On the rocks.

Lambeau and Lola (our 2 dogs) sleep in the house. They're confined to the laundry room with their blanket and we usually don't hear a peep from them all night. Well this morning at 5am we woke to the sound of a hacking dog. Matt got up to check it out and to his delight found a big pile of goo on the floor right next to Lambeau. (Please keep in mind this has not been an isolated incident. One day last week when I got up and let them out in the morning I found the same thing, only with two rocks in the middle of the goo. Anyone see where this is going??) So Matt let them both outside to potty, and then brought them back in so we could keep an eye on Lambeau. Well, sure enough...about 8am I hear more hacking...and then a little thud. More hacking...another thud. TWO MORE ROCKS. I cannot believe this dog.

Many of you know the trials we had last year with him and his rock eating, but for those of you that don't, here's a quick recap. A Sunday afternoon trip to the Emergency Vet Clinic with an overnight stay there after Lambeau wouldn't eat/drink for 2 days and was vomiting. X-rays found a rock lodged in his intestines, which would most likely require immediate surgery. Thankfully we have the best vet in the world (props to Dr. Jerry Brown!) and early the next morning he was miraculously able to massage the rock down thru his intestines and out his hind-end without so much as a single stitch. Of course after the whole E-Vet overnight stay with fluids, x-rays, meds, etc it ended up costing us over a $1000 for this little stunt. But, we were happy to have our poor puppy back and thought that would be the end of it. Not so. Two months later, he did it again. Only this time, it was two rocks, and there would be no massaging of the intestines. This was a several hour-shave him-cut him open-pull out the intestines and find the rocks-stitch him back up-surgery...with many weeks of recovery, and many medications. As you can imagine, this too cost us a pretty penny. Oh, and keep in mind this all happened when we had those horrible storms last November where it snowed, Matt's parents were here visiting from Wisconsin, and we had to keep him warm and dry for 2 weeks while he healed, along with cleaning stitches, and medicating him 3 times a day. Again, we were happy to have our puppy back...but this time terrified that he would do it again, and knowing that we couldn't just keep forking over a thousand bucks a few times a year for our naughty little rock-eater. Not to mention the fact that at some point, it's very likely that he would either puncture his esophagus or rupture his intestines, and that would be that. (I mean, these rocks are the size of golf balls. Going down or coming up, they've got to be doing some damage.) Well up until now, that was the last episode.

So...here we go again...