Sick Puppy

One of my angels is an eleven year old chihuahua, and she is small even for her breed.  Before I purchased her, I was painfully unaware of the nasty practices of unscrupulous puppy mills.  Although she has been one of the greatest treasures of my life, her life has also been a lesson to me to NEVER spend one more dollar to support these types of people ever again.  From intestinal hernias to teeth problems, my poor baby has been tormented with health problems her whole life.  One common problem with a lot of these over-bred small dogs is sensitive digestive systems.   Some things that might not affect any other animal will send her into fits of severe vomiting and diarrhea.   Sadly, she is having one these episodes now. 

After years of taking her to different vets, rounds and rounds of antibiotics, and hours spent reading online, I believe the single biggest contributor to this is mold/fungus in store bought dog food.  I am attempting to treat her this time from home.  The consensus of my research has led to me to act as follows, and if she is not showing signs of improvement by this evening, I will call my vet.  She began vomiting yesterday around 2 PM, and the diarrhea started about 30 minutes later.  I have been watching her closely and keeping water next to her in hopes that she will stay hydrated.  I attempted to give her pedialite, but she would not take it.

In accordance with my reading, I allowed her to fast the remainder of the day yesterday to give her system time to clean itself out.  In preparation, I boiled some rice and a chicken breast last night.  This morning after she passed some semi solid stool, I gave her a tiny amount of chicken broth.  She was not able to keep it down.  She is however acting like she is beginning to feel better.  I plan on offering her the broth each hour for the next couple of hours.  Once she successfully keeps this down, I will move on to the chicken and rice mixture.  However, if she cannot keep the broth down by afternoon, I will have to seek help from my vet to rehydrate her.

It hurts me to my very soul to see her this way.  I think that after this bout, I am going to try making homemade dog food from now on.  I will update this post with her progress over the next 24 hours.

Update:  It is nearly 9am, and I am happy to report that she has been able to keep down 2 tiny bowls of broth.  She has been walking around and even wagging her tail every now and then.  I think we are headed in the right direction.

Update 2:  Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse later that day, and, bless her heart, she ended up at the vet.  It is 2 days later, and she is finally home.  She kept down the food we gave her last night, but she is skinny and obviously still not feeling good.  The vet did tell me that I was on the right track with the broth and Chicken, and that he thought making her dog food myself was a good idea.  For now, I am just watching her and hoping to see her prancing around and wagging her tail very soon.