When I was ten, my father surprised us with a puppy he brought home from a pet store. Now, this was September of 1986; back then no one had heard of puppy mills, and unethical breeding practices were not something that were part of the public conscience. It was common practice to pop into a pet store and buy a pet; in fact (and I know this because as a child, from the age of six on, every day I read the “pets for sale” ads in the newspaper because I loved animals and just liked reading about them) at that time there weren’t even many people selling dogs out of their own homes, in our province. Pet stores were the norm.

And Oh! how my brother and I loved that puppy. She was a sweet little all-black poodle mix. She snuggled, fitting perfectly into the crook of my neck. She gave kisses. She was beautiful. We named her Midnight. On her first day home, she was pretty shy. She barely wanted to move, but of course we thought that it was because she was in a new place and nervous. And she was a puppy – puppies sleep alot. Same with the second day, although she did play with us a little. That night, like the night before, we put her to bed in our bathroom, with a dish of water and plenty of newspaper on the floor, just in case. In the morning, when my mother went to let her out, she found bloody diarrhea and vomit all over the bathroom floor. Not just a little bit. There so much that you wouldn’t believe it had all come from the same three-pound dog, and in a two-hour timespan, at that (Dad had been to the bathroom at 4 am, and there had been no problems. At 6, when Mom got up? Everywhere).
We immediately brought her to the veterinarian, where she stayed for three days with an IV full of fluids and antibiotics. And at the end of those three days, she succumbed to canine parvovirus.

I was ten years old. My brother was nine. We had never lost anyone close to us; our grandparents were all still alive, and no one we knew had died in our lifetime. Sure, we’d heard of people dying, our friends’ grandparents, Terry Fox… but it was so abstract. Death was not familiar to us. And this? This was immediate. This was happening to us. And our hearts were torn in two.

We had loved her so much, and now she was gone – how could that be? Surely if you loved someone as much as we loved Midnight, that love would be enough to keep her alive? We’d seen the Very Special Episode of Punky Brewster where her dog got hit by a car and was on the brink of death, and Punky’s impassioned speech at the last second (“Oh, no Brandon! I can’t give up! I’m not going to let you die! You still have squirrels to chase, and bones to bury! You’re going to be around for a long long time, you’ve just got to wake up! Brandon, wake up! Please Brandon! I love you, I love you, I love you!”) had woken him from his coma. Why wasn’t real life like that? I remember crying so hard into my pillow that my eyes literally swelled shut. My brother went to his room and punched the wall, over and over again, his tiny fists making dents in the drywall.

Months later, our parents drove to the Humane Society, two hours away, and brought home another dog. We named her after an Ewok (again – it was 1986). She was an incredible, beautiful dog, and lived for seventeen years: long enough to see the theatrical re-release of the Star Wars movies so that people didn’t look at us all quizzically when we called her name (“what’s a Wicket?”) . As I mentioned in a previous post, she was never sick. Not once in her entire life, up until the final week. We loved her, and yes, I’ll admit, the painful memory of losing Midnight was pushed to the backs of our minds, because we had a running, barking, sock-chewing, alive dog to love, right in front of us.

That brings us to this:

Last night, I took the boys outside for their nightly constitutional at about 9:00. They both did their thing… and I noticed that Sprocket was doing more of his “thing” than usual. I figured he’d probably eaten too much at their last feeding, and left it at that.

Ten minutes later, I heard Rob in the kitchen saying “Sprocket, no!”, picking him up, and running him outside. When they came back in, he told me that Sprocket had started to squat and poop in the house. “That’s funny,” I said. “He just pooped outside, twice”. Ten minutes later, he was sniffing around again, as if he had to go to the bathroom. I brought him outside, on the off chance and sure enough, he was pooping again. And, because I was starting to get concerned, I checked it out, and it was diarrhea (are you enjoying this story?).

Over the next hour, we were ferrying him outside every fifteen to thirty minutes (he is great at signaling when he needs to go. Usually he sits in front of the door and stares at it, and if we’re paying attention we get him out pretty much every time). We called the vet, but of course they were closed. There was an emergency number on their answering machine, but we got a machine at that number, as well, telling us that “office hours are 10 am to six pm. This machine doesn’t take messages”.

I, being the panicker that I am, started checking the Internet. It said that puppy diarrhea is usually caused by overeating, or eating garbage, or… whatever. And that it wasn’t necessarily something to worry about, unless it lasted more than a day, or unless the dog started vomiting. To feed him rice and make sure he had plenty of water, and it should pass. Okay, great!

But he wouldn’t eat the rice. And he wouldn’t drink any water. And at 11:30 pm, he threw up. And then he threw up again.

At this point I was inconsolable. I was convinced it was parvo, and that he was going to die. And, since parvo is so highly contagious, I knew that it was just a matter of time until Doozer got it too. We were keeping them in separate rooms since Sprocket had started with the pooping, but they’re constantly together. They hate being apart. If Sprocket had something, the chance that Doozer had it, too, was about 99%.

Over the next several hours, we brought Sprocket outside every 15 minutes. He would squat, and pretty much nothing would come out except maybe a little liquid. I know this because after about the seventh time taking him out, I went batshit crazy and started taking a flashlight out with me, getting down on my hands and knees and shining it directly at his butt when he squatted. I was checking for blood. I knew that it was just a matter of time until I saw blood, and that the when I did, well, that would be the beginning of the end. He also threw up, a total of four (five?) times. In between potty breaks, I would make him take water from an oral syringe (when we first brought them home, Doozer still hadn’t gotten a hang of how to drink from a bowl, so the breeder gave us a syringe to help him to drink. He used it once and then figured out the bowl on his own). He hated that. We would try to cuddle him, but he’s not the cuddly one, Doozer is, and he would struggle out of our arms after a couple of seconds . He wanted to be on the floor playing with his toys, or laying on the couch next to us, but he wasn’t interested in my weepy ministrations at all.

Eventually the vomiting had stopped altogether, and the pooping seemed to slow down. Instead of every fifteen minutes, it moved on to every half hour, and by 4 am he hadn’t gone in an hour and was sleeping peacefully. Rob sent me to bed, assuring me that he would stay up with him and take care of him. I fell asleep, convinced that when I woke up Rob would be telling me that he was dead.

When I woke up at 8:00, Rob reported that he had only been out one time since I’d gone to bed, and that he’d been drinking water from the dish, and running around playing.

By 10 am, it had been five and a half hours since he’d pooped at all, and he was demanding his breakfast (we usually feed them at 8 am, but of course we were nervous about feeding him). Rob called the vet, who said that since the diarrhea and vomiting had stopped, and he was drinking and wanting to eat on his own, there was no need to bring him in. She said that more than likely it was caused by eating something weird (he had been eating grass) in combination with the heat (it was over 30 degrees yesterday). This is when Rob went to bed, finally.

So we’ve been keeping an eye on both of them, and they’re fine. Doozer hasn’t had any symptoms at all. Sprocket has been eating and drinking, and has had three solid poops today (again, aren’t you glad you’re reading this?). They’re both very energetic and playful.

I don’t know how parents of human babies do it. If we had kids, they would sneeze and I would be ready to take them to Urgent Care. I know I’m just (and I say “just” and it’s not “just”, but…) a dog mom, but this was the most stressful night I’ve had in months. And, obviously, it brought back some crazy memories.

Thanks for reading this whole thing!
Love,
The Poop Watcher.