Moose Gives Me Another Heart Attack

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

My dog Moose is what you might call "accident prone". When we first moved to Oregon, he got attacked at the dog park and ended up needing stitches inside his ear. About a week after he got his stitches out, he slipped his collar and chased a cat into the street and got hit by a car.

It's been a while since we had an adventure -- but he saved up a good one.

On Sunday afternoon, I came home from work to find that one of the dogs had thrown up bile and blood clots in the living room. I was a little freaked out, but hoped it was an isolated incident. I woke up this morning to two more piles of bile and blood clots.

Since I was scheduled to be at the cats-only boarding facility, I asked one of the vet techs on the veterinarian side what she thought about the situation. She said that vomiting blood was never a good sign, so I called my vet. They squeezed us in for an appointment this morning.

The doc questioned me about Moose's habits. Does he scrounge things out of the garbage? No, but he does scrounge snacks off the ground -- everything from kitty poop to garbage that didn't make it into the dumpster. In fact, on Sunday morning, I'd heard him crunch on something while we were out walking. We talked about what they've been eating and I explained about the most recent poopstorm.

The vet took two x-rays... and I waited anxiously for the results. I envisioned a lodged chicken bone, or something piercing his digestive tract. I wondered about the symptoms of intestinal cancer.

Luckily for all of us, it was none of those things. His x-rays were clear. The vet had two possible causes: an intestinal parasite called Giardia or an ulcer. We're treating both, and hopefully I won't find any more scary messes!

Learn more about Aimee Amodio

Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

View Full Profile | More from this Blogger