Georgia, Part II

There wasn't supposed to be a second installment of this narrative.
Our "Georgia-Peach" came home from the vet's and everything seemed okay. She was keeping her food--what little we were supposed to be feeding her--down, always a good thing, and her personality was returning. If anything, she was a bit dopey and lethargic, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Eva was chatting on the phone last night when Georgia suddenly gave out a piercing scream, jumped two feet straight up in the air, and came down snapping at her own heel. What the hell was that?, I thought to myself. Did she step on her?
Our puppy looked around, seeming to come out of some sort of trance, and darted behind her Mommy, where she cowered.
No cats up here...nothing to explain why she'd suddenly--
Just then, she did it again.
She landed splay-footed this time, wailing. Tux went over to sniff her, anxiously. I approached cautiously, I petted her head, murmuring the kinds of things you say to your kids to calm them down, while I tried to calm down myself.
She accepted the petting, and I examined her. No obvious sore spots, but she's...well, not exactly panting, but out of breath, anyway, and she's making retching noises. Nothing's coming out, just an ominous huk! huk!
Then she tore off around the living room as if all the bats of hell were on her ass, ending up, once again, cowering behind Eva.
That's not normal canine behaviour, I thought to myself, conjuring all sorts of awful explanations like tumours and infections and imminent death.
These...episodes...continued, alternating with periods where Georgia laid perfectly quiet, quivering a little, an occasional huk! the only thing to let us know she was still with us. With no warning at all, she'd suddenly snap her head up and bark piteously, shaking.
Eva and I looked at each other.
"That's not right", I said. She nodded.
"We ought to take her to the vet."
A little more conversation on that point, a call to the after-hours clinic, who assured us we weren't overreacting, and it was decided.
I had to go to work, right then--didn't want to, let me tell you--and we really didn't want to leave Tux at home by himself. The humans in the house weren't the only ones worried.

Auntie Suzie, thankfully, agreed to take Tux in for a bit, and we all piled into the car. Of course, by now, Georgia seemed pretty much fine. Isn't that the way? It's like when you take your clunker of a car in to the mechanic and it runs like a dream.
I was dropped at work, Tux was dropped at his favourite aunt's place, and Georgia was ferried all the way to Cambridge. Ninety minutes later, Eva called.

"She's okay", she said.

Apparently there had been a noticeable change in Georgia just while she was being examined.

"The vet thinks it might be psychological, stress-related."

Great. We have a crazy dog. MAD DOG ON THE LOOSE!

Then again, with the week she's had--taken away from Mommy/Daddy/big brother, knocked out, hysterectomized, revived all alone, brought home, subjected to fits of voluminous vomiting, face puffed up like a balloon...well, I'd go a little nuts, too.

"This vet doesn't have psychological background. Ours does. So when we bring our chlluns in next week, we'll chat a bit. But the clinic vet here did ask if Georgia had taken to chasing her tail obsessively, lately."

"W-e-ll, I wouldn't say obsessively..."

"I asked her to define obsessively. She said more than once a week. Our wee girl qualifies, don't you think?"

"I think." I was thinking of all the times I'd reached out to give her tail a friendly little yank, only to find it coated in dogslobber.

Sure enough, our peach has been just fine today. She slept with me all day, glommed to my side like she used to do when I slept at night like a normal human being. No sign of hallucinations, no vomit lagoons, and a dog who's playing-with-the-Tux as if nothing whatever happened last night.

Tux and Georgia, together again

I hope she's okay for real and for good, now.

Sweet Georgia's Down...

When our Tux first came home from the pound, we made a token effort at crate-training him. That didn't take; I think it reminded him too much of the cells he'd just escaped. So we enlarged the crate...we gave him our guest room during the day (not like we were using it), and let him sleep with us at night. It wasn't too long before Tux had the run of the house 24/7 (save the basement, which is the cats' domain).
When Georgia came along, things got a little complicated. We got her young enough to crate-train, so we used the cage we'd originally bought for Tux, placing it in the corner of our living room and confining her in there during the day. She grudgingly accepts this, with the aid of a Kong and a knifeful of peanut butter, although I'm sure the sight of her brother roaming free galls her mightily. Still, she's not old enough to join him in gambolling all over the place while we're gone. So there she rests. Of course, she sleeps with us at night, too, because we're just softies. Anyone got a good quality king size bed?

Okay, so last week Georgia got broken. They say "fixed", but I say let's call a spay a spay, okay? She went away Thursday morning and came back Friday afternoon. In the interim, any remaining doubt we may have had about how well our wee girl had integrated herself into the family dissolved into a big pile of mope named Tux. Seriously, he didn't want to move until she came back, and Eva reports that he was absolutely ecstatic when he caught sight of her.

Everything was going fine in the aftermath of her surgery. In fact, she wanted to run and play-with-the-Tux immediately, and it was impossible to restrain her.

Getting Georgia crated, me in bed, and Eva out of the house in the morning now entails some sleight of hand. See, I don't want Georgia to know I'm home, or like as not she'll yip her face off all day (and she does have a yip on her, does our Georgia). So Eva takes her (and Tux) outside, I scoot to bed, and then Georgia comes in, gets her peanut-butter Kong, and retires to her cage. Tux wanders upstairs within about thirty seconds and finds me. Ssshh, Tux, I tell him. We don't want your sister to know I'm here.
Okay, Daddy, he says amiably. I'll just sleep down here at the base of the bed and keep you safe.

Today I woke up around two to the sound of Georgia yipping. The first thing I noticed, after my ears stopped ringing, was that Tux wasn't standing (okay, laying) guard. Damn, I thought. Ratfink tattleTux. Now Georgia wants attention.
Two o'clock. Well, an hour's more sleep would have been nice, and 90 minutes even nicer. I could maybe lay up here and block that noise out...
Nope.
There will be no blocking out of that noise.
Downstairs I went, snap-crackle-popping Rice Krispies out of my eyes. To be confronted by Georgia, clamoring as usual to get out. And...what the hell?
Puppies?
There are two other puppies in there!
But she was spayed last week, how the hell did that happen?
I opened the cage and Georgia shot out. So begins the daily game of race-the-bladder, a seven metre dash to the door. The impossible other puppies didn't move (well, one of them kind of spread itself out a bit), so I shelved them for the moment and raced Georgia to the side door, Tux along for the ride.

Back to the cage I went, to examine the miraculous additions to our happy little family.

Not puppies.

Puke.

Giant colossal freakin' MOUNDS of barf, an interesting brindle pattern marking them distinctly as the property of Georgia Breadner. Holy gee, I thought. Georgia yarks like she craps: prodigiously. I'd be yipping too, having brought that up into the world.
Kidding aside, the sheer quantity of vomitus was alarming. Georgia frolicked around, seemingly unconcerned, but I was worried about her.
Eva came home shortly thereafter, and we called our vet (slogan: "Your other family doctor"). She was in with a client, so we described the situation to the receptionist, making sure to repeat the phrase "giant colossal freakin' MOUNDS of barf" several times.
No, she seems okay otherwise. She runs, she plays, she eats, she sleeps, she horks up Rhode Island.
The vet was with a client, so we awaited a call back. While we were waiting, Eva called Georgia over. She's really good with "come"...better, in fact, than Tux.
"Her bum's red...and look at her eyes! Are they swollen...shit, her whole face is swollen!"
The vet called back, and we added this information. It was quickly decided she should go in for a look-see.
Of course, Tux wanted to go with her, and he was despondent when he couldn't. I fretted to myself, hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't as serious as it looked.

Me, I was thinking bee sting. Or several of them. That'd account for the swelling, anyway. We have bees just outside the house, almost as big as a pile of Georgia-sick. I know this because they dive-bomb me whenever I go outside. The sun actually went dark for a second the other day. I shot back into the house as if I was on wheels.

They were back surprisingly quickly. No idea what it was--a reaction of some sort, said the vet. Our wee girl got a cortisone shot, and some special food to calm her stomach, and we're supposed to keep a close eye on her for the next little while. No problem there. These puppies are our children. They're just furry, is all.