Watson Violently Sick Yesterday

First of all, two things, that photo was take at 6pm last night and Ava woke up this same morning on Thursday with just a slight limb. By Thursday afternoon I could not keep her from being her normal active self.

Watson started by having diarrhea around 11am. Digestion issues have always been an issue with him ever since he had emergency surgery at five months old. He had blocked his intestines with parts of his Mexican wool blanket he was sleeping on, and eating. Since then I have tried different foods but almost all of them give him gas three years later.

So when I saw what I had to clean up, I was wondering what he had been eating since he eats literally anything outside. When they all go out (except Cletus) first thing in the morning together, it is always dark and instead of watching them I go pour their morning kibble where they can eat as soon as they come back inside.

He seemed normal until lunch ... when he turned away from his bowl of food. That never happens, not with him. Later I saw him vomiting outside and it was the same color as his diarrhea. Now I am a little concerned that this is just not normal stuff. I set him up with a big blanket to lay on, a bowl of water and set the garage heater to 60° on the thermostat.

Each time I checked on him ... he was sleeping ... but I started seeing small spots of vomit, white foam and watery, scattered around the garage floor. 

By 5pm it looked like he was puking his guts out in different places on the concrete. The scary change was all of those small spots of white foamy water now had traces of red in them. I took photos like I always do so I can show the vet to give them a better idea what I am describing. I could not recognize anything in his vomit that would correlate to what he might have eaten outside.

I called the VCS Emergency Vet downtown, the same one that Ava went to for her cut leg July 4th weekend. They did not open until 6pm but stayed open until midnight. I prepped the car to transport him but I had no idea how I was going to get him in the back. He could barely walk and there was no way I could lift him with my arms and hands under his stomach.

I found out later when I asked, the vet tech said in that situation to prop his front paws on the bumper then left him by grabbing his rear legs right above his ankles. His legs would fold where I cold lift and slide him in the back of my car.

Luckily it never came to that.

I had given him a bowl of rice I had cooked and cooled in the fridge. Some organic pumpkin was added. He wasn't interested in eating any of that. I tried a 1c of kibble soaked in warm water ... he walked over to the bowl and started to nibble but acted like he was having a hard time of chewing. He let me open his mouth and checked inside of it but things looked normal. His gums were normal color too.

I thought it was a good sign that he tried to eat and had ingested some of it. I checked back 45 minutes later and he is on the blanket in the photo above. He doesn't act like he wants to move. All the other four had been going crazy with him not around. Cletus with the best nose of all of them, could smell him in the garage as he put his nose to the base of the door. He'd bay .... so finally around 7pm I let them all out into the garage.

Cletus sprinted to that bowl of rice and started eating so fast you would have thought he had never seen food before. For some wild reason, Watson stood up and went to the bowl of kibble and ate the rest of it. After all four sniffed Watson's nose and face they all headed up the steps into the house and straight to the patio door to be let outside. Watson followed them with his tail wagging slightly !!! What is going on?

It was like a miraculous recovery within 45 minutes. It was only an hour ago I was planning to take him to the vet and was expecting the worse diagnosis. I have had a lot of bloodhound but luckily none of them had bloat. His stomach was normal when I felt each side of it earlier in the afternoon and again at 5pm. 

I was relieved that he had eaten some kibble, went outside and had some fresh water and did some walking in the backyard. When I opened the door to let them all in, he trotted through the kitchen and down the hallway to his dog bed and slept the rest of the night. Just like nothing had ever happened. I am happy, very happy but slightly confused about the fast turnaround. 

I never heard him in pain last night while he slept. He never was in the state of heavy panting, a sign of pain and he did not yelp when I tried to get him in back of my car. Still I was very curious what caused all of this. Honestly when he looked just like Stella did at the end of her life, I thought I was going to lose him, even if he made it to the vet. He looked that bad. 

But this morning the big mystery was solved .....

Around 9am I glanced out the window and Henry is eating the soil inside the pot of the dying palm tree that I decided to move outside a few days ago. I didn't care how cold it got, it was dying anyway plus, doesn't it fall below 32° in Florida and palm trees don't die. I had set the palm tree in that area where the faucet is, between my great room and the walk in closet that is the size of a room. 

Henry has always like eating dirt in plant pots. He has done it for years. This blog has photos of him doing that out in Arizona as a puppy and when we moved here. So I go outside to stop him from doing that and then move the palm back inside or maybe just to the trash can.

As I look at the dirt he is eating ... a lot of the dirt has been eaten and a lot of the roots are exposed and HAVE BEEN CHEWED ON !!!! Those roots were the same color as Watson's vomit.

But that was not the deciding clue. I will not show you the photo because it is gross to most people but in one of his vomit photos there is one small round pebble that is bright turquoise. A very distinct color don't you think ....

Well guess what you will see in the next photo.

This is a photo taken this morning after I stopped Henry from eating the dirt. He has not been sick nor has he shown any signs of being sick. He is just his normal laidback happy basset self. From the amount of potting soil gone and the exposed roots from the replacement Palm I had bought ... Watson had been chowing down on that pot for some time yesterday morning. Those small turquoise pebble were the biggest clue on what Watson had been eating. I saw only one of them in his vomit. 

So really lucky there because that is just not potting soil but soil that includes fertilizer. 

Watson has been his normal self all day today and as of 3:09pm CT, he is taking his long daily afternoon siesta, snoring too. 

I did not throw the plant away because there was new green growth and green leaves still on it. I moved it high in the living room where the other one did so well on its comeback from Ava knocking it over. 

It has been quite a week here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.