The week in retrospect

I get on my soap box daily about spaying and neutering, pet responsibility, pet ownership, where to buy a companion dog, why NOT to buy from a pet store or an on-line seller. I also get on my soap box about microchipping, vaccines, diet and general care for one's dog. To be fair I also do this for cats, but I am a dog person, so I tend to talk more to the dog people than cat people.

It irritates me to the point of apoplexy to see how many folks treat their pets. One dog ate chocolate the day before valentine's day, a couple of bags of Dove chocolates, a couple of bags of kisses, two boxes of Whitman's samplers and who knows what else. On Valentine's day we saw the dog at the hospital where I work and induced vomiting (even though it had been more than 24 hours). Up came entire stomach loads of candy. Bright red wrappers, pink wrappers, silver wrappers all with the chocolate still inside the wrappers! A lot of the chocolate had of course been digested, but there was so much in this dog's gut that we were all amazed. Why did the owner not take the dog to the vet immediately it was discovered to have eaten the chocolate? Irresponsible ownership is one of my pet peeves. That poor dog suffered for a few days at the emergency room on IVs - after he had been treated by us, he spent his nights at the EC and came back to us in the mornings. He went through seizures and he suffered with pancreatitis. He did make a full recovery - but at what cost to him physically and also a huge cost to his owner's pocket.

A valuable and expensive lesson learned - keep your dogs away from chocolate.