So my husband was out of town in Florida for the InfoComm conference. He left out Tuesday and came back on Friday.
I'm piddling around the house waiting for him to come home from the air port Friday night. At around 9 I go to let our dog in (Schatze - mini-schnauzer). He won't come in, but that's not abnormal. I pick him up and carry him inside. As I'm walking in the door he starts to squirm and scratches me. I just kinda step forward and let him go. He falls wrong, on his head/neck, gets up and is walking like he's really out of it.
He's done this before. We had him up on a table shaving him and he just jumped off and landed on his head (was the dumbest dog I've ever met, no kidding). A few hours of wobbling around and he was perfetly fine. Took him to the vet and all was good. That was like a year and a half ago.
There was another time that he ate a pinecone and was all acting strange. A few hours later he puked it up and all was good. Had him checked out then too.
So Friday night, my husband gets home, and we pay attention to Schatze. He's moving around a bit more and responding when we call him, coming jogging over to us etc.
So we decide to put his bed by our bed that night.
I woke up around 3 am to him gasping for air. I immediately started to give him CPR...breathing into his nose/mouth. He's getting worse, so we jump in the truck, I'm driving, literally going 90 mph down residential streets (I know I know, not smart, but when a member of your family is dying....). We pull up to the emergency hospital and he quits breathing and poop comes out of his butt.
He's gone...they couldn't do a damn thing to save him. No idea what caused it, but his abdomen was full of blood. Apparently the reason he didn't want to come inside is because he wasn't feeling good. Then when I picked him up it obviously was uncomfortable so he started squirming. I'm sure him falling wrong didn't help.
The vet sampled his blood and found that it wasn't clotting like it should for some reason.
We went and canvaced the backyard when we got home. I found a chewed up packet of Tylonel (sp?). We also found where he had dug a hole by the tree in the backyard, which is rather unusual for him. When he had eaten the pinecone he started digging afterwards for some reason too...
So, we go to the SPCA come Sunday and adopt an 8month old blue heeler. Sweetest, most well behaved, gentelest dog I've come across. Bring her home, let her get aquainted with the house and the back yard. Put her out in the back yard for a while so the cats and her can get aquainted through the glass door.
We go upstairs, and an hour later come down and she's gone.
Our gate has a gap at the bottom between it and the groudn that's about 5" tall. Schatze had NEVER dug or tried to squeeze out at all here or anywhere. So we didn't even think about it.
So the new dog is lost.
We drive around for about 4 hours looking for her. What's so upsetting to me is that about 5 of our neighbors saw her walking but none of them did a damn thing about it. They just left her...they were too stuck in their own little worlds to think about anything but themselves...god I hate people sometimes.
So we put up about 30 signs in the area and went to bed.
This morning we got a call. Somoene found her!
She was crossing the street right by our house when they found her last night. This morning they drove around the area looking for signs, found our signs and gave us a call...
At least there's one happy ending.
Tonight we're going to pick her up and will spend the evening in the back yard fixing every little nook and cranny we find...at first we thought that she had climbed the fence, but then we found fur on the gate at the bottom where she climbed out. The fence is a good 8 feet tall.