Happy Thoughts for Our Marti

We have had a very scary weekend with our little sweet Boston Terrier, Marti. She started throwing up a week ago on Friday sporadically. After a vet visit on Wednesday they thought it was a stomach issue and told us to do a bland diet and gave us some medicine to give her.

On Thursday the vomiting got more frequent after giving her the medicine, but then stopped.
Friday we were gone for a few hours and got the test results for her blood work on our way back.

They suggested we bring her in for a IV to get her some fluids, because the results showed she was dehydrated. When we got home we found her laying by the door, barely moving and she had thrown up several times and it was rust colored.

Mike took her to the vet and they thought she could have an obstruction so they x-rayed her again and gave her barium. After the results we found she had a blockage but they couldn't see what it was on the X Ray. They recommended we take her to the emergency animal hospital for exploratory surgery.


On the way to the animal hospital

I picked her up and took her there. The doctor thought she was throwing up blood and was concerned part of her stomach was dying. They called about 2 hours after I had dropped her off. She had been very unstable and they recommended we bring in a specialist to do her surgery, because of the anticipated complications.

I went back to the hospital for the surgery, and was able to hold her before she went in. It was so terribly frightening as the doctor had told us she only had a 30-50% chance of surviving the surgery and if she lost part of her stomach she could survive the surgery and not survive the post-op.

After the 2 hour surgery they found no obstruction in her stomach, only that her intestines were in bad shape. She was out of it when I saw her and looked pretty sick. I got home at about 3 in the morning, and waited to hear an update in the morning.

In the morning she was doing better, but still throwing up blood. The doctor on the day shift had started to think her liver was failing. After a lot of talking about possible things that could have poisoned her, we came to the Sago palms by the pool. She normally can't get to them, but one day the pool fence was open and she probably chewed on them and got enough to poison her.

They changed the direction of her treatment and she is so much better today then yesterday. She isn't throwing up blood and the tests came back showing the treatment is working. It looks like she is going to be okay and should have no long term affects. But she will probably be in the hospital until at least tomorrow. It will take a few weeks for her to fully recover but to know she should be okay is the best news we could possibly hope for.

She is such a huge part of our family, she was our first dog and we got her before we had children. She is the sweetest most loving dog I have ever known. Our house this weekend has not been the same without her here.

Please pray for a quick recovery for our sweet "stinker binker". Here is one of my favorite pictures of our sweet little girly girl.