They are my babies!

Thursday, after a long day at the hospital saying goodbye to my Aunt Lynne, I came home emotionally exhausted... I came in and told Joel that I was going to go lay down for a while. He decided to take the kids to run some errands. Later that evening we discovered that the boxes of chocolates I had bought from the school fundraiser was missing. Once we started looking around we found bits and pieces of the cardboard boxes...hmm, not a good sign!

50 bars in each box!

When I went to lay down, I took the dogs with me. When I woke up, I remember that Fisher was still in the same spot he was when I fell asleep. I didn't remember Zoe still being with me... So, we thought that Zoe had eaten them all... Little did we know we were wrong!

We immediately began looking online about dogs and chocolates. We had heard that chocolate was bad for dogs... After reading about symptoms and warning signs, I called my brother, who has many animals, to see if him or his wife knew where I could get active charcoal which was recommended to give dogs to absorb the toxins in chocolate. Christi said that only vets could give it to you and to take Zoe immediately to the Animal Emergency Center in Sunset.

Brent then offered to come take me so Joel could stay home with the kids, it was after 10 pm by this time, on a school night. Joel was not happy with me... He thought we should wait it out and see how she did. I didn't agree and started getting her ready to go :)

Once we got her there, the vet induced vomiting and got a lot of it out of her system. It was gross - yes, the vet brought the bucket full of chocolate, wrappers, and cardboard pieces out to show me! Because her heart rate was in the normal range, he gave her the first dose of active charcoal and sent us home with the second dose. We got home just after midnight and both of my kids were still wide awake waiting to make sure Zoe was okay.

By the time the kids fell asleep and I reassured Joel that I didn't have to re-mortgage the house to pay for it, I laid there wide awake listening to Zoe breath - making sure she didn't start showing new signs of being in danger, the vet gave me a list of things to watch for. Just as I started dozing off, around 3 am, Fisher started throwing up chocolate all over my bedroom. GREAT!!

I woke Joel up to tell him I was taking Fisher in. Once again - as he was telling me NO - I was looking for his leash.

By this time it had been over 7 hours since he had eaten the chocolate, so inducing vomiting was no longer an option. Fisher had already began to digest the toxins and had an extremely high heart rate. Fisher ended up with numerous shots for all of his symptoms as well as the first dose of active charcoal. After watching him to make sure the medicines were working and he was going to keep the charcoal down, they sent us home around 4:30 am.

I was a, very tired, nervous wreck and I had two very sick black labs... Their tummies were rumbling and grumbling, and they were not allowed to eat or drink for several more hours... Zoe was able to bounce back to herself by late Friday afternoon, probably because we were able to get most of it out of her system before she digested it.

However, Fisher was not back to himself until today :(

So, I learned a very expensive lesson...
It's true, Chocolate is VERY bad for dogs!