limping dog, worry and anti-inflammatories

Penny's having a quiet, quiet time this week. It all began when her on-and-off limp suddenly was ON! One family member took her to the vet, who thought she might (MIGHT, you notice, so fingers crossed) have torn a cruciate ligament.

Being a champion worrier, I foresaw operations, months of enforced quiet for Penny, etc, etc. So, keen to start getting her well, I gave her the anti-inflammatory tablet that the vet had dispensed. But I hadn't read the written report from Other Family Member properly, and I wasn't supposed to start the tablets that night, because Penny had already had an anti-inflammatory injection that day.

Mild panic. Phone call to the all-night Animal Emergency Hospital, who said, just watch her, it's not necessarily an overdose, but ring your own vet in the morning.

So, sleepless night, popping out every few hours to see how Penny was in her crate. (she usually sleeps in different locations around the house during one night, but we shut her into her comfy crate so we'd definitely know if she vomited or had diarrhoeia.)

How glad we were that she had been trained to be happy in a crate, even if we almost never put her in there.

All fine. And she rested beautifully all morning. I congratulated myself on how well she was resting, not stopping to consider how unusual it was for her to be curled up in her crate all day. I even took this photo to show how she'd voluntarily gone in there to rest.



And then, she vomited. And again. I tried to ring our vet, but he was busy. In all, I rang about six times over the next four hours, trying to catch up with him. She vomited twice more, and went out a couple of times to eat grass.

I'm big into guilt, so I stressed mightily that I had overdosed my dog, but my common sense told me she wasn't vomiting much, so we could afford to wait and see.

Eventually the vet rang me and told me to feed her tiny meals of boiled chicken. We did that and so far so good. (It's evening of the next day now.)

So the vet and I have agreed that she should rest and see how she goes, and I won't feed her any more anti-inflammatories.