You Never Know What's Coming

Young Pip, who is two years old this June, yesterday managed to get herself a bellyful of snailbait. I left her at the vet's in Avonsleigh about 6.20 pm on a drip with the prognosis to take home to Lib and the boys that she had a better than 50% chance. It happened all so accidently and easily, but it was my fault.

The whole trauma up to 6.20 when I left her at the vet's, was played out inside two hours, but the tale has it's origin a week ago, last Monday. I went into the vegie garden at the farm to see how my broccoli plants were going. I'd planted a batch of seedlings out, another week earlier, and we'd had 50ml of much needed rain since, so I was expecting them to be thriving. Not so. 90% of them were chewed off almost at ground level, obviously by a rabbit.

A gardener so much enjoys seeing the progress of his labours, especially when you grow things from seed and nurture them through dryspells and caterpillar and slug attack. To make it worse, there was a rabbit fence around the vegie garden but someone who worked for us in recent times, while doing a clean out in the garden, had cut a hole in the fence so that he had less distance to walk pushing his wheelbarrow, rather than to walk further each trip to the gate at the lower end.

When I got back into the garden this autumn there didn't seem to be any rabbits around so I also made use of the hole in the fence rather than spend ten minutes putting the rabbit wire back up. This I now regret. I fixed the fence. I scrounged around at home and found enough seedlings left over, previously thought to be inferior, and took them to the farm with me last Friday. Toward the end of the day in fading light I planted them out, somewhat soothing the disappointment caused by the rabbit. Last thing, almost in darkness, I threw some snail pellets around them, thinking I couldn't stand it if slugs and snails ate the next lot. I usually use the 'dog safe' type, especially at home where there are dogs, but not having any on board I used some 'Baysol blue' that I found in the farm shed.

Pleased to be finished I put the tin of the remaining snail bait in my toolbox in the van and dashed off to do some shopping. I'd arranged with Karen at the Gembrook Pizza shop to pick up, at 6.30pm, two pizzas and 3 serves of cannelloni that Lib loves, I was on schedule. Rob had had an exam that day and was crook as a dog with the flu and crashed to bed, but the rest of us enjoyed our Friday night takeaway, sitting by the fire and watching TV.

Unusually, I didn't use the van on Saturday. I poked around home getting firewood into the shed and having a rest. I used Lib's car to go up the street, and check Vilma's garden. Despite it being a windy night the grass was too wet at Vilma's to spray under her blueberries. Sunday I woke up with a burning throat, the dreaded lurgie that Lib and Rob had already had. I didn't even do my morning walk. Lib went to work at 6.30 am and I went back to bed. Feeling a bit crook when I got up, I stayed inside and wrote my letter to Phil Allchin in WA and did the vegies for the Sunday roast etc. It had been my plan to go to the farm and put some string around the broad beans to hold them up, so when Lib came home and with the fire going and firewood in, I thought I'd make up for the dogs missing their morning walk and take them to the farm for a run.

I loaded them into the van at 4.30., stopped at the post box outside Sal's supermarket on the way to post my letter, and had a chat for five minutes to Gary and Anita Stephens who were mowing and cutting back outside the physio's clinic. Anita said she would rake up all her autumn leaves into bags for me as she has done for a couple of decades, with the exception of the last couple of years following her car accident. At the farm, the dogs ran about outside the vegie garden trying to sniff out rabbits, having a lovely time, while I tied up the broadies and threw the ash from my fireplace around the pansies and silverbeet.

The days are so short now, light was fading, I looked about for the dogs to get them in the van. Pip was about twenty feet away, looking like she was trying to do a toilet. Her movements were odd, her back was arching jerkily. I thought she might be constipated. I went over, I could see no bowel motion on the ground. She went to the van, not jumping up as she usually does. I picked her up, she was shaking. I drove to the house to see Elvie and Meredith and fill up a few jars of honey. I told them something was wrong with Pip, I didn't know if it was serious, maybe it was, maybe a bowel obstruction or something life threatening. On Sunday evening, bugger it.

I rang Tom, our Gembrook vet. A recorded message said he was unavailable till Monday, and in emergency ring the Avonsleigh vet or Cranbourne. A young lady, Fiona at Avonsleiegh, said she would be at the clinic at 5.45pm, somebody was coming in to pick up a dog, she would need to talk to them and would see us at 6.00pm. "Are you aware it will be an out of hours fee?" I went back to the van. Pip was in full tremors and dribbling at the mouth, and bum, frothy dribble. Her abdomen was so tight and her back half as stiff as a board. She lay in a gap between two boxes, seemingly in great pain. Now her tongue was hanging out.

I went to the Avonsleigh vet and spent ten agonizing minutes while the vet and a lady picking up a German shepherd with a bucket on it's head discussed what she was do when she got the dog home. The lady asked the same question six times using different words, the vet gave the same answer six times. I nearly yelled out, "My fucking dog is dying while you are talking." I didn't, I didn't want to alienate the person who could help me. Pip had staggered to her feet, as if in a last ditch panic, and made a convulsive arch, while the vet asked me my address and tapped at her computer. Little Pip, with a huge effort, or so it looked, spewed up a big blue vomit. I'd fed the dogs before we'd left home, knowing it'd be dark when we got back. Much of her evening meal was on the floor, died blue by what was now obviously blue snail bait. She'd found the tin in my tool box, probably bored when I'd stopped to talk to Anita and Gary, if she hadn't already while I was driving. I had totally forgotten I'd put it there the previous Friday.

We went into the vet's rooms. Fiona gave Pip three injections, one to help the heart keep working, one to calm her muscles, and another to help her spew more, which she did. The senior vet John Hamilton turned up and he and Fiona put Pip on the drip and explained to me how deadly that blue shit is with dogs. It can cause blindness and brain damage if it doesn't kill them. It affects the nervous system. It was fortunate I'd fed her before she ate it, that diluted it and slowed its absorption. I think it probably helped her spew too.

I rang the vet this morning at 8.30 as instructed, then Lib to tell her the good news. Pip survived the night, she showed no obvious damage, and should be OK. After a long night and a sad walk in the morning with just 'Snow', I couldn't have been more relieved if I was on death row and given a reprieve.