Emergency

Oh my! I was out picking up a few things at the store yesterday, and my husband called, explaining that Valentina was sick.

“Sick?! What do you mean 'sick’? What are her symptoms?!”  

Tom told me she was weak,  lethargic, trembling, her eyes looked bloodshot, she had thrown up several times on the back porch and was fussing and whining a little.  I asked him to call the vet.  In the meantime, I drove home while Tom got an appointment with the vet.  When I arrived, Valentina was already doing better. A noticeably more peppy puppy greeted me at the door.  I examined the “scene of the crime” (a.k.a. the vomit).  It appeared that the first time she threw up was on her pillow in her dog house.  I found what looked like a piece of brown mushroom.  Then I looked at her bed that is out on the porch in the open.  I found several small pieces of the same kind of mushroom.  I put the mushroom pieces in a sandwich bag and scooped up the vomit and put it in a larger bag. Really.  My husband took pictures of the vomit to show the vet. Really. (He’s a biologist.)  We rushed Valentina off to the vet.  It appears that I diagnosed the problem correctly.  The vet put a tube down Valentina’s throat, filled her stomach with charcoal to absorb any toxin that remained, and gave her an injection of Cerenia, an anti-emetic for dogs so she would not throw up the charcoal.  He warned that the next 24 to 48 hours, we should watch her closely for further lethargy, and other symptoms, in which case further action would have to be taken.  And he also warned us that her poopie would be very black for a short while due to the charcoal, and not to be alarmed. We walked out of the vet hospital with a peppy puppy, and  $104.72 poorer.

I had been walking the yard for days, finding four different kinds of strange-looking mushrooms and removing them from the yard, but because of the recent rains, they, as well as the mosquito population, have been flourishing.  One kind of mushroom looked much like a light tan-colored rock , no stem,  just a conical end with roots at the point, and was embedded in the dirt, so I had to dig a little to get it out.  Another mushroom was similar, but was darker brown.  One that was also flush to the ground,  looked like a medium-size, dark brown dead flower with a large brown center and brown petals surrounding the center.  Another grouping of small thin, long-stemmed mushrooms was an orange color. At least one of these types of mushrooms, or all of them, was poisonous.   I had obviously missed at least one poisonous mushroom in my hunt because our puppy was very sick. Thank goodness she threw it all up. Determined to find them all,   I scoured the yard again after returning from the vet and found six more! Everyone has seen toadstools crop up overnight.  First there’s nothing there, and then, they seem to magically appear overnight. I tried to research which mushroom might be poisonous, and after an internet search I concluded that, after all, it didn’t really matter.  Any brown mushroom is most likely poisonous. The skinny orange ones could be poisonous, and who knows what that brown, flower-like fungus could do if consumed! I just need to be even more vigilant and get them out of reach.

The day ended with a sigh of relief, a prayer of thanks, and some pondering…Valentina’s only ten weeks old.  First it’s ‘shrooms; what next? Parental worries began to set in.  She’ll probably check herself into detox for substance abuse by the time she’s 8 months old, be pregnant by her second heat, and flatly refuse to go to college, never reaching her full potential, condemned to entry level positions the rest of her working life. Sheesh! What’s a mother to do?!