Take 23 and Call Me in the Morning

(Note: This post has been sitting in the draft folder for days. He's fine now.)
Batman has been having issues lately. I blame the weather. Now before you all start with the eye rolling and the "Oh for Pete's sake, she'd blame the Bush presidency on Seattle's weather," hear me out.

Mason is the one with issues. For those of you who don't know his story, he was abused before we adopted him from a rescue at the approximate age of nine. He was a Velcro dog for a while; I could not go to the bathroom without him anxiously tailing me. Over a year later, I can now visit the commode alone, and he no longer flinches if we get out the broom or move suddenly, but he still has separation anxiety issues and can be a bit needy.

Batman, on the other hand, has always been happy-go-lucky with no behavioral issues, smart as a whip -- a veritable Lassie. Lately though, he's gone on a paper-shredding tear. At first I suspected Mason. Yeah, I know, blame the dog with the issues. Batman's only had two incidents in the time we've had him: The Great Tampon Escapade of 2005, which resulted in $1700 of emergency surgery right before Christmas, and Batman's Jellybean Adventure of 2006 wherein our hero ate a two-pound bag of of Jelly Bellies that Teen Demon had received for Christmas, along with some toothpicks. In hindsight, it looks like there's some sort of link with Christmas going on here, but since Batman's pretty much been trouble free other than those two things, yes, I suspected Mason.

It was kind of funny when I first found some shredded junk mail, but it got worse, progressing from shredded paper towels or the occasional piece of paper, to actually eating books. He ate several books Teen Demon was reading for school, also The Bluest Eye, and The Dog Encyclopedia. He actually started pulling them off the shelves. He even attempted to eat a photo album.


This is him, avoiding eye contact after we came home to find this book about horses. Like if he doesn't look at me, I won't figure out it was him. Sorry, Batman, but when your poop comes out basically as a fibrous white pulp, either your ass is doing double duty as a paper mill, or you're the culprit.

I couldn't figure out why this great dog was suddenly acting as one possessed by the Spirit of Cujo.  This is where Seattle's weather comes in: by the time I get home, it's dark as Satan's asshole. It is also almost always raining. Like Satan's having a piss fest on my life. I have not been walking the boys or taking them to chase tennis balls nearly as often as I should. Even so, nothing seemed amiss, because they're always very calm when we're home. Then Batman started this paper-eating deal.

Oh, I should also explain that Batman long ago figured out that bringing papers to us resulted in him getting attention. He'd come prancing in, holding someone's homework, a napkin, or the school newsletter. He didn't chew it, just brought it to us. Of course we'd ask him to "give it", and praise his retrieving skills when he proudly did. Now, however, "give it" has somehow morphed into "eat it" in his mind, and the offspring have actually had to use that tired, old excuse, "The dog ate my homework," except that it's really true.

Anyway, I think that he's bored and frustrated from lack of exercise, and maybe he also equates the whole paper thing with attention because of his paper trick, who knows. I had decided to bite the bullet and purchase some of that reflective walking rain gear that all Seattleites and their dogs seem to own, so that I can venture out in the cold, dark, wet, nastyass evenings after work, and walk my dogs without being hit by a car or soaked to the bone.

But then the plumber happened, my car is overdue to have an oil change, Christmas is a-coming, and I kept putting off buying the reflective rain gear crap.

So yesterday, Male Offspring and I come home to find the contents of the kitchen trashcan all over the floor. This would be the tall, metal, covered kitchen trashcan that you have to step on a pedal to open. The dogs have not once shown the slightest bit of interest in it. We were shocked. It looked like Oscar the Grouch had gone all Exorcist in our kitchen.

Worse, I discovered that Teen Demon's sports duffel had also been emptied, due to the booty of protein bars and Cheez-Its found within. Neither dog had ever shown interest in her bag prior to this, either. Teen Demon had had a small zip-lock bag of ibuprofen in her duffel. There were 19 ibuprofen 200mg tablets laying next to the duffel. The zip-lock itself was gone.

Shit shit shit. Ibuprofen can be lethal to dogs. I estimated there were between 0 and 20 pills missing.

I spent the next hour outside in the cold rain with a flashlight, force-feeding my dogs hydrogen peroxide to make them puke. Nothing like going through dog puke with a stick in the freezing rain, until your fingers are numb and barely functional. Batman puked up some nasty trash, which I will not even go into, but which would've likely caused the second emergency surgery of his life, had he not puked it up.

I didn't see any telltale orange, at that time, but later that night, he started puking up blood. Fuck. Welcome to level two of ibuprofen poisoning, in which the medicine causes ulceration. Great. I calculated the milligrams of meds per kilogram of dog weight, knowing that if I saw even one more symptom, it was off to the emergency vet. Because my dogs never have medical problems on a weekday during business hours. Oh, no. My dogs are strictly evening and weekend guys when it comes to medical problems. Cha-ching.

So basically I spent the night watching him for things like refusal to eat, lethargy, excessive thirst combined with decreased urination, staggering, seizures, and the like. Beyond that comes coma and death.

Already longass story short, he didn't have any other symptoms. He's fine now.


We were very very lucky. Had he been smaller, had he eaten even some of the 19 pills left lying on the floor, had the H2O2 not made him puke up the trash objects, we could've been looking at a very different kind of Christmas, and some huge vet bills to boot. I'm so glad he's ok.

I don't know what it is with Batman and Christmas, and I don't know what it is with me having house problems right before Christmas, but it's becoming an annoying pattern on both counts that I definitely do not need. I am either on Santa's naughty list, or I have royally pissed off the Baby Jesus. Somehow or other, I seem to be on the Yuletide Shit List. Next year I'm just heading to the tropics come December 1st.

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Public Service Announcement: please take extraordinary measures to make sure your pets have no chance of being exposed to ibuprofen. Animals' bodies do not process it the same way our bodies do, so even small amounts can be very harmful. Cats are actually twice as sensitive to it than dogs, and can easily die from ibuprofen poisoning after ingesting small amounts. Ibuprofen can severely damage an animal's kidneys and cause ulcerations in the stomach/intestine which can actually eat completely through the tissues. It can cause neurological problems, leading to staggering, seizures, or coma. (Acetomenophine is also dangerous to pets.)
We consciously keep all our meds out of reach, but all it takes is once. None of us thought about that small bag of Ibuprofen buried in the bottom of a sports bag, and our dogs are not usually the type to get into things, but they did this time. I can't imagine how we'd have felt if Batman had been seriously injured, or worse. We got lucky.