Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Take a Trip Without Leaving The Farm.

I had a scary few moments here at Peace Pups Yesterday. I was just coming back up the driveway at the end of my bike ride and heard a lot of commotion coming from the dog yard. I put it into high gear and flew up the hill and into the dog yard to see what was going on. Once in the dog yard I saw that Buck who is my main, go to lead dog was laying on the ground with a large amount of foam coming out of his mouth. Panic.. This is not one of my strong points with my dogs. I tend to become a tad emotional when I think one of them is in danger. Immediately I began worrying about what I'm going to do without my best buddy Buck. I ran over to him and got him to his feet, kind of.. He was staggering and seem to have lost some of his motor skills. His eyes were glazed and dilated and he didn't seem to know where he was. I ran to the house and called my veterinarian but only reached the receptionist. Both vets were on the road but she suggested I keep an eye on him and call right back if his condition got worse. I went back out to see how Buck was doing and found that he was walking much better and had shaken the foam from his mouth but when I started to approach him he growled at me. "Buck, buddy, it's me. You alright?" Grrrrr. This is one of the only three dogs I have raised from a puppy and he has never growled at me. I'm thinking Old Yeller at this point; but it couldn't possibly be rabies, all of our dogs are vaccinated regularly. Or could it be, maybe there was a problem with the vaccine? These are the kind of thoughts that flash through my mind. I went back in the house for another five minutes to grab some biscuits then back out to the yard. This time when I returned he seemed to be back to his normal self; wagging his tail and very happy to see me. I was also very happy to see him acting like himself again. A round of biscuits and a lot of hugs were in order!

I'm still not positive what happened but I suspect it was a toad and that Buck took a little trip with out leaving the dog yard. I have had other dogs pick toads up when I have been in the yard with them and they had a similar foaming at the mouth. This seemed a lot more extreme though. It's possible that Buck ate the entire toad. I spent quite a bit of time looking around his house and the surrounding yard for any sign of body parts and found nothing so I think he must have either eaten it or it escaped the yard intact. Buck seems to be fully recovered now and during play time yesterday afternoon he was running around like nothing had happened.



Hopefully Buck has learned to leave toads alone; or maybe he will be hunting for them now.. I sure hope not, I don't want to go through that again!