My poor little guy
Payton’s last dose of flagyl was Tuesday… last night at 2:30AM I was up cleaning runny poo off my carpet yet again. =< Lucky me, I hadn't even taken the crate back downstairs from the previous week, so I brought it into my bedroom and started setting it up for him. He actually started CRYING when I was setting it up. He went into it willingly and settled down easily and fell asleep once I got it set up, but he really doesn't like being in the crate. He likes curling up with me right when we get into bed, then jumps down and sleeps on the floor... then in the early morning he jumps back up and snuggles some more before I get up. When he's crated he just stares at me from the crate with his ears back a little like he's pouting. But I never thought he would CRY when he saw me setting the crate up. =< Poor baby. The sad thing is, he's just going to have to be crated at night until we get his tummy figured out. So he's going to be really unhappy for a while. I'm not very happy about it either, I like having him snuggle up in the mornings. =/ Booooo. On the one up side, I contacted Auggie's chiropractor and asked for a second opinion from her. She agrees it's clostridium and has prescribed a nice chunk of stuff for him. Tylan powder for a while, B12 injections, and two herbal formulas. Whew! Getting stuff out of the cabinet to feed the dogs looks like I've raided a pharmacy. And to make matters worse, when I left for lunch my plan was to go to the vet's office and pick up the stuff my other vet called in for them to have ready for me, then go home, let the dogs out to potty, reheat my lunch, eat it, then come back to work. By the time I get home - too late! Payton had crapped in his crate. So I spent the rest of my lunch break cleaning out his crate instead. I kept trying to decide if I should just bring Payton back to work with me so I could watch him and take him outside HERE if I needed to, but ultimately decided I would just give him some Pepto and leave him at home. Then the poor little guy spat Pepto all over my clothes and that EFFING white carpet that I swear I'm just going to flip out about one day and rip up with my bare hands. Did I mention I'm running a 5K tonight? I managed to pop my lunch into the pizza oven and warm it up while I was syringing in the Pepto, then threw it in a Tupperware container and came back to work and ate at my desk. And now my stomach hurts because I'm so stressed out and worried. Worried about having left Payton at home instead of bringing him here where I can watch him. Worried I'm going to come home and he'll have crapped all over his crate and all over HIMSELF, and I don't know where I'm going to fit time to give him a bath. Worried he's going to be sick all night tonight when I'm trying to get sleep before my half-marathon tomorrow. Worried this is never. going. to end. To top everything off, when I was on the phone with my other vet, she asked how big Payton was and when I told her he's 17 pounds she said "Wow, he's TINY." He is. He is taller than Auggie's dad but weighs at least five pounds less. And every time his stomach acts up like this it's just not helping. He's not skin and bones or anything but I've NEVER been able to put weight on him. And then he asked me how old he is and I told her he'll be a year old on the 16th, and she said "Wow! He's old!" Waaaaah!! My puppy!! I'm drinkin' tonight. finishing the 5K, havin' a drink. then going to bed. yuuuuup.
Payton’s tummy troubles continue.
Mr. Man has the poops again. And threw up a bit last night in his crate and it didn’t look right. Part of it looked normal… and part of it looked like poop. Every two hours, pretty much on the dot, he was crying in the crate to be let out.
The vet couldn’t get us in any sooner than 5pm, so he had to sit all day without even any water.
He’s acting totally normal besides having the runs every three hours. First thing this morning he teamed up with Auggie and they nearly caught themselves a squirrel. =P I was on the phone with the vet and they asked “Is he acting normal? Not lethargic or anything?” Nope… definitely not lethargic!
I took the morning off work to catch up on the sleep I missed letting him out all night long – and after he threw up I had a pretty hard time falling back asleep at all, even though I knew it wasn’t anything major to worry about yet – and one I found out the vet couldn’t get us in before 5pm, I took the rest of the day off too so I could just watch him and make sure he doesn’t get worse. And so I didn’t come home to take him to the vet and arrive back to a poo-covered dog.
So after a full day off work and fifty-some dollars later… the vet nothing apparently wrong with Payton.
We came home with more Flagyl, I guess it’s just the general tummy troubles med. Sigh. Best guess seems to be when he eats little pieces of rope and fleece bits off toys it might be enough to irritate his digestive system? I’m not on board with that theory, to be honest.
Doc was thinking blockage, but couldn’t feel anything, his belly felt fine, wasn’t hurting him… asked if I wanted to x-ray him anyway, and I asked if he thought it was worth an x-ray, and he said no. So no x-ray. A friend had recommended checking for clostridium, so I asked about sending a fecal off to check for clostridium. They can actually do a clostridium strain right there in the office with their fecal floats, so didn’t have to send away for anything. We talked about switching food, Doc said maybe switch food; I went over and talked to Auggie’s breeder’s husband about switching food, and he said probably not switch food, at least not now until we get him settled again this round, because if he doesn’t take to the new food it will be hard to tell if it’s that or he’s still got this going on… so no new food just yet… and he isn’t convinced switching food will take care of it anyway. Neither am I.
So chicken and rice for a few days, Flagyl for a week. I’m frustrated. I want more than “The good news is, it’s not this, this, or this! Bad news is I dunno! Here’s some Flagyl, cross your fingers!” which is kind of how I feel right now. =/
Poor Payton.
We just did this two weeks ago. Seriously? Buh.
Wow, Payton
So the last few weeks Payton has been very restless on the bed. Pacing around, taking a long time to settle down and sleep.
Last night he actually jumped off the bed, and since I’m sick, I just rolled over and figured whatever, I don’t care.
I could hear him shuffling around a bit and it sounded like he was in the bed on the floor, so I lifted my head to look, and sure enough, he curled up in Auggie’s bed on the floor. We don’t really have beds around the house anymore, so I was kind of surprised he decided to curl up in there. Auggie does climb into that bed sometimes if we’re hanging out in my bedroom, but Payton usually doesn’t.
He stayed there almost all night. I know since I kept waking up from my throat hurting… I expected him to get out of the bed and start making trouble, but he just curled up and slept there. It was actually kind of nice, because he was in there with me, but I had more space on the bed haha. That was how I imagined things would be back when I first started letting him sleep out of his crate, but he was too little to jump on and off my bed and was still at the age where he would destroy things if he got the chance to do so, so it just became him sleeping on the bed with us (since he wouldn’t jump off, he was “stuck” up there with me… therefore he had no chance to destroy things!)
He did jump back on the bed and curl up against me when I woke up about 4am coughing so bad and I couldn’t stop coughing… it quite alarmed him. =P So he slept on the bed for the last few hours of the night. But I’m so impressed with my puppy for being so good and CALM all night long and not tearing up anything in my bedroom hahaha.
Now we’ll have to see if this becomes his new habit. I don’t mind at all – I actually think I would prefer it this way. Auggie might prefer it this way too actually.
Payton has a sick
Poor guy had diarrhea all over the entryway last night, literally right before we all got in bed for the night. =< I had to clean it up, then clean out the spot cleaner, then decided to leave him in his crate for the night because I thought he might get sick again all over my bed. This worked fine for about three hours, until my mom got up to use the bathroom, and he started howling like he'd been abandoned on the side of the road. X_X I let him out to poop again and saw he threw up in his crate, so I cleaned that up too. He was unhappy about being left in his crate this time, so I ended up bringing Auggie's crate (smaller) into my bedroom and put Payton in there. I don't think any of us slept well. With no crate pad or anything in the crate I could hear him every time he moved, and he was confused as to why he wasn't on my bed like usual. At 5am he was crying to go outside again, and at 5:30am I sent my business manager a text taking half a personal day to try and get a few more hours of sleep.
I did manage a couple more hours, got up, washed both dog's pillows (I had removed Auggie's before putting Payton in it, but still, I was doing laundry anyway), bleached both their crates while I was at it, gave Payton a bath because his butt was all poopy and gross. He's been acting fine all this time, even in the middle of the night he would go out and run happy laps in the yard, stop and dump some poop, then bounce around again. Just an icky tummy. I was going to fast him this morning but decided to give him half his normal breakfast just to see if it made him sick again, and if it did, I was going to drive a stool sample over to the vet just in case, but so far so good.
Poor guy. I hope he's done being sick. Not sure if he got into something or just got a touch of a stomach bug. Before he had diarrhea, he had some REALLY smelly farts – like smelled like he had actually pooped farts. So definitely a case of upset belly one way or another.
Though I will say there was quite a bit more room in my bed last night with only one dog up there, LOL. Not that it mattered much since I STILL didn't get much sleep…
Payton coming home pics
Last weekend Auggie’s breeder’s husband was playing with her phone looking at all the photos and videos, and he came across a photo of a puppy and went “Who’s that?!” and I was like “AHHHH THAT’S PAYTON!” At the time, she sent me one of these but not all of them… so I sent the rest to my phone LOL.
So here’s photos of Baby Payton right after we picked him up.
“Hello new baby.”
Waiting in traffic – you could see the people in the car next to us so I erased them. X3 Not quite as sweet as the first “real” photo of Auggie and I hahaha. I think I’m kind of in shock at myself still. Like “Did I really just go buy a puppy?!”
He was actually a squirmy wormy and did NOT want to sit still on the ride home. He was climbing all over me as soon as we were actually driving. This was him faking it. “Ohhhh I’m a sweet, cuddly boy! Yes indeed!”
Almost home and he finally fell asleep… sweet little baby boy! Faker LOL.
My little puppy…
He has a big. D=
I hardly even remember this!!
He is still rather squishy and I can totally snuggle him into my arms though, LOL. I always pick him up and say “I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be mine! And he shall be my Squishy.”
Seriously though, he’s turning out SO well, and I’m so happy with him. I mean the excited nose-touches all over the place and the jumping up on me to try and nose-touch my hands while I’m cooking dinner aren’t fun but we’re working on it.
