Back in December, my husband sent me a picture of a very cute puppy while I was at work-- not just at work, but about to go into a meeting where I wouldn't be able to check my phone for a while. I asked who the puppy belonged to. "Don't know." Ok... well, I asked, what are you doing with it? "Playing mostly." Mind you, we already have 3 dogs, and a number of cats in 1400sqft-- certain of the dogs have their own issues that I'll cover at a later date, and life had JUST settled down.
No more dogs, I'd said. No. More. Dogs. I wanted time to work with the ones we already had.
No more dogs.
Well, cut to the chase, of course this dog ends up at our house. He was very sweet, but had no manners. At least he was smart and easy-going. I was determined to find a home for this guy and not repeat our performances with the last 2 strays that made it past the threshold (ie, they stayed). I was pimping that dog to everyone I knew.
Vet thought he was between 1 and 2 (WE think closer to 10mos, but he had tartar on his teeth, so...). I just can't believe he's an adult...
After a couple of weeks with us, right before Christmas actually, Andre didn't seem to be feeling too well. My step-daughter and I were making Christmas cookies. Next thing we know, he's throwing up and lethargic. Two corn cobs came up. We don't compost corn cobs and hadn't eaten them in god knows how long. So suffice to say, he got into them sometime during his time on the streets and they stuck around.
For those of you who don't know, those things hang around. They can slosh in the stomach for months. They are BAD NEWS.
Anyway, he had no appetite, was staggering, was just... not right.
So we took him to the emergency vet (because of course it was the holidays). They didn't feel anything else in there. They gave him a shot for nausea and said that if he didn't feel better over the next day or two to come back.
Well, next day, threw up more, and this time really couldn't walk. So back he went. And this time, the vet could feel what was wrong. A THIRD corn cob had moved further down into his intestines.
So our big man had surgery on Christmas Eve. With a snow storm blowing in.
Luckily, they didn't have to cut into his intestines and were able to manually work the corn cob out.
Christmas day, he was back with us and begging for food with the rest of them.
But within a week or so, he had another vomiting episode with staggering-- back to the E-vet (this time it was over the New Year's holiday). IVs, supportive care, antibiotics. He appeared to have an infection. He also developed an incision site reaction.
Once he'd recovered, we tried to ease him onto raw foods like the rest of our crew eats. He was doing well, but by the end of January, he seemed completely blocked and vomiting. Again.
This time it was his own intestines causing the blockage. He had been eating sticks and whatnot in the yard, caused punctures, developed nasty peritonitis, his irritated bowels had folded in on themselves. He had to have a couple feet of intestines removed because they had necrotized.
Total mess.
So now we know the corn cobs weren't a fluke. He will eat anything and everything.
We are now up this poor dog's butt 24/7. We again tried to ease him onto different food-- another vomiting episode (from which he recovered quickly). So we tried home cooked food, and at one point, he developed fully liquid diarrhea. We thought it might be the raw food, but after he had problems on NOTHING but boiled chicken... the concern is that he may have a problem with fats (I'll get into the details of this later...).
He does not gain weight. But has a ravenous, almost feral, appetite.
He also (especially when eating kibble) has crazy amounts of energy, like cannot control himself and doesn't like it levels of energy.
He has the bad teeth and breath.
Gangly puppy legs and puppy uncoordination.
But he's a good dog. Sweet as can be and smart.
We are trying to find a diet that does not give him the crazies (one that doesn't "carb load" him), but that his system tolerates... and if that can't be found, we have a game plan for testing with our vet. I'll go into all of these details in later posts and why we want to get him to raw, or homecooked, or as close as possible.
We also want to find out if there is an underlying cause to his frequent eating of inappropriate things along with all the other things. We don't want to just treat symptoms, but try to address any underlying problems.
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