It happened yesterday, just before supper. Ocean, our akita girl, wasn’t acting right. I thought maybe she was feeling sad or off and I started giving her kisses and petting her. That’s when I noticed how tight and bloated her stomach was.
And she was trembling.
Now, most people wouldn’t panic but I panic at the drop of a hat. Watching Ocean shift restlessly in what I now recognized as pain, made me want to call an ambulance over. Instead, I called my hubby and two minutes later, we were in the car on the way to the nearest emergency vet.
We got there with a dog that was quickly deteriorating. Thankfully, they saw her right away. Ocean was inside the clinic for a minute before the vet called us (we weren’t allowed inside–I asked) and told us the diagnosis: A twisted stomach. Either Ocean got an immediate operation or she would die.
We had to wait hours for the results of the operation but I’ll tell you right away. Ocean survived and is recovering. She’s still at the vet hospital because until she can eat solid food again and take her medicines by mouth and not an IV, she can’t leave. We are at home, relieved and looking at River with sharp eyes. If he so much as yawns too widely, I worry.
I don’t want to jinx our situation and celebrate too early her recovery but I did speak to the vet this morning and she said Ocean was doing much better. We’ll know better by the end of the day because complications can still happen but the nightmare of yesterday is over.
I know Ocean is only a dog, and I know she’s going to die but yesterday, while we were driving to the vet and she was shaking with pain, I was beside myself. And she would try to lean against my side to try and console me. It’s things like that that make me think: humans could learn so much from our doggies.
Taylor Grace 