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MISTAKES
They say everyone makes mistakes. Bad things only happen to other people, not me. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He loves animals too much to ever hurt one. And so on. It’s a long list of cliche’s but I’m here to say they aren’t always true. I’ve made some mistakes; some big one. So I thought I’d just sort of mention them here in case it helps anyone else. As an animal lover I still haven’t forgiven myself for these oversights. No one blames me except for me, but I would never complain if anyone did blame me for these things. Usually we learn from our mistakes.
Here’s just how easy it is to make a dire mistake:
We had a wonderful black Lab that was looking like he was going to be an excellent dog; smart as a whip, loyal even as a pup, and lots of fun.
Anyway, with a new puppy in the house, untrained and gregarious, I realized one day that there was some mouse poison around the garage that wasn’t protected from the animals due to some rearranging I had done.
Yup: You can see it coming, can’t you? The irony of the whole situation is, I cleaning OUT the poison to get rid of it when, unbeknownst to me, Ptooie, the pup, managed to get into the garage with me.
When I noticed him, I put him back in the house of course, and checked the poison; it didn’t look like he’d eaten any.
To add to the problem, the previous day the pup had hurt its right front leg running around the pool with the other dog and had a sore leg.
Shortly we noticed his injured leg was suddenly swelling and he was acting lethargic. But the swelling continued so by late afternoon we became concerned and took him to the vet.
Long story short, the leg injury created a small, hairline fracture in his leg. He was exhibiting signs of having been poisoned too, according to the vet. It was a little over twelve hours since he would have been able ot get the poison, so he began dosages of K-12 or whatever it was, and kept him overnight. Later that evening we got a call from the vet, asking if he could give him a blood transfusion; that it might do the trick, but was of course a little risky for a dog, but he had one that should have had compatible blood and be a good match.
It turned out the blood wasn’t the right type (they cannot type blood for dogs as well as they can humans) for a good match and between that and the dog’s weakened state, he succumbed to it. I’m almost crying as I have to relive it just to write it here. Poor Ptorrie went home to wherever dogs go that night.
I keep telling myself I was only trying to make it safer for all the pets, but I still did something wrong (allowing the dog to somehow get into the garage while I was doing it), and paid the price. It was so senseless.
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