So, if you’ve been following the blog for a while, you know that Sid has an uncanny ability to disrupt America’s most thankful of holidays with absurdly gross health emergencies.

First there was the great kennel cough eruption of Thanksgiving 2009, during which he literally came down with kennel cough on Thanksgiving afternoon as Brian and I were preparing to head out for a feast at a friend’s house in LA.  We had to ditch our plans and spend the entire day at the emergency vet’s, quarantined while Sid coughed up yellow watery goo.  Keep in mind that Sid has NEVER been to a kennel.  We’re assuming the “pug in the plastic bubble” caught kennel cough from a communal water bowl at the snack shack in Griffith Park.

Then there was the great Atopica eruption of Thanksgiving 2010, in which Sid re-developed his blergy, vom-tastic reaction to the only effective non-steroidal medication available for his allergies.  This was a day or two before Thanksgiving, but the nastiness of this event stayed with us throughout the holiday weekend, much like the hydrating bubble of saline that the emergency vet injected under the skin on Sid’s back.

Well, this year’s Thanksgiving started off without a hitch.  Sid was extra healthy in the days leading up to the holiday – Brian had been waking up every morning to take him to off-leash hours, and Sid was being extra sweet and cuddly throughout the day – perhaps that should’ve been our first indication that something was wrong.  We had Thanksgiving dinner at my brother and sister-in-law’s apartment in Crown Heights, just north of Prospect Park, and Sid’s Grammy Grace was there to give him extra lovin’ and treats.  As a holiday surprise, Sid got an extra-large Kong bone filled with peanut butter and venison sausage, and we let Grammy Grace feed him a dollop of whipped cream.

That night, we let a very contented Sid sleep in the big bed and he purred / snored all night long.  The next morning, he had extra snuggle time with Brian on the sofa, before Brian and I headed out at noon for a nerd-errific afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History.  We had plans to bring Sid over to the home of Miss Timothy Buttons later that evening – her grandparents were in town, so it was going to be an excellent photo-op for the blog.

Totally unrelated yet totally amazing photo of Timothy Buttons

We got home at six pm, with a half an hour to feed Sid his dinner before bringing him over to see T-Buttz and her fam.

Now, bear in mind that we have a live web-cam that streams to our iPhones so we can check on Sid while we’re out of the house. We’d literally just checked the Sid-Cam fifteen minutes before we returned to our apartment, as the F-train passed through the short elevated portion of it’s route, just before our stop.  All was fine.  Or so we thought…

What follows is not an exaggeration.

The pungent odor of regurgitated sausage that hit our olfactory nerves as we opened the door was our first indication that something was wrong.

We noticed a small pile of “business” on the hardwood floor.

Then we turned on the overhead light…

Our ENTIRE apartment was like a cross between a MURDER SCENE, a SEWER EXPLOSION, and the FLOOR OF THE GRAVITRON AFTER A HOT DAY AT THE STATE FAIR.

Blood, diarrhea, vomit – EVERYWHERE.

And by everywhere, I mean, everywhere in our apartment that is NOT viewable on the Sid-Cam.  It’s like he knows the boundaries of the frame that the camera is filming.

Our bed, for instance, is not viewable on the Sid-Cam.  That’s right.  Our bed.

But the mess in our apartment didn’t matter, because Sid was SICK.  He was shaking so much he was vibrating, and he looked gaunt and lethargic.

I called our vet in a panic.  Our non-emergency vet normally closes at 6:30pm on Fridays, but they said they’d stay open until we could get Sid down there.  They’re amazing.

Now, one of the fun things about living in Brooklyn is that everything’s walkable!  You don’t need a car!

Which means, of course, in an emergency, everything is “runnable” because you don’t have time to wait for a car service to come pick you up.

So, we wrapped Sid in a flannel housecoat, scooped him up, and RAN seven blocks to our vet.

He was still vibrating when we got to the vet’s.  They gave him an IV of saline and an anti-nausea injection and some anti-biotics.  Sid, who normally squirms and flails like a bull at a rodeo when the vet tries to touch him, didn’t even try to fight.  They took some blood and stool samples to test, and then sent us home with our raggedy little guy with instructions to keep an eye on him and keep him hydrated.

When we got home, we set up his crate, lined it with wee-wee pads that we had bought for our hurricane preparedness kit, and popped him inside with his water bowl and an old potato toy.  Then we got to cleaning.  (Er, Brian got to cleaning… I got to ordering pizza delivery and then I got to Googling keywords like “Dog Bloody Diarrhea” and “Dog Bowel Explosion Vomit Leaky Anus.” We all have our specific roles that we fill).  Our floors were due for a good scrubbing, I guess, and every rug and linen in our apartment got a good soaking, as well.  Apparently Brian did an amazing job, because later that evening Timothy’s family popped over so that her grandparents could finally meet their grandpug’s much-older boyfriend, and they said the place didn’t smell at all like regurgitated sausage (of course, they could’ve just been trying to be polite – they’re mid-westerners). Timothy stayed at home, just in case Sid was contagious, and also because I don’t think Sid could’ve dealt with the excitement of having his lady love around.   Sid slept in his crate through most of their visit – I pulled him out for a quick hello, but he was still vibrating a bit, poor guy.

He slept in his crate all night long, and when I opened the door to his crate the following morning, he just looked at me and then laid his head back down on his potato.

The vet called later that morning with the lab results – no parasites, nothing serious. Probably just a stomach bug that he picked up at the park.  Thankfully he’d be back to normal in due time.

And by noon, Sid was back to his old ways, trying to steal Brian’s pretzels with a total disregard for authority.

Just another whirlwind 24-hours of holiday fun here at the Pug Slope Headquarters!

Thank you again to Dr. Quim and his staff at the Prospect Park Animal Clinic for taking such great care of our little guy!

So, Sid now has to take this super-thick, molasses-y, brown, gooey gel twice a day to help him with his pee problem.  The vet warned us that most dogs have a hard time eating this, and we might want to mix the goo in with some food to make it more palatable.

You’d think the vet would know by now that Sid is not “most dogs”…

Things have been really busy here at the Pug Slope Headquarters – so busy, in fact, that we accidentally let almost an entire week go by without updating the blog!

I wish I could say that we’ve been too busy for blogging because we’ve been traveling the globe, or solving world hunger, or finally catching up on the entire series of The Wire, but, alas, our lives are not that exciting.  Instead Brian and I have both been swamped with work (not exactly a bad thing) and Sid has been busy finding new excuses to visit the vet.

For example, two weekends ago, while Brian’s sister and her husband were in town from Chicago, Sid ate something unmentionable and definitely not edible that required a very embarrassing midnight trip to the emergency vet, where the previously-mentioned unmentionable was vomited up and then PRESENTED TO US IN A PLASTIC BAG.  Oh, and how did we even know that he ate this unmentionable item?  Could it be because the chewed up wrapper of said unmentionable was displayed proudly in his bed when Brian, his sister, her husband, and I returned home from dinner?  That could be it! 

Then, yesterday, while we were walking Sid in the park, we noticed that he was having trouble peeing.  Like, he’d lift his leg for 45 seconds, looking at us with a confused and slightly strained expression while nothing came out, and then uncomfortably hobble along to the next tree, where he’d repeat this charade.  Twenty minutes later, we’re at the vet’s and an ultrasound is happening and then a catheter is being inserted and…well, let’s just say that some sort of blockage has been extracted and is currently being tested in some lab somewhere.  We were sent home with antibiotics, and then, when he couldn’t pee again later in the afternoon, we had to go back to the vet’s for an x-ray and a bladder flush.  The pipes seem to be flowing a bit better this morning, so fingers crossed that this is nothing too serious.

In light of all the fun Sid has been having lately, we made sure to wake up early this morning for an extra-long walk and some off-leash time at the park:

We have two news items to bring you up to speed on today – and we’re glad to say the news is good. The photo below should give you a clue.

GOOD NEWS #1:
The results of the biopsy on Sid’s “mutant toe” came back and it turns out that the small growth is in fact just a viral papilloma as Dr. Quim had originally thought and will go away on its own in a few weeks. That was a relief, especially after we read about Suki’s extra toe and the mention of the dreaded “c” word (thank you for the link, Suki – we’re so glad everything turned out well for you).

GOOD NEWS #2:
Sid’s little pal, Winston, is doing well and is over his bout of pneumonia. Here’s a little message from his parents:

Winston surely felt all the good juju out there. He breathed in steamy showers, got lots of rest, and figured out that he didn’t mind taking his medicine too much if it came disguised in peanut butter. He coughed a lot while we were on vacation, but that was good, and he is doing great now. Took him to the park for his first off-leash fun in weeks. I think he was happy to be back home, and not being chased around by a crabby, territorial 11-year-old Cairn Terrier who is his dog-in-law.

Thank you again for all the positive thoughts and “good juju” you sent. These sure are two lucky pugs to have so many people caring about them. It was good to see all the pug pack back together again this weekend in Prospect Park!

Yes, Sid is wearing a purple polka-dotted bootie.

In the midst of all the excitement over Sid’s new pug-mate last week, we noticed that our handsome husky* guy was having a very…odd…health issue.

Between his toes, on his back right paw, were some weird growths.  Sid doesn’t like having his feet touched, so we were attempting to piece together the facts based on repeated split-second views of his foot.  It looked like one of the growths was big and round, and the other was long and skinny – Brian claimed he saw a nail growing out of the long one and he was convinced that Sid was growing a mutant toe.  I, meanwhile, was trying to keep an open mind and set off to Googling phrases like “dog toe growths” and “dog mutant paw anomalies” and “pug prosthetic limbs discount.”

We set up an appointment for Saturday morning with our very patient vet, Dr. Quim, at the Prospect Park Animal Clinic. Sid reluctantly let Dr. Quim take a good look at his toes, and Dr. Quim was pretty sure it’s just a viral papilloma (or, in layman’s terms, a wart).  But, he wanted to do a biopsy, just in case, so Sid got to spend his weekend wearing this jaunty purple polka-dotted bandage, which, considering that dogs are color-blind and not particularly amused by patterns, and also considering the bandage was wrapped around his foot immediately after we watched him scream in pain during the biopsy and subsequent cauterization of the affected area, is obviously designed to promote the healing of both the pet’s foot and the parents’ mental health.

I mean, how could your mood not perk up when you look at this silly thing?

We were able to take the polka-dot bootie off his foot yesterday, and we should hopefully hear from the vet in the next few days with the results of the biopsy – We’ll keep you posted!

*More on Sid’s newfound “huskiness” tomorrow.

I took Sid out for a walk as usual. And as his usual self, he was being a little bit stubborn and refused to do his business. I took him around another block to see if he would finally cave in but no luck. He just kept sniffing leaves and then moving on.

About five minutes later I noticed him “funny walking”. He did have on a t-shirt, his harness, and collar which sometimes upsets his equilibrium, so I bent down, re-adjusted everything and proceeded to get back to the walk. The funny walking continued. His right-rear leg was not making contact with the ground. I tried to look at his foot to see what was going on but he refused to sit still for a second so I could check him out.

I carried him back to the apartment to get a closer look and his foot pad looked really weird. Jenn said one of his toes had split down the middle. Great – another trip to the vet (Sid must not have been satisfied with November’s multiple visits). Well, I craned in for a closer look and realized the split section was not Sid’s toe but instead a nut shell that was the exact same color and size as Sid’s toe. It had gotten stuck over one of his toes like a little cap. Below is a photo of said nut shell.

The shell just popped right off and Sid was back to normal. Jenn and I breathed a sigh of relief as another potential vet visit had been averted.

Sid recently started on a new regimen to combat his severe allergies to everything (more details coming soon), and up until today he had been doing well. But today all that changed when the Atopica, which does wonders for his skin, severely upset his stomach, causing him to lose both his breakfast, dinner, and whatever else was in his digestive system. After another visit to the emergency vet, where he got a shot of hydrating fluids and an anti-nausea medication, it seems he’s decided that we’ve been to the vet far too often this month. We whole-heartedly agree.