There are days when I swear I own two baby elephants and not two Bull Terriers.  When they decide to tear around the house, they rock the joint.  Two wooden camels, Don Quixote, William Shakespeare, and a few other carvings on the top shelf of the curio cabinet walk from one side to the other.  On the top of my desk, my computer speakers do a square dance with pictures.  Ganesh swings his partner gargoyles and they promenade left and right.

     Patty loves to dive onto the couch and race from end to end slamming her butt against the arms to stop and turn.  Sometimes she races along the back of it—my poor, worn out couch.  I don’t care, she’s having fun, and that’s what matters.  Gavin’s favorite dash takes him from the living room to the kitchen where he uses the cupboard to stop and make his turn to run headlong back into the living room.  Yes, this can be a lively house.

     What I don’t understand is why they wait until I get up to expend all this energy.  When they are alone downstairs with Dear Hubby, Gavin is asleep in a chair and Patty is unconscious on the couch.  At least that’s what DH tells me.

Patty’s towel incident prompted me to write this post.  Our first BT, Danny had a taste for rocks, socks, and shoes.  I had a lovely pair of suede boots that he chewed to bits in less than five minutes.  Dear Hubby had a habit of leaving socks on the bedroom floor, a habit he soon broke after Danny pooped one out.

Our second BT, Joey liked to chew on wood.  He redid the woodwork around the doors.  He ate my bentwood rocker and redesigned the rungs on a couple of wooden stools.  He also ate his Varikennel.

BT number three was Malcolm.  Malcolm ate a Superball, which resulted in major surgery and a vet bill that’d make you faint.  He would chew the covers off tennis balls in less than a minute.  He too had a taste for wood and added his own touches to Joey’s artistic endeavors.  Malcolm ate a four-foot section of lamp cord, which he, luckily for him, had pulled out of the wall socket first.

BT number four, Mercy is the one who ate the back off the sofa from her crate.  No one has topped that feat of legerdemain.

BT number five, Sadie managed to eat a five foot by 4 foot square section of linoleum flooring one night.  This is why I now have a ceramic tile floor in the kitchen.

BT number six, Gavin has been the least destructive BT we ever had.  He’s stubborn, dominate, and demanding, but the least destructive.  The only thing he wants to eat is food any sort of food at any time.  Surprisingly, he is not over weight but then I do watch his diet carefully.

BT number five, Patty eats her bedding.  She’s chewed blankets, fake lambskins, and the last thing was that towel, that $448.00 towel.

BT number six, our new rescue, Lucy loves to chew holes in blankets. Nibbles on the backs of The Curmudgeon’s slippers when she can snatch them away from the side of his chair. Who knows what else we’ll find out about her in the years to come.

Malcolm the ham.

     A few days ago, Patty decided to snack on her bedding, a towel.  Towels aren’t digested quickly or easily even by Bull Terriers.  By Sunday, she was quite ill and so we took the run to the only available weekend emergency vet.  When he couldn’t tell what organs he was looking at on her x-rays, we decided against the $4400.00 barium test of which they wanted half right then.  We also decided against their $7800.00 exploratory surgery where they wanted half of that, and signed Patty out AMA. 

     Don’t get me wrong, I love my dogs and will do anything for them, but I had no confidence in this man.  After we sat there for four hours and he harangued us several times about what irresponsible pet owners we’d be if we left, I figured we’d better leave before I decked him.  By that time, my vet would be in his office in only a matter of a couple of hours and he knows my dogs.  Patty was not showing any real signs of pain she was more stressed out by the vet than by anything else.  Every time he’d walk back into the room, she’d dive and hide under Dear Hubby’s chair.  She doesn’t do that with our vet.

     The emergency vet’s office faxed everything over to my vet’s.  I called my vet the instant his office opened.  They know me, they know my experience as a former vet tech, and as I said before, they know my dogs.  My vet’s opinion was to keep an eye on her and if she showed any distress bring her in.  Poor Patty, all she wanted to do was sleep by then. 

     She and I spent the rest of the day dozing together on my chair and checking in periodically with my vet’s office.  I coaxed some beef broth down her a few times to keep her hydrated and allowed her stomach to settle.  She ate a very light dinner of hamburger and rice.  This morning she was hungry and ate a light breakfast.  Then she wanted dinner around five this evening.  Soon after that, she passed the offending piece of towel.  Then she raced about the yard back to her old self.

She started trying to mooch our food today so I take that as a good sign.  We are not certain that all is well yet.  She hadn’t eaten since Saturday morning and so far, today she did keep down beef broth and some hamburger and rice.  However, the night isn’t over yet and I’m staying up again to keep and eye on her.

Our vet talked to me this morning and wasn’t overly concerned.  I do trust our vet more than the emergency vet we saw Sunday night.  Who, when he was showing us her x-rays, said, “I think that’s her stomach…”  Saying something like that to me doesn’t instill a great deal of confidence on my part.