Just Fine: A Pluto Story

Dogs that bolt down their food or eat things that are not food are at risk for medical emergencies. Every time we found another stash of Halloween candy had gone missing we worried.

Late one night, right after Thanksgiving, Pluto came and found me just as I finished putting the kids to bed. He had a distressed look on his face, and his tail was tucked way in, under his haunches, and he retched a bit. 

I showed him to my husband (who had exactly as little experience with dogs as I had), and he said, "oh, he'll be fine. He's a dog."

You know how sometimes, when you can't make up your mind about something, you flip a coin? And when you get heads, you realize that's the wrong choice and you go with the other choice? Hearing my well-meaning husband say he'd be fine made me suspect he would not be fine.

I called the emergency vet.

I described his expression, his tail, his unsuccessful efforts to vomit, and I further noticed that his belly was rock-hard and distended. The vet tech on the phone said, "Well, it's a holiday weekend, and we're packed with sick animals and emergencies."  Then, she added emphatically, "you better bring him in RIGHT NOW."

So while my husband sat in the quiet house with the kids asleep, I rushed Pluto to the emergency vet. It was pouring rain. It was crowded in the waiting room. They whisked him into an examination room and x-rayed him.

The x-ray revealed that his stomach was huge--as big or bigger than a basketball. The vet went into lecture-mode. "Well, what you have here is a gastric torsion. You see this faint outline. That's his stomach. His belly is bloated and his digestive track has twisted shut on both ends. Nothing's going in and nothing's going out. A dog can die a lot of different ways from this: stroke, gangrene, heart attack. Fortunately, we have much better anesthesia now, and we don't lose so many dogs. Ten years ago your dog would definitely die. Today we can do a belly surgery on him and we've got a 70% chance he's gonna be just fine."

I left the dog and drove home in the dark in the rain. I had an estimate for the cost of the surgery which I had okayed without reading. In my mind, that 70% chance of being just fine was a 30% chance that he was gonna be dead tomorrow, and I was gonna have to explain to my small children what happened to Pluto in the night.

Exhausted, we tried to wait up for the call, but it woke us anyway. Pluto survived the surgery just fine, as promised. We could pick him up and move him to the local vet on Monday.

Pluto came home a few days after that, emaciated and half-shaved, with a ten inch line of metal staples running along the middle of his gut. He had a cone on his head and a very dull look in his eye. We took him home and put him in his kennel, which we moved to a spot where we could keep an eye on him.

A couple more days passed. Pluto was on a very restricted diet of brown rice and chicken in very, very small quantities. He seemed very sad and very uncomfortable at all times. After dropping the boys at pre-school, I let him loose in the house without his cone. He fell asleep on the couch in his usual spot on the left.

When it was time to pick up from pre-school, I knew I'd be gone only 15 or 20 minutes. The dog looked very quiet and comfortable for the first time since he was home. I left him where he was.

When I got home with the boys, Pluto was lying at the other end of the couch, with his head up. I would swear to this day that he didn't want to make eye-contact with me. Soon I found the source of his detectable shame. But I didn't know what it was at first: about two inches long, black, and with four or five fingers, like a dried monkey paw. It lay there on the kitchen floor. At first I thought it was a very strange potty accident. I crouched to look at it, not really wanting to touch it. It was very dry. I got a paper towel and picked it up. It was the connecting end of an entire bunch of bananas. It was all that was left of five bananas. While I was gone, the dog had eaten five bananas, skins and all. Special diet, small portions, ten inches of staples in his belly, a $1200 surgery, and he was gonna kill himself stealing bananas.

I got the vet tech on the phone. "Pluto ate an entire bunch of bananas." While I spoke I took a look at  him, and the spark was back in his eye. He was sitting up. "Eh," she said. "Bananas are pretty benign. I think it'll be ok."

She was right. From that moment forward, he was on the mend. I think all he needed, maybe, was some bananas.

A Pluto Story: Corn on the Cob, and Other Eating Disasters

Pluto story #4 was supposed to cover all of the most disgusting things Pluto did. I realize in retrospect that there were many other disgusting things he did, and I share some more of them here.

Pluto bolted his food. We tried kibble, which he seemed to suck into his mouth and swallow in four chews. We tried canned food, which we carefully spread to the edges of his dish, and he seemed to suck it into his mouth and swallow in one motion. In the end, we found that adding hot water to his food made him slow down and savor it in six or eight mouthfuls.

He willingly ate any food, and even things that seemed like food, like PlayDo, modeling clay, crayons, and scented soap. Often, we would not discover that he’d eaten something until it came out the other end. Crayons and modeling clay pass through a dog with color and texture intact. Expensive scented soap turns into a massive, grey mucous-covered substance that makes me ill to think about.

Pluto loved beer, and barked when beer was opened until he was given a small amount in his dish. He also loved broccoli, so much so that he clamored for the water the broccoli was cooked in—what we called broccoli water. Broccoli water was usually still hot, and would elicit growling sounds from the dog, head down in a big saucepan. You could amplify the sound, and vary the pitch by poking him in the ribs while he drank it. Our current Vizslas do not understand why we sometimes absent-mindedly offer them the pot of broccoli water.

Once, at the end of a big family meal, my brother asked me whether he could give Pluto the ear of corn left over from his young daughter’s nibbling.  I had a charming mental image of a dog quietly gnawing the ear while he steadied it between the paws. I thought it was a great idea. Sure! Give Pluto the ear of corn. Pluto swallowed it in two or three bites.

It took a few days, but the corn cobs needed to be barfed up, since they would not break down and come out the normal route.

32

Last Friday, an Alaska Airlines flight out of Seattle was delayed because a rat was seen scurrying in the cabin. Our county health department provides helpful advice if a rat swims up your sewer lines into your toilet. 

We even have a neighborhood nicknamed “Rat City.” Rats are featured in the popular Underground Tour of Seattle, and I believe are part of Seattle culture as much as Douglas firs and coffee.

Not long after Schwartz killed our pet snake, I discovered some evidence in our basement of rats.

They had found some secret stashes of dog food samples and treats and chewed their way in.  I called the exterminator and he went through the usual routine of setting bait and traps and dutifully returned once a week to look for results.  We suspected they were living in the basement ceiling, and Schwartz did his part letting us know that now we were on to something. 

The exterminator finally decided that it was time to open the ceiling and pull out the rat’s nest once and for all.  As he got to work unscrewing the screws that held the panel in place, Schwartz watched him carefully.  As he tipped the panel down to slide out the rat’s nest, down it came, full of leaves and sawdust and lots of rat poop and there in the middle one big live rat.  As it hit the floor it took off at a run, but Schwartz was on the case.  He had the rat immediately.  In one pounce he stopped the rat.  The exterminator did the rest. 

The exterminator was very excited and proud to tell me this story.  

A Pluto Story: Vizslas

I had cats and other pets growing up, but never a dog.  In 1992 my husband and I were living in the Bay Area, and went to a big dog show at the Cow Palace. Walking around with our son in a baby-backpack, we saw a lot of breeds we had never even heard of before, including a Hungarian breed, the Vizsla. My husband was born in Hungary, and escaped from the communist regime in Hungary with his family when he was a small child. The privilege of owning a real Hungarian dog was meaningful to him, and the more we learned about Vizslas the more interested we became.

We were told that the Vizsla is a breed dating back to the 9^th century. A gentleman’s walking and shooting dog, the Vizsla may have been originally developed by the Magyars to hunt with falcons. The dog is a pointer/retriever, capable of finding prey birds, pointing, flushing the birds on command, and retrieving the bird after it is knocked from the sky by a falcon. If you ever wonder what inventive Hungarians are like, think about that Magyar, who contrived to train two animals to do most of the hard work of hunting.

Vizslas were also always intended to be family companions, as well, and I have not met one yet who is not a couch-potato in the home.
After the second World War, because of their associations with wealthy landowners, the breed was almost completely wiped out by the communists in Hungary. The story I read said that eleven purebred Vizslas were rescued by a Canadian breeder who smuggled them out of Hungary in the early 1950s to reestablished the breed abroad.  Today the AKC standard says that the dog should be “A natural hunter endowed with a good nose and above-average ability to take training. Lively, gentle-mannered, demonstrably affectionate and sensitive though fearless with a well-developed protective instinct. Shyness, timidity or nervousness should be penalized.”  I believe that this means those who make the best Vizslas do so by trying to meet this standard. I have not met Vizslas “bred for hunting” with the same outgoing, positive nature as those “bred for show.”

That having been said, I know that there are an awful lot of homeless pets in the world, and would encourage anyone interested in a dog or cat to consider going to find an adoptable companion languishing in a shelter. Both dogs and cats know when they’ve been given a second (or third) chance.

Things I Find in My Basement #17

Things I Find in My Basement #16

Things I Find in My Basement #15