Toadily.



Doc, in happier times



Doc had a pretty rough weekend. What am I going to do when I actually have KIDS? What am I going to do the first time they get sick or hurt? I was a wreck all weekend over my little DOG. I am going to be the most overprotective parent ever. My children will live in a bubble. They can play sports if they wear head to toe padding like in "Little Giants"...have you seen that movie? It's a classic.

Friday night I got home from the Bayhawks promotion around 10, and since we're super cool, Joey and I were getting ready for bed. I took Doc outside one last time for the night. Lately he has been enjoying pouncing on the toads that like to lounge on the patio at night time. We always yell at him to go do his business and leave the toads alone.  This time, I had my back turned for ONE SECOND and he suddenly had one in his mouth. I screamed NO! and he let go and I saw the toad happily hop away into the bushes. Doc ran inside and was making a horrible face, licking and grimacing and just looking awful. Here's the part
where I sound like a total psycho dog-mom.

I picked him up and carried him to the bedroom calling, "Daddy! Help! Doc bit a toad!" and then, noticing Doc was beginning to FOAM AT THE MOUTH, "JOEY! HELP ME!". Joey's first instinct was to yell at me for letting Doc bite the toad (really? Yes. I did it on purpose actually...). Then we ran upstairs with Foamy and I started to *attempt to* wash his mouth out while Joey ran upstairs to wake up his parents to ask where the turkey baster was (so we could flush his mouth with water). "It could be poisonous, Sarah!" Great, so my panic level just elevated to RED.

Joey tried to pour water in his mouth while I frantically googled "my dog bit a toad" and got all kinds of crazy information. Depending on what kind of toad it was, Doc could be seriously sick.

Meanwhile, Joey's Mom was yelling at us because we packed Doc's Benadryl away and we didn't know where it was. She gave him a little bit of milk and he drank it, which was a good sign. But Doc was NOT behaving right at all. He crawled into his crate and sat down in the very back, which was extremely unsettling since he never goes in there. I call the vet and while I'm on hold, Joey goes over to the crate to check on him and says "Sarah? He just threw up. A lot." I hung up, called back, and said it was an emergency so they wouldn't put me on hold. The technician was nice, but hurried, when she told me toads around here aren't poisonous and that she's not surprised he got sick since he's so small. She said to just watch him for a while but he should be OK.

We cleaned up the Doc-vom (wow, his entire stomach emptied itself) and took him downstairs. The next 2 hours were terrible. Poor Doc, he was not feeling well at all. He was so sick and sad looking it just broke my
heart. We petted him and told him he was a good boy and he just leaned into us like "Help me :(" Joey passed out after a while leaving me to sit up every few minutes to check that Doc was still breathing. Eventually he got annoyed with me poking at him and crawled under the covers next to Joey so I would stop bothering him. He slowly started to feel better- I heard more sniffing, scratching, etc. and I finally felt like I could fall asleep. But I woke up every couple hours during the night anyway.

The next day he was toadily (haha) fine. He was bouncing around like a rubber ball again and eating his kibble and drinking his water. Here's the best part. Guess where he went the MOMENT we opened the door?? That's right. Back to the spot where the toad was. Stupid dog.

Saturday was uneventful, but Sunday he came in from being outside with bright red spots on his belly. I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE OF THIS. Google told me it's black fly bites, and they are healing just fine. But I'm refusing to let him outside unattended during the day and he'll be on a leash at night until he learns not to go near toads.

Red spots,  also censored for your virgin eyes.