Balloon Puppy

Thursday was a pretty boring day. I planned on not leaving the house, so I was just sort of a hot mess. I did not actually do anything productive other than stuff some pillows and start to tape a wall off for painting. I was exhausted, but not sure why. However, my day went from boring to scary in a matter of minutes.

I was sitting in the living room taping the wall when Basil came and sat down next to me. She had just returned from an adventure outside a few minutes before, so I ignored her, as she seemed to want to go out yet again. I figured, it being roughly three in the afternoon, she was just being pesky. Yet, something was not right. So I started talking to her and then I looked at her.

She looked funny. She was just sitting there. She wasn't shoving her head in my way or getting in my way, she was just sitting there. Usually when I talk to her she actively listens, she was just sitting there staring at me. And she looked funny. She looked like she was lumpy in her face. I began to pet her head and stare at her. I tried to touch the spots that were lumpy, but she kept moving. I took her head in my hands and stared at her and realized she was swelling up before my eyes. The lumps were getting bigger by the second. Her snout suddenly looked like she had a golf ball in the side of her mouth.

And so I freaked out. I leaped up and ran like a mad woman into the kitchen, cursing the drawer that sticks. The drawer flew open and everything flew out of the drawer. It took me a few minutes to find the sheet of phone numbers the spouses had given me a while ago with suggestions. They only had two vet numbers listened, one was in Eagle River and neither was the one I wanted.

At this point Basil began to jump on the back door and make muttering noises. She also kept staring at me, getting larger and larger. I found the number for the vet I wanted and called, while staring at the ever swelling Basil. I found out they had no appointments till Monday, but that I could take Basil to an emergency vet.

Emergency vet? A pet ER? Sure, give me that number.

Before I called, I put Basil outside, because she was having a royal hissy fit while I was on the phone. The lady at the vet figured she was having an allergic reaction to something. She was prompt to blame Basil's new bag of food. I called the ER, and they said basically the same thing and bring her in and they'd give her something to stop the swelling.

I dragged Basil inside. She had been rolling around in the snow face first since I had put her out. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get Basil and myself in a state to leave the house. I basically threw shoes and a coat on and grabbed Basil leash and records (just in case). The latest snow storm was going on at that exact moment and it was also 3.30 in Anchorage. This meant I fit right in as I drove like a crazy person across town to the pet ER. Basil was perfectly silent on the way over. She looked horrible by the time I got her into the car. She looked like she had been beat up. She had huge lumps above her left eye and her left side of her snout was huge, and her right side was getting going. She also had a few other random lumps forming above her right eye.

I managed to get to the pet ER in one piece and got Basil out of the car, past the random barking dogs in a truck and into the vet. It was deserted. Seriously, no one was in this place. Basil was greeted by a random dog before a person showed up. When the person did show up, right away she said it was an allergic reaction and the vet would give her a shot of Benedryl to make the swelling go down. We had a fight with Basil to get her on the scale (I am not sure when Basil concluded the scale was evil) and found Basil had gained a pound since she left Illinois. After that, we went into the exam room and a vet tech came in.

He took Basil's temp (which went better than the last time she had that done to her) and asked me a million questions. He wanted to blame the paint (I had no paint out when she started swelling) he wanted to blame her food (which she had eaten almost 8 hours ago?) he wanted to blame the new house (which she had lived in for a month?) he wanted to blame anything I had done to her except let her outside.

Then he left. And I realized I was sweating through my shirt and I had to pee like no other. We sat in the room for almost a half hour before the vet showed up.

The vet marveled at Basil's cute name. We had a conversation on why we'd named Basil so and how names get stigmatized. She seemed to think Basil brought hippies to mind, while I didn't voice the fact when I thought of Basil I thought of a British butler. She didn't ask me many questions, but said who knows why dog's have allergic reactions. She thought Basil was adorable and seemed to fall in love with my dog. When she found out Basil was a lower 48 dog, she seemed even more fascinated by Basil's reaction. She admitted it might have been her trip to the outside that had caused the reaction. Spring was attempting to break out, so something might have popped up and she had gotten into it.

The vet left, another vet tech appeared a short while later to take Basil to get her shot. After the vet left, I noticed a huge lump on Basil's neck, which seemed to be covered in dried blood. Right in her usual spot where she scratches. I mentioned it to the vet tech and the vet tech said she's tell the vet. Basil left, then returned, wagging her tail and having her perky ears on.

This is important, as she had not been wearing her perky ears since her swelling had began. She was still panting up a storm, but her perky ears were on. The vet tech said they'd also given her a steroid shot to help with the swelling.

I took Basil out, paid 100 dollars and left. Basil was her normal self on the ride home. By the time we got home, she looked better. She still was swollen, but not as much as she had been. Pilot Boy was home when we arrived, so Basil's day was even better now. She ran into the house, greeted Pilot Boy, drank down all her water and then threw it up. (She does this when she drinks water too fast.) I finally peed and changed out of my sweat drenched shirt (it was like 100 degrees in the office and I never took off my coat.) By the time we had gotten done at the ER, the snow had stopped and the sun had come out.

I let Basil outside shortly after she had finally gotten some water down. She sat on the porch the whole time. She refused to leave. I let her back in. Later, before bed, she left the deck, did her business and came right back. The next morning, I noticed she would not leave the snow area. I concluded she must have gotten into something in the melted area of the yard. Her swelling had gone down within three hours, like they had said it would, and she looked like her normal self the next morning. I worried every time I let her out, she'd get into the same thing again, but she seemed not willing to venture out into the yard much.

It was evening when I discovered the dead bug on her. She was sitting in her chair by the big window in the living room. Pilot Boy had put it there for her so she could look out. I was petting her and remembered the blood caked area on her neck. I looked. I pulled her fur back and searched and thought the thing I thought was a scab looked like a bug.

"Is this a bug?" I asked Pilot Boy.
"No, its a scab," he said, barely looking.

I kept looking at it, pulling away more fur till I was sure it had legs. Scabs do not have legs.

"I think its a bug!" I screamed.
Pilot Boy looked again, "I think you're right."

He got some tweezers and pulled it off of her. It was dead. It had been dead since I think it bit her, because it was dead when I found it at the vet and thought it was dried blood. It was a brown bug with some legs. Some sort of tick, I guess. I freaked out all over again, blaming myself for not buying her the most expensive flea/tick treatment one can buy. Her swelling was a tell tail sign of a bug bite, yet NO ONE thought of that, even thought I told them she had just BEEN OUTSIDE. Why? Because it is still WINTER HERE. The ground is still pretty frozen in places. But, when it began to melt, I put the treatment on her. It said it was also for ticks. I will just have to watch her to make sure she's okay. She seems okay. She has been totally normal since the whole thing. Yesterday she even ventured further into the yard. No running around, but she is venturing out again. Pilot Boy told me not to worry, but of course I do worry. She is my puppy.

Right now she's in her crate sleeping because I got her up too early. We also forgot to lock her crate last night, so she went for a night time stroll. Pilot Boy woke me up and asked, "Did we lock her crate last night?"
"I didn't. Didn't you?"
"No. I think your dog just went for a nighttime stroll."
"Is she downstairs?"
"No, she just went back to bed, I think. I'll go see."

He left, I heard the crate shut and he returned. "Yeah, she was in there. Rolled up in her ball."

At least she didn't go on a barking stroll like she did when we were in Chicago and my parents didn't lock her crate. Her nighttime strolls to her other bed were cute, barking all over the house at 2 am, not so much.