dog diggity dog

A few weeks ago, as our family was headed out to the duck pond to go fishing with our neighbors, I was trying to put Charlie outside.  Charlie hates being put outside when he knows we are leaving, so he ran downstairs to get away from me.  While he was down there, he got ahold of Sam's rattlesnake head keychain.  He ran back up the stairs with it, and I continued to chase him all around the dang house with that thing in his mouth.  At one point, I grabbed Charlie, and he swallowed the keychain.  It is really big, about 5 inches long, so of course he started choking.  In order to save him, I put my hand down his throat, and I got ahold of the keychain.  I yanked it, but only the keychain came out, Charlie swallowed the entire 5 inch preserved rattlesnake head.  UGH!!!  I kind of freaked out for a while, and watched him, but he seemed fine, so I just put him outside and we left.

The next day, we noticed that Charlie had a huge lump under his eye, about the size of a golf ball.  It really hurt him if we touched it.  I started to wonder if I had somehow broken his nose when I was yanking out the keychain the previous evening. Our friend and neighbor is a vet, so I gave him a call.

It was next to impossible to explain that my dog swallowed and chocked on a preserved rattlesnake head keychain, and possibly broke his nose.  It sounded so ridiculous, and hilarious, and crazy!!!  Our friend came over, and ended up doing some x-rays on Charlie's stomach (to see if the snake head was blocking his stomach), and his face.

Sure enough, Charlie had a broken bone in his nose.  The stomach x-ray didn't show anything, but he told us to go to our vet the next day, so we did.

I had to tell the story all over again.  The vet had a great laugh about it, but told me that he has seen and heard about everything when it comes to dogs swallowing stuff.  He confirmed the break in Charlie's nose, but said it was just a tiny bone, that is very common to break in puppies, and that it was two weeks old.  I did not cause the break, and it wasn't a big deal.  Few!

The lump on his nose though, didn't look good.  The vet did a biopsy of it, and it showed that it was full of some bad infection.  The vet's guess was a poisonous spider bite.  The lump on the nose wasn't even related to the break!  huh!

Charlie's stomach xray did show the snake head (insert eye roll), but it was not blocking anything.

We came home with antibiotics for the infected lump, and instructions to watch his poop for the snake head.  oh joy!

Charlie seemed fine after that.  The lump went down, and he was pooping.  However, one night, he started gagging THE ENTIRE NIGHT!  We seriously thought he was dying.  I called the vet, and took him in again.  I was terrified that he was going to die, for real.  The noise he was making was horrible!
On top of that, we were headed to Idaho that very day for a reunion.  Great timing.

It ended up being kennel cough, which is very common, and he probably got it from the last vet visit, because it is extremely contagious.  It sounds WAY worse than it actually is.
The vet had pity on me, and didn't charge us for that visit.  I think he was just thrilled that we still took Charlie home with us.  Believe me, by this point, it was tempting.

So there you have it.  Spider bite, snake swallowing, broken nose, kennel cough, and car sickness.  Go Charlie.