Three days in the life.

May you not live in interesting times! I make that statement having had an interesting 48 hours with the small dog.

We did an 8km walk in Queanbeyan with her on Tuesday 18 July and she was in fine form. On returning home she was put on the lead to put tooth to bone which concluded with her yelping very loudly. This is most unusual for her and when I went to investigate she was caught up in some vegetation. On untangling her she gagged and vomited up a lot of slimy foam.

This was repeated several times over the next couple of hours. She then seemed to come good until evening when she became very unsettled and appeared to be looking for a dark corner to crawl into.  A definite worry.  The unsettled behavior continued through the night and we didn't get much sleep.   The process of settling her down was to cuddle her and stay very still oneself.   By morning she seemed to be getting very unresponsive. 

As soon as our vet (John Montgomery of Sonza) opened on Wednesday morning we rushed her over there.  (Actually in comparison to when we knew she had been snake-bitten and time was of the essence this wasn't much of a rush - my guess is that it took me about 40% longer this time.)   

We were expecting John's advice to involve a green needle as a result of some cardiac situation.  Instead he diagnosed a spider bite (I suspect red-back) and gave her a shot of cortisone and some antihistamine, noting that she may be sleepy but overall the prognosis was OK. Indeed she was sleepy for most of the day. However by evening on Wednesday she had another drink of water and scoffed some beef and rice.  Then she sat on the bed in a pose which clearly said "Where's my Smacko?" 

A more restful night for all concerned.  She still seemed a bit quiet when she got up on Thursday morning but did explore the kitchen floor looking for any food scraps.  However when Frances went to the wardrobe to get her parka Tammy's ears were pricked and she trotted over to the back door looking very interested in going for a walk.  Off she went and despite having had next to no food for 2 days still managed to park a coil.

We kept the walk short, and on return offered her a couple of chop bones.  As she was still rated as a poorly dog she allowed them indoors on her mat.
Demolition dog rools!  The bones vanished quickly.

We then went into Canberra and while Frances took care of some business I went to North Weston Ponds with Tammy in the search for a decent bird of the day. The first interesting sighting was 2 Darters.
 A third Darter joined them but it was a fuss getting the camera out so didn't take that snap.  The hoped for species (White-fronted Chat) appeared but got chased off by a bolshie Magpie before the Lumix could be wielded.

Instead I took an image of the snow-free Brindabellas.
The weather wasn't that pleasant.  Some folk would say that 8oC and 35kph winds was somewhere between ordinary and average. So we didn't hang around.  But having a bit of time before due to pick Frances up I thought I'd swing in to the RSPCA shop to see what they had in the way of doggie jackets, in an effort to overcome Tammy's spitting the dummy when the road is wet.  They had just what was needed: Dog Hoodies at $5 a go..
I didn't run a client satisfaction survey but have put it on a couple of times without losing any digits, which is far from the worst outcome possible.

Overall a pleasant end to a rather fraught period.

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