ANOTHER Maia Adventure

Yesterday I was sitting at work, focusing as much as one could two days before the Christmas vacation would begin, and I get a call from my husband.

Husband: Do we have hydrogen peroxide?
Me: Yes.
Husband: Where is it? (sounding a bit frantic I notice now)
Me: Um, uhhh (I was feeling a little pressure to recall something that I had no idea how to recall) I don't know why what's wrong? **kicking myself mentally and thinking why on earth I didn't know where the stupid hydrogen peroxide was**
Husband: (kind of babbling and not making a whole lot of sense) Maia was whimpering and I think she ate her leash and I came and looked and I need the hydrogen peroxide and where is it?

I proceeded to try and think as hard as I could without hurting myself of where I might have put that stupid brown bottle that was eluding us at the moment. Every place I suggested came up empty. Finally I said that he should call the vet because that was our only option at this point.

Once I got off the phone, I was somewhat smug at first that DJ finally "got" to experience a Maia adventure. Every other time I've had to rush her to the vet, DJ was either thousands of miles away or busy at work and didn't understand the level of hysterics that such an "adventure" can cause. Now he was getting a little taste of it himself. (moowahahaa)

Then I started getting a little tiny bit worried and the amount of worry that I heard in DJ's voice started to get to me. But I quickly squashed it deep down and told myself I was being silly and Maia would be fine. She always is.

Once DJ got Maia to the vet and knew she was being taken care of, he had calmed down a little bit and called me back. That's when he told me that Maia had eaten 3 FEET of her leash. I started getting worried again. What DOG eats her leash? What DOG eats 3 FEET of her leash? WHY Maia? WHY?? She never ceases to baffle me. I just don't understand what goes on in that little squishy wrinkly fuzzy soft head of hers.

They did a couple of x rays (and clipped her nails, took care of some other, ahem, necessities that I will spare you of the details, checked her infection-prone ears, basically gave her a little spa day) and sent DJ and Maia on their way. "The leash will pass," they said. "We injected some saline solution to make it really slick, so the leash should certainly pass." Oh, thank goodness. Once again we have evaded the dreaded "s" word....surgery.

We played with her. She was fine. Normal Maia antics, just fine. We fed her. She gobbled it up, no problem. We took her out to potty. Not a big deal. Everything was fine.

So we were a little surprised when this morning, I woke to the sound of my poor little puppy vomiting. I jumped up, yelled at DJ that Maia threw up and confusedly tried to put on my glasses and walk out into the hall where Maia was and turned on the light.

Yep, not a pretty sight.

She was sick alright...

She had thrown up all OVER her crate. One of the upchucks had produced part of the leash so I was still hopeful at that point. I thought that was probably a good sign since she was just getting rid of the nasty leash. DJ had a different perspective since the vet told him that throwing up was not a good sign. So we decided to watch her and see if she was ok after that.

No good.

She threw up two more times.

So it was back to the vet for DJ and Maia (thankfully, DJ had the day off today) and I headed off to work, quite sure that today Maia would have to endure a surgery. (Or should I say WE would have to endure the surgery BILL.) Sure enough, the vet recommended we do surgery right away since tomorrow and Christmas were holidays and the vet clinic would not be open so of course, we agreed and Maia went under the knife.

Thankfully after the surgery was over and we were debriefed, we found out that Maia is healthy as a horse. (As parents, we are always glad to hear that, of course. It's because we feed her only the BEST dog food, you know.) AND we got a two-fer-one because the vet was able to fix a hernia that Maia apparently had from where her umbilical cord had not completely healed properly so yay! The vet said it wouldn't even cost us extra. God bless you woman. They took out a LOT of leash bits. She had chewed three feet of leash into about 7 or 8 pieces and promptly swallowed them, piece. by. piece. How diligent. (I would have a picture at this point but apparently, DJ thought it was gross, even though I thought it just looked like wet pieces of leash. Whatev.)

So Maia is ok. Thank God. But I miss her to death now. She has to stay at the vet for observation for two days and because they are closed for Christmas Eve and Christmas, we can't see her before we leave for Atlanta. AND because they are also closed on New Year's Day, we can't pick her up until the day after we get back. So that's 11 WHOLE days until I see my baby again. **Tear** We did get to go visit her today but I'm pretty sure she didn't even know we were there. And if she did know it at the time, she won't remember because they had her completely drugged. She had an IV in so they didn't want her to mess with it. It was so sadly sweet. She just laid there and kind of dragged her eyes open every once in awhile to peer up at us with watery glazed over eyes. We petted her and told her we loved her very much and stroked her very soft head and then after just 5 minutes, we left. I mean, we didn't want the doctor vet lady to think we were obsessed or anything. Cause we're not.

So Maia will be kept in the recovery "room" for the next day or two and then she will be taken to the boarding area, where I will imagine them loving on her, and cuddling her and making sure that she doesn't bother her stitches. Basically taking care of her as well as I would. (No one burst my bubble here. I KNOW that they are going to do everything they can to make her feel comfortable and safe and secure and like her parents haven't abandoned her forever.) And they will give her antibiotics and essentially take on all the responsibilities that we would have otherwise had to do ourselves. I feel like I am getting a small glimpse of what Britney Spears must feel like. Just pay people to do all the dirty work for you. I could get used to this.