Just TRY to tell me things don't happen for a reason

Call it a higher power, call it divine intervention, call it whatever you want - but there's SOMETHING or SOMEONE out there watching out for each and every one of us - animals included. Here's a long story to prove my point:

We were having a pretty normal morning. Although Josie didn't want to finish her milk this morning, which is strange for her. But we didn't really see any red flags. We get her to daycare, start taking off her coat and hat and mittens, and she proceeds to throw up on dad. Sorry for the detail here - but it's necessary for the story. What she threw up was pretty much curdled milk and lots of mucus. She's had this cough and runny nose for what seems like forever, and she doesn't know how to cough that stuff up, so it all goes to her tummy. She is not showing any other symptoms of being sick and does not have a fever. She actually now seems quite happy to have that nastiness out of her system. Betty says to leave her and she'll call us if anything else seems amiss. Perhaps not the best decision, but she REALLY seems to be just fine. So we leave her - all the time wondering what is going on beyond the cough and runny nose. Allergy, lactose intolerance, what? I make a note to call her doctor and try to get her in today.

Problem - Pat is covered in puke. We need to go home so he can get cleaned up. So we do. For some reason, I go into Josie's room. What I find does not make me happy. Brewster has decided to dig in Josie's diaper bag, take out the tube of Desitin, and eat it. In doing so, he has smeared it all over the rug in her room. Pat looks at the tube, and sees that it says to call Poison Control if ingested. Hmm. This probably isn't good.

I call our vet. They quickly say that we need to get him to their office, ASAP. So we do. The dumb dog gets to go for a ride, and becomes very excited, even though we keep telling him that this is not going to be a fun trip.

Zinc is poisonous to dogs. If it gets into their systems, it can cause a variety of damage, including breaking down red blood cells and causing kidney failure. Brewster ate pretty much the entire contents of a full tube - which just happens to contain 40% zinc oxide. Fabulous. Of course, his health and well-being are our primary concern, but we can't help but begin to get sick thinking of the cost this episode is going to incur. (Remind yourselves of our $175 Chinet paper plate incident, if you will.) We have to leave him at the vet's office all day while they treat and observe him.

We get to work - me about 1 hour late and Pat about 1/2 hour late. We need to get Josie to the doctor to figure out what's going on with her, and now our dog could die. The vet calls after a while and gives us pretty good news. They induced vomiting, and because he had eaten this morning before he ate the Desitin, it stuck mostly to the food in his stomach instead of to the lining of his stomach. So now they have to give him medicine to stop vomiting, give him IV fluids and put a tube down his throat to get gel into his stomach which will, hopefully, absorb what is remaining of the Desitin. He is one lucky dog. And here is why:

If we would not have had to go home for Pat to change, we would not have discovered that Brewster had eaten the Desitin until 5:30 tonight. Which would have been disastrous. We had 3 things on our side: 1. He's an 80 lb. dog, so the effects would not be as serious as to a smaller dog. 2. He had a full stomach which inhibited absorption into his stomach lining and 3. We found him within 1/2 hour after he ate it, also inhibiting the time it had to absorb into his system. Now you tell me why this day of all days, we needed to go home? It gives me goosebumps just to think about it. I can honestly say that we have NEVER needed to run home quick before going to work.

The vet gave me an estimate, while still not exactly cheap, was not nearly as horrid as what we were imagining. This, of course, is true as long as we do not have to have him admitted to an Emergency Hospital for further treatment. Knock on wood. So this disaster is, hopefully, averted and on the way to a happy ending.

After hanging up with the vet and calling Pat to let him know the news, I decide to call Betty to see how Josie is doing. She had thrown up, again. Great. So Pat calls and gets her an appointment so we can figure out what in the world is going on with our little girl. So the drama in our life is not over, for the time being. We'll keep you posted.