The Great Sock Incident of 2009...

It has been a while since I've last updated Bailey's blog, but today was quite a noteworthy day. Today shall now be forever known as the "Great Sock Incident of 2009"... allow me to explain... this could be lengthy!

My mom had been staying at our house for the weekend, and I planned on taking her to the airport this morning on my way to work. As she was packing her suitcase, Bailey wandered into the guest room... usually no big deal. Before she could stop him, he grabbed a sock from her luggage and took off with it. He darted into the backyard with it and started chewing it up. Ryan and I both ran after him, trying to get the sock away, but that just made him think this was a "fun game". Eventually, he ran into a corner of the yard and gobbled the sock down whole!

At first we were more annoyed by anything. Just when we think he's growing out of his puppy stage, he does something like this. Although he's 15 months old, he is still very much a puppy, and he loves to play "keep away" and chew things. He regularly chews his blankets and even eats portions of them sometimes, but the fact that he ate this sock whole is what concerned us. After I got into work and thought about it for a while, I decided to call the vet.

Of course the vet told me to bring him in right away, after scolding me that I should have brought him in no later than 1 hour after this happened. (It had been about 3 hours at this point). I rushed the 1/2 hour home to pick him up, and then rushed him over to the vet and they gave me the options. I'll list them below with their relative costs in $:

1) Give him an injection that will make him throw the sock up: $$
2) Take him to the pet hospital and give him an endoscopy to pull the sock out manually: $$$$
3) Do nothing, but if the sock causes a blockage he'd need surgery: $$$$$

I decided with option #1, although they warned me that since it had been so long (3 1/2 hours at this point) that it probably wouldn't work. They said the injection was a nasty one, and it would make Bailey "violently ill" within 5-10 minutes. I felt so bad for him, but at the same time ... it was his own dumb fault. I sat in the waiting room and called Ryan, mentally freaking out and trying to figure out how we were going to pay for an endoscopy or surgery. Luckily, after about 10 minutes, the tech came out from the back... the injection was success! They got the sock!!!

The injection they gave him was part morphine so they said he'd be groggy and "out of it" for the rest of the day. It was so funny though... anyone that knows Bailey knows how hyper he is. Right after they warned me that he would be "out of it", he came out and started jumping all over me, wagging his tail, licking my face (eww he just threw up!) and sniffing the other dog in the waiting room. So much for "out of it"! The tech even said "Wow, I've never seen a dog act like this after that nasty shot!" Go figure... we already knew that Bailey is definitely not like other dogs!

The moral of the story is that Bailey will be fine. He is curled up in a little ball right next to me on the couch as I type this. We did have to pay some money today (...that we don't have, with a baby on the way!) but at least we didn't have to pay thousands of dollars for an endoscopy, or even worse, a surgery!!