Maki's Illness Yields Great Insight into My Personality

It's been a rough past few weeks in our house...we had a great vacation at Torch Lake with Maki and the fam. Upon returning to work I was informed that I was being laid off due to the company's financial issues, bummer. The following day I came down with a nasty cold and was generally in a "poopy" mood. I had a terrible time with the Unemployment Department...but enough complaining! This is Maki's blog!

As Daniel mentioned in the previous post Maki caught or ingested something nasty and proceeded to have a week of puking, pooping, and general discomfort. So I guess it was fortunate that I could stay home and care for him during the day because it would have been miserable for him to be trapped in a crate all day. Especially given the fact that Maki felt the urge to defecate nearly every 30 minutes for the first few days. We've been teaching him to ring a bell next to the door to indicate that he wants to go outside. Let's just say it's felt like Christmas in our house lately and I plan on pimping Maki out to the Salvation Army this winter for some extra cash!

I felt really bad for him but after a while it began to test my patience letting him out and encouraging him to come back inside all the time. Especially at 3am in the morning. You're probably wondering "why not just leave him outdoors?" That would have been convenient however it was sunny, in the 80s everyday, and Maki insists on sunbathing. This would have been very detrimental to his current state of dehydration. He's also very stubborn and wouldn't drink any water. We found a compromise where he would lick the water droplets off my fingers if I dunked them in his water bowl which was painfully slow and inefficient. From all this I determined that I can't imagine having an infant that wakes up screaming all night if I can't deal with a sick, bell-ringing dog!! I have more appreciation for all the parents in the world now :) Here's a picture of him being sick and sleeping on the couch.

He's back to his normal self now which is great but he's kept his knowledge of how the bell works and insists on going outside all of the time. I should probably just let him be outside all day but I worry about his dehydration, I'm fairly paranoid that he might be dog-napped, and there's always the fear that someone might shoot with more pellets. So I check on him every twenty minutes or if I hear abnormal jingling of his collar. This has led me to believe that I will be an extremely paranoid, worry freak parent in the future.

I can't remember if we've mentioned before (I think we have) that it was revealed that Maki has a "beebee" lodged in his side. We first noticed it the day we adopted him and then it was confirmed when Maki had chest x-rays for his pneumonia shortly there after. What we didn't know was that he actually has two. The recent stomach x-rays clearly show the one in his side and another further back and closer to his spine. I panicked when I spotted this on the x-ray but the vet said it's not that close to the spine and he'll probably be fine. Later I was relaying this information to an x-coworker and friends and we gained further knowledge that they aren't "bee-bees" they are pellets which are made of lead! Another panic...he could get lead poisoning and how will we afford removal surgery!!!

Here's a view of the latest x-rays!

Having all the time in the world to Google and do "research" during the day I did a thorough review of the long-term effects of internal pellets. Let me just say that pellet guns aren't toys! They're weapons and millions of helpless dogs and kids are shot with them all the time. There haven't been a lot of studies done on animals but I found a number of papers that discussed pellets inside children. Bottom line is if they aren't in a location that is likely to cause serious damage it's better to leave them in than take them out and the chance of lead poisoning is low. So no surgery for Maki :)

That's all for now!

Elizabeth