Almost a near death experience...
Emma scared the daylights out of Mr Knits and me Monday. The story begins Sunday afternoon with the mister and me sitting on the front porch, patting ourselves on the back for a day’s work well done. We had cleared the winter detritus from the porch, yard, and deck. We sorted the recycling, picked up the doggie bombs, moved many of the branches that fell during the Boxing Day ice storm (some were bigger than 20 feet long!), so we felt we deserved a break before we started preparing dinner.
Out came the two B’s – Budweiser and Bailey’s and some macadamia nuts. We sat for a while chatting about what to do next, and how we have finally fixed the problem of the dogs getting loose (we changed the swing of the door so if they push on it, it will only close tighter) then went back to work or I should say he went back to work. I hopped into the hot tub. And we left the macadamia nuts on the porch. Bad idea. Emma, always a scavenger, got into the nuts and ate about 20 of them.
Fast forward to Monday morning. I get up early – really early. Mr Knits say someone has to go outside and wake up the birds, you know. Shaking the trees to get the birds singing is serious business.
My morning routine starts out like this – wake up the birds, put out the dogs, make a cup of tea, check email and Ravelry while the dogs are outside, let the dogs in, and crawl back into bed, drink my tea, and read for a while. Most days I am woken up by Emma giving my face a quick wash just to let me know she needs to go out. NOW! Monday morning though I woke up on my own and only Norma Jean followed me to the front porch where we keep the dogs’ leashes, and she went out. I thought Emma would be right behind her, but she wasn’t. I called to her, but she politely declined to get out of bed. At that time, I supposed she needed her beauty sleep. Besides, sometimes she stays with Mr Knits until he gets up. I wasn’t concerned at all. At 8:00 am, I gave him the wakeup call, and soon he was on his feet, making coffee. Emma was still in bed. I called her again, and this time she came. Or at least, tried to. Poor little thing struggled to get up and then she fell off the bed – her hind legs weren’t working at all and she was all hunched up. I couIdn’t get to her in time to prevent the fall. I carried her outside, and she obviously was in some pain and couldn’t walk.
We called the veterinarian’s office in Napanee and they said we could bring her at 2:40 pm Monday afternoon. Although very worried about her, we weren’t too concerned for her as Emma escaped from the front porch yesterday morning, tore around the property chasing wild turkeys (told you we lived in the wilds of Ontario). We originally thought she might have torn a ligament, really stiff muscles or something along those lines. We weren’t thinking anything more serious was wrong. So, we took her to work, and began the usual – picking up emails, checking for online orders, etc. Then around 9:30 or so, Mr Knits said, “Maybe macadamia nuts are poisonous to dogs.” I googled it, and sure enough they are extremely toxic to dogs. I called the vets’ office back, explained the situation, and they said to bring her right in. Now, we live about 90 kilometres from the vets so “right in” is at least an hour away. Emma and I got to the vets around 11:00 am. Sure enough, Emma was suffering from toxocosis – poisoning from macadamia nuts. This condition, while very frightening for the owners and distressing for the dog, will improve over the next 48 hours and she will likely suffer no ill effects from the adventure.
She was very laid back Monday evening – she was definitely on the mend, but not herself yet. The vets advised me that dogs should not eat nuts of any kind as they are toxic to dogs in varying degrees. Fortunately, Emma didn’t eat too many of the nuts to cause a severe reaction – she could have developed pancreatitis and become very ill.
I have always objected to feeding my dogs table scraps and the like as I insist it encourages them to beg. It’s been a battle I have been waging for years with friends and family. Granted our two fur babies do get into the garbage aka “the green bag buffet” on occasion, but for the most part the only treats they gets are Denta Stix - we call them “doggie crack”, and the homemade doggie treats our daughter in law Terri makes – we named them doggie crack version 2.0. Funny thing is the Norma Jean and Emma used to get pretty excited about the word “cookie”. Now if we say “crack”, they run to the cupboard where we keep it and bark until they get one.
After this terrifying episode, we certainly will be more careful with human food left in the reaches of the dogs, and I have warned Mr Knits if anyone ever tries to feed my dogs some “people” food, I’ll bite their hand!
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