A Dog Named Blitz - Chapter 7, "Third Year - Part 8"

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The second time I put Blitz into danger was a couple of weeks later in early December.  Blitz and I had been hunting at the farm in the morning, and we drove all the way back to the house after the hunt as my wife and I had an engagement the next morning in town.  Our hunt was successful, and upon our return I cleaned the birds, fed Blitz, showered, then settled in to get some work done in the office of our house.  Knowing that Blitz would be tired from hunting and that she likely would just lay at my feet, I brought her upstairs to the office under the frowning oversight of my wife.  The dog and upstairs were a bad combination, and my wife voiced her displeasure at what she viewed was a bad idea. 

Offering the dog a bone to keep her busy, I settled in to get some work done, and fired up the PC to knock out some work emails.  About twenty minutes into our experiment Blitz made a large chomp on her bone and snapped me out of my concentration of the work I was doing. I looked over at my dog, lying there peacefully, and wondered when would be the best tome to tell my wife "I told you so." 

I settled back into the task at hand and was startled out of my work again about a half hour later.  This time what snapped me out of it was not the chomping of a bone, or licking, or panting.  It was silence.  Dead silence.  I looked over to where Blitz was previously laying and spied just a lonely, abandoned bone.  This was not good. 

Since I'd not heard my wife yelling, the cat hissing, or the dog running, I was hoping that Blitz was just getting a cool drink out of the toilet of a nearby bathroom.  A quick check of the location came up empty.  Trying to stay quiet lest I find myself on the receiving end of the "I told you so," I slinked into the next most logical place where Blitz could be found.  The kitchen. 

I rounded the corner, and sure enough, there in the middle of the kitchen stood an extremely happy Blitz, who had just raised her head out of an empty cake pan there on the floor.  The cake pan, previously perched on the kitchen counter, used to be filled to the brim with my mother-in- law's famous fudge.  The pan was a holiday treat that we were saving, and it was a virgin.  Nary a piece had been taken from it yet.  But that didn't stop Blitz. She somehow managed to get the pan down from the counter, onto the floor, and proceed to empty it down to bare metal without making a peep.

An entire pan of homemade fudge gone. 

Knowing the chocolate is poisonous to dogs I immediately yelled to my wife for help.  Vera entered the room, saw the dog and the empty fudge pan and was just about to read me the riot act when she must have noted the panic on my face.  "What's wrong?" she asked.  "Oh, honey, chocolate is poison to dogs.  What do we do?" I blurted. 

It was now Saturday evening, and our local vet had gone home for the day.  I sprinted back into the office, hopped on the web, and found the number for a nearby emergency vet.  Vera was in action mode as well and was getting the dog's create ready to transport her to the emergency vet.  All the while Blitz is standing there with a completely satisfied look on her face that can only come to one that has just polished off a massive amount of homemade fudge. 

I dialed the number to the vet to let them know that we'd be coming in when the nurse on duty wanted to know the nature of our emergency.  "My dog ate a pan of fudge!" I exclaimed.  "A pan of fudge?  How much exactly?" 

"The whole pan." 

"THE WHOLE PAN?" 

"Yeah at least five pounds!" 

"FIVE POUNDS?  So ho long ago did she eat it?" 

"One minute ago!" 

"OK, calm down, here is what were going to do.  Do you have any hydrogen peroxide?" 

"Yeah." 

"OK, you want to take your dog outside and give her a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide.  Wait abut sixty seconds.  If nothing happens, give her another one right away.  Then step back.  She'll vomit it all up."

"Will she be ok then?" 

"Oh yeah.  Just give her the hydrogen peroxide and call us back if for some reason she doesn't throw up." 

I stammered a "thank you" and asked my wife for the hydrogen peroxide, which she found and brought to me.  Explaining to my wife what we'd be doing, we took Blitz outside to administer the treatment.  I got Blitz on the patio, made her sit, removed the cap from the hydrogen peroxide bottle, then poured a tablespoon's worth into the dog's mouth.  Holding Blitz's nose up, rubbing her throat, and blowing on her nose to get her to swallow worked as it always had, as she finally gulped the fizzy liquid down. 

She stood up and gave me a look like, "Whoa.  I DO NOT feel so good..."  We waited for what felt about two minutes (but was likely 30 seconds), and with no signs of the dog getting sick I decided to administer another dose.  After the second shot, the dog stood up with foam boiling out of her mouth; looking more like a rabid wild dog than my faithful companion. 

Blitz was obviously not feeling well, and was clearly at the other end of the spectrum from her post-fudge-fest high.  After about 10 seconds she showed the tell-tale signs of getting sick, and within seconds we were treated to the sight of a huge pile of five pounds of fizzy fudge in the middle of the driveway.  Over the pile stood my dog, with the look on her face like "What the hell just happened?  Why isn't that stuff still in me?" 

Judging by the amount of fudge the dog had deposited on the concrete, we were satisfied that she had indeed thrown it all up.  And then some.  I quickly kenneled my confused and disappointed dog, and proceeded to break out the snow shovel to remove the offending treat. 

While scraping up the remnants of what used to be the best fudge in the world, I thought what a waste it was that nobody got to enjoy it.  I then thought about Blitz's face when I entered the kitchen, and I corrected myself.  She enjoyed it.  She enjoyed the hell out of it.  For all of about two minutes.