Animal Woes, Bad Guys and Sleep

Lest you think our family goes from one happy family adventure to another, I'll try to add a dose of reality occasionally. With as many people as we have there is also some situation going on and if things are going smoothly with the kids, the animals will generally step up with a crisis all their own. The plan after bouldering (see previous post) was to have a nice dinner and get to bed early so that we were rested for the big race. Well Eric had sprayed insecticide earlier that day and somehow Katie's dog, Pippin had gotten some of it and he became violently sick that evening. I was still up - Eric had gone to bed. So after figuring out what had made the dog so sick, I woke Eric up. This is always my first step in a crisis - Eric loves it. He was not amused and mumbled something about putting the dog in the garage and then he went back to sleep. So waking him up again, I tried to explain that I wasn't upset about the mess the dog was making, but I was concerned that he had ingested insecticide.

Now you have to understand that just the night before I had woken Eric up again from a sound sleep because this very same dog was growling and barking at something outside. When this dog barks there IS something outside. Eric recognized this and so got up and checked things out, but didn't find anything. However, the next morning we find that Scott's car window had been smashed as someone tried to break in, so the dog was vindicated. We think the barking scared them off before they were able to steal anything, but we still have the broken out window to deal with.

So back to the sick dog. The choice now became should we take the dog to the vet. Of course it is the middle of the night so that leaves the animal emergency clinic. In my opinion these clinics exist solely to plunder money from people and not to treat animals. We do love our pets, but we also like to feed our children and emergency animal clinics and feeding children can be mutually exclusive options. But not knowing what else to do Eric prepared to take Pippin in. Mercifully the dog decided to stop throwing up at that time and seemed to be a little more normal. But as we didn't know if he was out of the woods Eric decided to sleep with him in the garage. He set up the cot and as soon as he did so Pippin jumped up and made himself comfortable. Katie and I just laughed. I guess things like that can be very funny in the middle of the night. So much goes for getting a good night's sleep before the race. Oh well, sleep is overrated anyway.