Monday, April 11, 2016

Feelings you get from a pet's illness

Pets are a great way to teach children about illness, death and dying.  I will never forget how my little dog moppet taught me how to deal with illness.

We began to love our dear little Moppet more and more each day.  My sister liked to brush her hair.  I liked to feel the softness of her forehead hair.  There was a light brown and grey patch there like that of a poodle.  Her hair would grow and grow and she did not shed much, so we had to take her to the hairdresser to get trimmed like a poodle does.  Her hair styled well because of the wire haired nature.  My sister and I would spend hours and hours brushing her for fun as we watched the local clown Flippo on television as he presented movie classics for the greater central ohio and Columbus area.  In between the show during commercials my brother would get out a rag from the rag box and shake it up in the air and she would jump up in the air two or three feet and grab it with her teeth and then tug at it and not let go.  My brother relished the growl, the intense play and the sport of it all. I worried that she would somehow get hurt.  One day she did.  She lost a baby tooth from the strong tugging of a thirteen year old boy.  Mom then outlawed strong tugging.  Scott had to figure a way to get her to jump and engage in such a determined way.  It was too much to let go of this kind of fun.  He just had to find a way to instigate the growl, the turn of tail, the wild look.  It tickled all our funny bones I had to admit.  My brother was clever.  He devised a way to keep the chase on without the tug.  He got out the garden hose and sprayed it into the air.  It looked white.  To little Moppet that arc in the sky was one huge rag ready to be clamped onto and tugged and growled at and the chase was on!  Up went the water into the sky.  Up went Moppet springing so high in the air.  She spring sprung up up up and bit the ark of water.  Months of rag play prepared her for this day.  She was in her element.  She bit hard, and then….to her surprise it disappeared.  There was Scott at the other end of the hose grinning.  He had the sprayer nozzle on the end of the hose.  He could control the stream of water in an instant.  Moppet looked puzzled.  Scott kept playing with her.  This was even better than the rag!  I thought it was funny too.  “Can I try?”  “Sure!”  Scott was the generous type.  After a while all the kids in the neighborhood had a chance to try and Moppet did not want to stop.  My mother called us in for dinner and we were all wet and dirty and happy.  We washed our hands, sat in our seats and were ready for our meal.  The dog sat at my feet knowing that tonight we were having broccoli.  She curled up against my legs.  Any other night I would nudge her away, but tonight we had a special bond.  I would eat the mashed potatoes.  I would eat the Salsbury steak, but when it came to broccoli I would gag.  I just couldn’t do it.  Moppet and I had a deal.  If she would keep quiet about it, I would hand her all the broccoli she could eat.  No one was the wiser until tonight.
For some reason, tonight she wouldn’t eat it.  I quickly wrapped it up in my napkin hoping no one see, but my mom saw.  I got in trouble.  Just as she was ready to make me take a new bite of a new piece she looked at the dog and saw that she just did not look right.  Something was wrong.  She asked my sister to get out a packet of dog food and feed her, her favorite food.  Moppet heard the crinkling of the plastic and painfully got up and waddled over to her feed bowl.  She sniffed the bowl, tried to take a bite and started to gag.  My mother looked at my dad.  My dad looked at my mom.  Why could the dog be acting so strange?  At that moment my mother had a frightening thought.  The neighbors had just ordered chemlawn to come and treat their lawn against cinch bugs.  This treatment was dangerous and pets were not supposed to go on the lawn for at least 24 hours after treatment. We tried our best to stay on our lawn while playing with the water, but come to think of it, Moppet did run over to their lawn a few times as she had been jumping in the air.  The thought that our poor little Moppet had inadvertently poisoned herself was too much for my sister to bear.  I was too young to understand, but when she started crying, I started crying because she was crying.  My mother’s eyes started watering, then she grabbed ahold of herself and got up from the dinner table and stated that she was going to call the vet right away.  As soon as we all realized something was wrong, Moppet suddenly looked worse.  I asked my mother after she got off the phone with the vet “Mommy, is she going to die?”
The after hours vet came after my mother told him the signs of Moppet’s illness.  Although she didn’t have vomiting, or diarrhea,or seizures yet, she did have lethargy, gagging and loss of appetite. We really didn’t know about the heartbeat because a dog’s heartbeat is different.  It sure sounded like gastrointestinal symptoms according to the vet.  Perhaps they could save her life if they pumped her stomach. She was already having some neurologic symptoms the way she was acting so strangely, and maybe she was having heart symptoms too.  We loved her so much.  Maybe they could hook her up to an electrocardiogram just to see.  It happened so quickly.  This indicated that if she was indeed poisoned we would have to act fast to eliminate it if she would stand a chance..  We had read in the paper about a Labrador retriever who died in one night from a lawn treatment.  We were beside ourselves with panic, fear and worry. Charcoal, might be an option, but we had to be sure.  She had been outside gulping water all afternoon.  We had to take her in just to be sure.

We filed into the vets office.  The vet was kind.  He saw how distressed we all were.  He asked permission to talk frankly in front of the children.  My parents explained that they don’t hide death from us.  It is a part of life.  He explained that if we can get the stomach pumped there is a chance that she will make it.  But first he had to examine her.  He looked into her eyes and was relieved to inform us that her pupils were not dilated and appeared normal.  He checked her vital signs.  Her breathing and heart rate was also normal.  This was one more thing to be relieved about.  He felt her abdomen.  It was as tight as skin on bologna.  It was so hard it felt like she had stones in her stomach.  That was a problem. So next he gathered her up in his arms and explained to my mother that he was going to need to have someone to hold her tightly.  My father stepped up to hold her. He grabbed a long rubber tube from the medicine cabinet on the far wall and walked deliberately and slowly up to Moppet.  He put the tube down her throat and for the next ten minutes we just heard this slow ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshowew just hissing out the end of the tube. The somber look of the vet turned into a grin.  Grins were appearing on every face in the room.  Moppets tail began to wag.  They set her on the floor and she almost began to dance with joy.  She even wet a little.

No comments:

Post a Comment