Alright, i have a story to tell from this week. don't worry, penny ends up fine.
Three days ago there was a major snowstorm in portland. we got over a foot of snow and ice and the roads were in extremely bad shape. since we were stuck at home, erin decided to bake brownies since we had brownie fixings. she baked them, and left them out on the counter to cool.
Fast forward a few hours. i've been at work, erin's been upstairs working on sewing project. she comes downstairs and is like "oh fuck. (Peek) did you eat any brownies" to which i replied "no". it turns out that penny had jumped up onto the counter and eaten SEVEN brownies, which is half a cup of baking chocolate, which is the absolute worse type of chocolate for a dog to eat.
We were freaking out at this point because we looked up that amount and her body size and got basically "go to emergency care". we called a special pet poison control hotline and they told us to try and induce vomiting, since fortunately it takes a few hours for the chocolate to be absorbed and pass out of her stomach. (feeding her certain amounts of hydrogen peroxide is how you make a dog puke, if you're curious). she seemed completely immune to it, though, nary a puke in sight, which left us in a bad position: we needed to go to the emergency vet, it's like 6pm so it's dark out, and the roads are like six solid inches of slick, uneven ice.
We end up calling my dad because he has The Best Truck (a 2001 toyota tundra) which has 4 wheel drive. he came to our house, we loaded penny up, and made the (frankly, harrowing!) drive to the emergency vet.
Three-ish hours of waiting at the vet's office (which actually had quite a nice waiting area) later we get an update on her condition: they did manage to get her to vomit, and they got a lot of brownie out, but it was a little too late and some of it did absorb into her system and she was having symptoms of cardiac toxicity. The vet wasn't too worried about her prognosis, but we needed to leave her there overnight for monitoring.
On Thursday morning, the vet called and said she did well overnight, and her heart rate and blood pressure are back to normal, so she was ready to be discharged. However, I now had a new problem: my dad's truck was no longer available. Fortunately, two weeks ago, I put new tires and brakes on my nissan leaf, and I chose michelin crossclimate2's. I chose them for their performance on wet roads (did you know it rains in portland?) but they just so happen to also be three peak mountain snowflake rated, which technically makes them winter tires, so I thought I'd brave it and see what happened.
Much to my delight, the tires actually completely fucking whip ass, and I had zero problems driving on the roads even in horrible conditions. Between the TCS and the tires, I think I actually had an easier time with the drive than my dad did in his truck lol. Anyways, made it to the vet, and picked her up. She's back home now, safe and sound, though definitely a little low energy which is to be expected after what she went through. 11 teeth extracted and then a Chocolate Emergency all in one week!
so that's the story of how i spent $4000 on my dog this week. the moral of the story is: cool your brownies on top of the fridge instead of the counter.
