeze them and plant them again next year. Don’t know if it will work if you’ve left your bulbs in the dirt until July, but heck, it’s worth a try, right?
2. Thursday evening, I noticed a wasp nest on our fence. Very small. 4 busy wasps starting it up. So on Friday, we moved the plants away from that area, and sprayed some wasp foam on the nest. End of that story. We put the metal plant stand in front of that area though, so I know she didn’t eat any poison.
3. Saturday, when Gen was so sick, she just wanted to sit out front. At one point, I found a bit of tulip bulb, which I didn’t think anything of, and threw away. Later, I found the papery covering from one of them. Again, didn’t think anything about it.
4. Back in 1944, the Nazis tried to starve the Dutch, and many people died from eating tulip bulbs.
5. Genevieve is a piggish dog who will eat anything, including licking the floor and cabinets for random grease or whatever, and she often picks things up off of the ground and eats them before we can stop her.

So…putting these factors together in my mind, a light bulb went off that said, “I’ll bet that she ate a tulip bulb that I missed…they were small and kind of mealy from being in the ground all spring…” Crap. So I looked online, and yes indeed, tulips are toxic for dogs to eat, and she had every single symptom.

I have no proof. Didn’t see her eat a bulb. But gosh, it sure as heck looks like my lazy gardening skills and her piggish nature almost killed our sweet dog. Crap. Thank goodness Ted took her to the vet, because I kinda think that the IV they gave her, plus the water Lura was able to get her to take, probably saved her.

You will be very happy to know that she is MUCH better today, enjoying the chicken and rice I cooked for her, and the extra love. She’s not well yet, but much better. Scary weekend, huh? (I asked Gen if she wanted to write this up for you as a “Genevieve’s Corner”, but she’s not getting up for anyone.)

Updated thought…LaToya says M.J. was murdered. Anyone, besides Genevieve, think maybe he ate a tulip bulb?