Poor Puppy, Part II

My oldest brother, Pete, is in town this weekend and staying with Luke and I. Per custom in my family when anyone is "in town," we invited the rest of my siblings over for some food, beer, and visiting. My sister is trying to socialize her dog, Trixie, a bit more, and since we had dogsat her a few weekends ago and Trixie and Howie got a long great, Lisa asked to bring Trixie along. Unfortunately, while Trixie and Howie were playing, which we were all excited about because Trixie doesn't "play" even on her own, it turned into a tussle. When we pulled Trixie off of Howie, he wouldn't open his right eye. I ended up taking him in to the emergency vet, where he was completely nervous (I think it was all the anxious owners and injured pets and running, screaming children everywhere). He doesn't have a scratched cornea, but the vet there said that she could tell he was in pain (well...yeah...he won't open his eye), because his pupil was constricted and his eye pressure was low, both auto-physical responses to pain. So our poor puppy has to take eye-drops and pain meds all weekend (on top of the antibiotics he's already on for his UTI) and go to our regular vet on Monday to have his eye checked again. *sigh*

My sister and brother-in-law feel awful, and it was just a really long, anxious night. I'm starting to feel awful about what the poor hound has gone through this week. But, as "The Dog Whisperer" Cesar Milan always says, dogs don't hold on to past bad experiences and emotions, they move forward. Good thing, 'cuz Howie's had one helluva week!

Poor Puppy

It's been a rough few weeks with Howie the Hound in our household. About 2 weeks ago Howie started have accidents in the house, which he rarely does. He went from rarely having accidents only when we both had perhaps left him an extra long time after a long day at work, to having accidents every other day or so, to having them nearly EVERY day. Very strange, and very frustrating. Initially, we thought it was a behavioral issue; perhaps we weren't spending enough time with him, maybe he wanted more walks. Luke thought perhaps that because he likes to be outside so much, even when he doesn't have to go potty, that he was losing the association of outside as his potty place. That seemed strange to me, and admittedly to Luke, especially since even in the dead of winter in 20-below weather he would ask to go outside for potty and not have accidents.

Something just didn't feel right. Howie is such a good boy, he wasn't flippant about his accidents (he seemed sheepish about them) and just in general sort of sad lately. So after clues of different behavior added up over the past 2 weeks, I brought him to the vet today, suspicious that something was just not right and it wasn't Howie being a bad boy. And now I feel awful, because our little guy has a UTI and I wait TWO WEEKS to bring him in!

After describing all the "it just doesn't seem right" behavior to the vet tech, and them of course taking a sample and finding a ton of two different kinds of bacteria and getting our prescription, the vet tech told me not to feel bad. She said that a lot owners don't bring their pets in unless they see blood in their urine and don't even notice all the little quirks we picked up on, so they wait way longer. She said that there was no way that we could have known, really, and she was impressed that we brought him in. A bit of lip service that made me feel a bit better, but I might have gotten a bit teary when I got home anyway. The poor little guy has been feeling under the weather for TWO WEEKS!! :-(

So Howie is getting even more snuggle and TLC from us lately, poor little guy!!!

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