Tyler's Emergency

Okay, this was the weekend from hell. Any other time I said that, I was mistaken. Those were only outer rings of hell. This was the inner pit.

Friday night Tyler got hold of a corn cob and ate a bunch of it. I didn't see him with it, so wouldn't even have known, but the Dread Reverend caught it, took it away from him, and got rid of it.

At first I thought he hadn't eaten any of it, had only been gnawing on it. By the time I realized what had actually happened, it was too late to take him to the vet's, so I thought I'd wait till the next day and see how he was. At that point I didn't know corn cobs were lethal to dogs, only concerned that it might cause a problem, mostly because of Tyler's propensity to bite off chunks of things and swallow them whole, not bothering to take the time to chew. And if he had eaten any of it, I thought it might only have been one or two small pieces. At that time he still seemed fine - he'd been running around playing with a toy that evening, ate his dinner after the incident, and was acting perfectly okay.

By the next morning, though, my intuition was kicking me hard, telling me there was more to this than I knew, and I really needed to do something. Tyler still seemed to feel fine, but he had thrown up that morning (a bad sign), so I was at the vet's 20 minutes before they opened, and accosted the staff at the door as they were unlocking it.

When we saw the doctor, the news turned worse. She said that dogs eating corn cob is in fact usually lethal; they can't digest them, and the pieces cause an intestinal blockage which would kill them, untreated. She even warned me that in many cases, the dog can't even be saved by surgery if it's not caught quickly, because often owners don't see their dog eating the corn cob, and don't know anything happened until the dog begins to show symptoms of the intestinal blockage - vomiting, loss of appetite, other general symptoms of sickness - which usually don't get noticeable for several days. By then, the corn cob can likely rip holes in the intestine as it moved to wherever it got before it got stuck, and those holes can't always be fixed by surgery.

My panic was escalating. I was only worried about Tyler having surgery because he's 13 1/2 years old, and often surgery is much harder on older dogs. But I really didn't have any choice. The doctor said the only alternative was to take him home and 'wait and see' - and I'd already ruled that out after she told me what usually happens when these things aren't taken care of immediately.

So I told them to go ahead. Turned out it was the right decision to make, because they found a huge amount of corn cob chunks in his intestines. He must have eaten far more than we feared, because there were an amazing approximately 25 chunks of corn cob they pulled out of him. All of them were just small enough for him to have swallowed whole, but all big enough that any one of them alone could have killed him - and that many of them all together certainly would have.

The good news, though, was that they got them all (she assured me she checked every inch of his intestines, five times through; that's going to hurt for awhile, but it was worth it, to be sure). And he did amazingly well through the surgery, having no problems at all, came out of the anesthesia easily, was perky and bright-eyed, and doing great. They kept him overnight just to be sure, and I was able to pick him up Sunday evening around 5:00.

He's just laying around sleeping a lot, but I'm sure that's normal and good for him, to heal. But he's been outside several times, and moves around pretty good. He has a very good appetite; he's on a special diet for 2 weeks, a special canned food from the vet, and he's only allowed to have 1/8 cup four times a day (and that's only a spoonful), but he's been gobbling that up and looking at me like, "Where's the rest?" He's had some water. So he seems to be recovering as well as can be expected.

I took today off work to stay home with him; I just couldn't leave him alone his first whole day home, I needed to watch him. The vet did say that he wouldn't be entirely out of the woods for three to five days, because there are sutures in his stomach and intestines, and if either of those would rupture, it could kill him. And there's no way in hell I'm taking the slightest chance of letting that happen. When I do have to go back to work, I have a crate around here somewhere I'm going to find, and he's going to have to stay in that during the day. I hate to crate him, but there's no choice. He has to be kept quiet and safe until his insides have healed enough for there to be no more danger.

The only difficult thing now is that he keeps wanting to lick the incision on his belly, and I can't let him do that. I'm afraid that in addition to crating him, he's going to have to be subjected to one of those big collars, because when I'm back to work, even in the crate there will be nothing to stop him from licking that incision all day long. I don't have one of those collars, and will have to see about getting one from the vet's later today.

So ... don't ever let your dog get ahold of corn cobs. And try to keep an eye on them always, so that if they do get ahold of something they shouldn't have, you will know it in time that it can still be fixed.