Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Digory, Digory, Digory

I think maybe Digory got jealous of Scout getting the lion's share of health crises because he got his revenge last night.

Stupid me left a bar of chocolate on my desk, within range of the nosy and starving hound. If you're sitting there saying, "Uh-oh, chocolate is toxic to dogs!" then you probably have an idea of what happened following this indulgence.

What made matters particularly bad, aside from it happening at 10:30 pm, was that this particular bar of chocolate was extra dark, with 85% cocoa. We immediately went online when we discovered what he'd done and found that for baking chocolate (a rough equivalent of cocoa percentage), a potentially fatal amount is about 1 oz. per 10 pounds of body weight. The bar was 3.5 oz and Digory weighs 33 pounds. There was a small amount leftover and I'd had some to eat myself, but he probably ate at least 3 oz.

Kevin rushed him to the emergency vet where they immediately induced vomiting, and then kept him overnight for observation and IV fluids. Kevin had to pick him up by 7:30 am (the emergency vet isn't open during the day) and they recommended he go straight to our regular vet for more IV fluids and observation. Poor Kevin had to endure perpretrating the most awful betrayal--picking up from one vet only to drop off at another.

Our vet did an EKG to check for chocolate-related heart damage or episodes and luckily he didn't find any. However, on a totally unrelated note, he did notice that the EKG showed some markers of an enlarged heart. This doesn't mean that he has an enlarged heart--just that he might. Or it could just be that he was anxious. The vet recommended we wait a few days or so and get a chest x-ray to check out the heart. That's scheduled for Tuesday. Oy.

He's home now and resting comfortably. We are not at all happy to witness this evening that this recent incident has done nothing to curb his counter/table surfing habits.