So did my mom.
Luckily, I am alright, but I might not have been, and that is the only reason I'm going to tell you about this. It is not a made up story, it is the truth, as are all of the things I've told you here in my first year.
Dogs are snoopy creatures, and anything that catches our eye, or anything that's laying around that you might not notice, chances are that we will. From the tiniest little pebble, to a little piece of forgotten food.
We find everything.
Monday June 26th, 2000, I found something I shouldn't have, and I played with it. It had fallen onto the floor when mom was cleaning off the computer desk. She didn't notice it, but I did.
It looked like a fun thing to play with. It was shiny, and little, so I picked it up and snuck away to the livingroom to play with it.
Mom didn't see me do it, so I thought I was being really smart.
I wasn't smart at all.
I played with it for awhile, and it really wasn't all that much fun, but all at once, it hurt me. It hurt my mouth, but when I tried to get it out of my mouth, I couldn't.
It was stuck in my mouth. I kept trying to get it out, but the more I tried, the more it hurt. It really hurt, but I kept pawing at my mouth to get it out, and finally I whimpered just a little, and mom heard me.
Since she didn't know I had what I had, she didn't know what was wrong with me. She thought, from the way I was acting, that I was choking on a rawhide chewy bone, and she reached in my mouth to try and get it out. That wasn't it, and when she couldn't feel anything in my mouth, she Heimliched me. She was sure I was choking, but I wasn't. I was feeling so bad for mom, because she didn't know what was wrong, and I couldn't tell her.
Mom was starting to cry, and I was wishing that I could tell her what I had done, because she had no way of knowing.
My mouth was bleeding, and then I clamped my mouth shut so she couldn't look in, and still, it kept hurting.
Mom knew something terrible had happened to me, so she called the veterinarian's office where she used to work a long time ago. They said there was a doctor there, so mom got me into her car and rushed me to the doctor's office. She was driving really fast. Faster than I had seen her drive before. She didn't stop at the two stop signs, but I'm not supposed to tell you that.
Dr. Janet Speth gave me some shots so that I would fall asleep and let them look in my mouth, but I was afraid to fall asleep. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. She put a plastic thing over my snout, and although I was afraid, I was very good, and kept the plastic thing on my nose. I got really sleepy and couldn't sit up anymore. Dr. Janet, and my mom helped me lay down, and they looked in my mouth.
Dr. Donald Harms came in to check on us, and after they had all looked in my throat, and all over my mouth, Dr. Speth pulled my tongue waaaay out, and Dr. Harms noticed a bump on the side of it. They found what I had been playing with, and what had been hurting me.
What I had found on the floor and taken to the livingroom to play with, was a two inch long needle threaded with thread. I had somehow poked it into my tongue, and it was completely embedded from side to side into the base of my tongue, so none of it showed. Only the little bump on the outer edge of my tongue, that Dr. Harms happened to notice.
Dr. Speth and Dr. Harms got it out, and my mom felt really badly when she saw what it was, knowing that it was her carelessness that had caused it to happen. After I woke up, I felt really badly knowing I should not have picked up something like that to play with.
I was lucky. If I had swallowed the needle, or if it had gotten stuck in my throat, I would have died, and mom would be writing this to tell you that there would be no more updates on my life.
I learned a lesson, and so did my mom. She kept the needle and thread on the computer desk so she could sew up holes in my toys when I rip holes in them. She had kept it safely up on a shelf so that I would never be able to accidentally reach it, but when she cleaned the desk, it fell from the shelf and then onto the floor. She will never keep one there again, and they are all safely far away from me now.
So, anyone who is reading this: Please, please, please, keep anything sharp, small, or dangerous, safely out of the reach of both children and dogs. We are both very curious, and we will both play with almost anything because we don't know any better.
I was lucky and there was someone to help me.
There isn't always someone around to notice when we get into trouble, so please, remember what I've told you here, and keep your house not only childproof, but puppy and dog proof too.
