This blog is dedicated to the life and times of an extraordinary dog named Guinness.
All of you who knew Guinness know that I've always told him he has Puppy Powers. Despite losing his right hind leg to bone cancer (osteosarcoma) early this year, Guinness continued to be his same good-natured, food-loving, gentle, yet silly self right to the end. It was during this time his Puppy Powers turned into Pirate Puppy Powers!

Monday, June 8, 2009

Help, I'm a Rock!

This post is rated **B** for Barf (Contains regurgitation scenes)
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You probably can guess what comes next.

I was actually in the middle of posting the previous post when J came upstairs to tell me a few hours ago that Guinness had thrown up. I went downstairs to inspect (I'm on constant sleuth mode during his treatment, if you can't tell) and to take care of it, and no sooner had I cleaned it up, but he barfed yet again.

I was debating whether or not to put a call in to OSU, since it was a typical Guinness upset in my book, which usually is due to him eating his food way too fast. But I'm also on notice to call if there are any incidents of throwing up while Guinness is getting treatments, and I'm very aware of the need for accurate data. I ended up talking to my sister and mentioned it to her and said that if he did it a third time, that was a red flag and I was going to call. I walked downstairs, and I found a third occurrence, the biggest of all, of course right in the middle of the living room floor.

As soon as I walked closer, I immediately recognized a certain shape I had seen before. The 2 cm rounded shape that was straight on one side, curved on the other, that I had seen in the radiograph of his abdomen. The eyeball! Except, it was not an eyeball. It was dark and sort of grainy looking, but definitely hard. A rock! Sandstone, actually. So, I picked up the phone and called our doctor there (I'll call her Dr. K) to let her know. Not only was that in there, but also plenty of grass, some pieces of bark, and even a few clumps of clay. Hum. I was wondering if that was all sitting there in his stomach for the past two weeks, too?

Later on I talked to my husband and he suddenly remembered seeing Guinness troff* feeding in our new garden bed last night, which we had filled with a layer of compost. Mulch, bark pieces and little balls of clay are definitely in there as well. So, I suppose partially due to eating more weird stuff, it probably helped clean out his stomach and get the rock out of there. Just one more object to add to his "have had in my stomach" list.

As much as I hate sifting through the remnants of Guinness's munch-a-thons, I'm glad to not have to keep an eye out for . . . an eye (insert drum sound here!)

Aarrrgh!


*trough (I love typos so much and that one cracked me up, so I thought I'd leave it so everyone else can giggle at me too)

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