{12aug2010: oh what a night}

We are all exhausted.  If owning a dog is similar to having a kid, then man we'll be well trained for the future. 
After coming home from work yesterday, Jason took Darwin on her walk while I made her weeks worth of dinners.  When they got back instead of coming to the kitchen to get her food, she laid down on the floor in the living room half heartedly gnawing on a bone.  We didn't think too much of it til we ate our dinner and she still didn't bug us for food and wasn't interested at all in her raw veggie/meat diet that she usually wolfs down.  She curled up on the couch and started hacking/coughing.  We thought she was going to throw up something but nothing came up and she laid back down.  I had noticed she had done that the night before, and wasn't that concerned til she did it again.  I googled her symptoms and what came up was possibly kennel cough, heart worms, or something stuck in her throat.  Since she was supposed to have her weekly play date with her brother today, I quickly emailed Kristie to let her know we were going to have to cancel in case it was kennel cough I didn't want her spreading it to Boo or Gino or Seamus.  We planned to call the vet in the morning and take her in.  
By 1130 she was still coughing so I decided to "sleep" in the living room with her to keep a close eye on her.  Soon every hour to half and hour she was up hacking/coughing/throwing up foamy saliva.  I was up watching her trying to throw a towel or blanket under her spit up (after all Jason had just steam cleaned the carpets the other weekend) and all of Darwin's hacking noise kept Jason up too.  At 230 we were all up trying to decide whether to take her to the emergency vet then or just wait it out til the morning to go to our regular vet.  We thought we'd wait, but by 300 with the next round of hacking we were changing our clothes and heading out to the vet.  
 
We got checked in quickly and the vet quickly ruled out bloat (which we kind of knew, but nice to know for sure) and said they would need to take xrays to see if Darwin had anything stuck in her throat.  If there was nothing there they would probably prescribe anti-inflamatories and antibiotics.   They were going to have to sedate her to get the xrays and then they'd call us in an hour with the results.  
We headed home and tried to sleep... slept through the call an hour later and managed to pick up the second call at 6am.  Turns out there was nothing in her throat, but it was very raw and inflamed.  The vet said it's common for dogs to ingest something that just irritates their throat.  She said we could pick Darwin up in a couple hours.
We finally got to sleep and peeled ourselves out of the house at 830 to pick her up.  While we were paying and getting her prescriptions we could hear a lot of whining in the back room.  The receptionist said Darwin must've known we were there because she was laying down quietly til we walked in then she was up and whining... poor girl.
 
{this is what i think of you emergency vet!!!}
  
{let's get out of here!} 
 
We dropped Jason off at work and I stayed home to monitor Darwin.  She doesn't seem to do well coming off of anesthesia (needy, whiny, leaky) and I wanted to make sure she was going to be ok.
One of the instructions from the vet was no food or water for four hours after we picked her up.  Darwin was not happy about that and stood in the kitchen for a long time whining.   After a while she finally settled down on her bed.
   
{look at my ghetto bandage... a paper towel and tape!}
 


  
She would sleep for a little bit, then get up whining for food and water.  At one point she stood, front feet on the couch, for a good 10 to 15 minutes whining, until she finally gave up and laid down on her bed again.
 
Poor girl.  We're all beat and need a good nights sleep!