Dog Emergency!

Got up today, and as usual, I was my normal slow grumpy self (I'm not a morning person as people who know me well can attest to!) I was just about to give the dogs their breakfast when I noticed Pepsi had something in his basket. It was a sleeve of eight Paracetamol tablets and one was missing. Somehow Pepsi had opened my handbag and got it out and eaten one tablet. Well Paracetamol is a highly toxic painkiller, people have been known to die after relatively small overdoses and here was my 4.5 kilo dachshund having eaten a whole tablet! He hadn't had anything to eat either so it would get into his system faster. With my nursing experience I knew that you have a window of time when you can remedy the situation by giving an emetic and an antidote. I rang the vets and was told to bring him in as they would have to make him sick. So I flew up there and he was given the emetic.

I sat outside in the sunshine with him whilst he threw up over and over again. I felt so sorry for him, I could see he was distressed and not sure what was happening. Pepsi is always so bright and happy it was sad to see him like this, but it had to be done.

I went off with a dachshund feeling very sorry for himself, the antidote and a lot poorer - why are vets so expensive? Luckily I can get the nasty smelling antidote into Pepsi ok. The vet says because I got him there fast he will be ok, but it just shows you how easily disasters can happen. Needless to say I have taken the Paracetamol out of my handbag!