Recently a lack of communication nearly killed our “Bouncing Buddy,” a 14 year old black Lab. A slow cooker filled with chicken soup was accidentally unplugged. Throwing it out became one of those “get around to it” tasks during a very busy, very distracting time. The soup sat there for over two days, building up all manner of organic poisons.
Thinking that it had been unplugged just the night before, one family member who was unaware of the festering time frame mixed the leftover soup in with the dog’s food as a “treat” for them. She had gotten up very early, before anyone else who knew the status of the soup. Thinking that dogs were able to “handle” food that is slightly spoiled, she thought nothing of it. Well, I am here to tell you that dogs may be able to “handle” a bit more than humans, but they definitely cannot tolerate seriously spoiled foods.
Rocky, our other Lab, simply would not eat the mix, and went the day without food. Buddy was reluctant, but finally trusted his humans enough to eat part of it. Unfortunately, that trust was NOT justified! Within a few hours he became violently ill. This degenerated into complete weakness. Not only could Buddy no longer bounce, he couldn’t even stand up to go be sick somewhere else.
I began carrying fresh water to him in a shallow bowl several times an hour. I also began giving him small doses of Dynamite “Dyna-Pro” probiotic (to restore his normal stomach biological functions), Dynamite “Trace Minerals” (to stop the growth of the bad bacteria and also stop any internal bleeding that may occur), and Lorand Laboratories “BiAloe” (to super-charge his immune system) diluted in clean water. I put these (separately) in a basting syringe and injected them down his throat periodically throughout the day and night. Even though he vomited some of it back out, I knew that whatever residue remained would be extremely beneficial to his healing.
By that evening it seemed that he would not survive. He was unable to stand or walk, had a severe fever, and was very unresponsive. My wife and I made a sling from a blanket to take him outside. We held him up, hoping that he would urinate, but that didn’t happen. We would then bring him back into our bedroom to afford him whatever comfort could come from being with us.
It became obvious that the bedroom was too warm for him, especially with his fever. We lifted him with the sling and moved him out onto a nice, cool grassy area in our front yard, beside the sidewalk. I rolled a recliner out onto the walk beside him, wrapped myself in a few blankets and spent the entire night beside him. He had been a good and loyal friend to me for many years, and I wanted to be there for him as long as he needed me. I spent the entire night awake, occasionally caressing him or speaking encouraging words to him. He was so ill that I expected him to pass at any moment.
I managed to doze off for a few moments at twilight. Then I heard him begin to rustle a bit. I opened my eyes to see him struggling to get up. His front legs were shaky, but working. He was unable to raise up on his hind legs. I joyfully jumped up and helped lift him up onto all fours.
He slowly, shakily, painstakingly walked into the “potty yard” where he urinated for a long time, then sprayed out the most vile, disgusting, horrid-smelling diarrhea that anyone could possibly imagine. He took a few more steps, then went back down to the grass. After a few minutes of rest, I encouraged him to move to a cleaner area by lifting his rear end. We returned to the grass by my chair. This time when he laid down he held his head up, panting. I knew the worst was over, so long as I could continue to get the rescue supplements into him.
His body was still way too weak to navigate the steps up to the dog door. I assembled a bed for him under the patio cover with a pallet, a large piece of foam rubber and a blanket. With my help, he was able to get on it and lay down. Then I constructed a ramp for him from the ground to the dog door, and covered it with a rug to give him traction. Meanwhile, he was very content to be outside on his newly constructed bed, and showed no interest in the ramp.
Periodically throughout the day I repeated the “tube feedings” of Dynamite “Dyna-Pro” probiotic, Dynamite “Trace Minerals“ and Lorand Laboratories “BiAloe.” I also encouraged him to drink clean, fresh water about every half hour by bringing a shallow bowl (large Corning ware frying pan, actually) near his mouth. He would invariably drink some, which also resulted in him needing to pee a lot.
Since he was still unable to raise up on his hind legs, I remained with him most of the time for the next few days. I rigged up a closed circuit TV camera so that I could monitor him while I was working in my office. Whenever I would see him stir, I would run out and see how I could help. He always appreciated the assistance with standing to go pee and with getting a drink, but he always resisted the basting syringe filled with supplements. Since he would not take the stuff on his own (the trace minerals are really bad tasting) I continued to force-feed them to him. As I did, he continued to improve hour-by-hour.
One thing Buddy had going for him is that he has been eating the highly-nutritious Dynamite Dog Foods every day for several years. This helped him build up a reserve of essential minerals. Without that critical reserve, he certainly would not have survived. We had made the decision to spend a little more on the Dynamite foods primarily to help them smell better, itch less, be rash-free, be resistant to parasites and have shinier coats. Now we were able to add “survival” to the “reasons to buy Dynamite” column.
Full recovery for Buddy took nearly two weeks. He didn’t eat anything for about a week. During this time I continued to baster-feed him the supplements and pro-biotic. I offered him a small amount of fresh food each morning and night, but he would decline and walk away. No doubt his stomach was still in turmoil, but I suspect that there was a trust issue going on also. Finally he ate about a tablespoon of his food. Then he began eating more and more each feeding.
Now, about a month later, Buddy is back to bouncing for his dinner, then licking his bowl clean. His energy and physical strength is back to normal, and we are again having to limit the amount of food he gets to keep him slender. To see him now you would never guess that he was so close to death just weeks ago. Not too shabby for a big black Lab that is over 100 years old in “human-years!”
In summary, here is what we learned from this experience:
- Feed your dog the best, most nutritious foods you can find to build up their health reserves (Dynamite Dog Foods).
- Never feed dogs any food that you wouldn’t eat yourself, regardless of what you hear about them being able to handle it.
- If your dog acts funny about what you have fed them, go take it away and throw it out.
- Always keep an emergency supply of Dynamite “Dyna-Pro” probiotic, Dynamite “Trace Minerals” and Lorand Laboratories “BiAloe” on hand. Had we not had all three of these, I am certain that we would now have “buried Buddy” instead of our wonderful “Bouncing Buddy,” who we are now even more delighted to be enjoying the company of.
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