Awww, puppy!

Some idiot let my dog off her run a few days ago while I was gone. I came back to find my dog missing and five bags of garbage strewn all over the yard. In cleaning it up, I came to realize that she had eaten about two cups of old Halloween candy, which had been individually wrapped in tin foil kind of like Hershey's kisses.

Yes, I know chocolate's bad for dogs. I don't try to give it to her. But she's had enough so far that hasn't affected her that I don't worry too much if she gets a hold of it. The tin foil, on the other hand, I worry about.

Stormy showed up on the doorstep about half an hour after I got home. Her leash was gone, so I ended up having to get her a new one. The following night, around three in the morning, she vomited on my bed. As I cleaned it up, I noticed there was tin foil in it. "Good," I thought, "that's done with, then." I went back to bed. I think I fell asleep in about ten seconds, because according to the clock, it was only two minutes later that I was woken up to the sound of Stormy throwing up again. I got up, went downstairs to get the paper towels and cleaner and trash can, came back up to find her vomiting a third time, so I took her outside and put her on the run so she could throw up all she needed while I cleaned up.

When I went upstairs and turned on the light, I noticed that the vomit on the floor was a funny color. Red. Red? I cleaned it up and went outside to check on Stormy. She was vomiting again. Within ten minutes of the first time she vomited, she threw up six times. Two of the vomit piles had tin foil and were about the size of a dinner plate. The others were smaller--about the size of a softball. All but the first were pretty bloody.

Needless to say, I kind of freaked out. Especially as she was throwing up the sixth time, because I wasn't sure how long she would keep going. Did I have to rush her to an animal hospital? Could it wait till morning? Was she dying? In a bit of a panic, I called my mom (fortunately, with the time difference, she was already awake) and asked for her advice. She called her farmer friends to ask for advice and went to some website called JustAnswer, I think? By the time she called back (only minutes later), Stormy was happy and perky and alert and looking at me like I was crazy for standing outside with her if we weren't playing.

I ended up going to the store to get a few loaves of bread and feeding her just bread and water for the next two or three days. Bread is soft on the stomach, and also, theoretically, it would wrap around any remaining pieces of tin foil that she was having trouble getting through her system and would get it through easier. She seemed to like the bread. I would rip it up in pieces and hand-feed it to her a piece at a time. She liked the game of jumping up and catching it.

The following day, we hung out with David, Joslyn, and the two kids Josy's babysitting, Syrus (who's five) and Anisha (who's six). The kids loved the game of feeding bread to the dog. I told them only one piece each every few hours, but by the end of the evening, without my noticing, they had fed the dog an entire loaf and a half of bread.

Stormy's doing fine now. She just made it through one of the rawhide chews Mom sent her, and is now asleep with her head on my lap. Awwww!

She really is a pretty dog.