I love a hefty vet bill

Coming home from work to find your dog has not only peed in the house, but has also had diarrhea, vomited, and spewed blood all up and down your hallway -- which is carpeted -- is not awesome.

Needless to say, I panicked. Freaked out, really.

First I had to control my gag reflex so that I didn't create a further mess by barfing at the smell of her diarrhea.

Then I proceeded to pet her and smother her in kisses (which in hind sight was totally gross considering all the bodily fluids she had just leaked) and tell her I wasn't mad at her and that she was a good girl. Because it's never a pets fault when they vomit blood. Poop and pee on the carpet? Yeah, usually her fault. Usually out of spite. (That or the fact that I was just too damn cold to wait for her to poop when we went out that morning). But vomited blood? Never her fault.

THEN, I scraped up as much of the diarrhea as I could with ten wads of toilet paper -- making sure to not touch any of it. However, I did have the sense to gather a tiny bit in a ziploc baggy (that I left on our front porch in hopes that the neighbors wouldn't notice) to take as a sample to the vet -- which, as it turned out, they just threw away because they shoved their finger up her butt instead.

After that I emptied an entire can of Spot Shot on the blood dribbles and vomit. But ran out, so I had to use the back-up bottle of Resolve. Which the sprayer is clogged on, so it took what seemed like forever to get enough sprayed out to finish cleaning.

In the midst of all of this I called the vet in a panic and they said they could squeeze us in at 6:30pm.

So I panicked some more because Todd was supposed to be working late, and I had no idea how I was going to pick up Nick, feed him dinner, take him and Whinnie to the vet, and make sure she didn't get sick again, and get home in time for Nick's bedtime routine because there was no way in hell I was throwing him off schedule and going back to the old middle of the night crying marathons. Good lord...I am in awe of single parents. I called my mom who volunteered to take Nick so I could focus on Whinnie. So I called Todd to warn him that I was probably going to incur a hefty $150 vet bill (oh so naive) because "Whinnie pooped and barfed blood all over the carpet", to which he told me his evening event was cancelled and he was on the way home anyway.

Sigh of relief. Another set of hands.

So I went and picked up Nick, and we took Whinnie to the vet and $400 later, we now know she is apparently fine.

Don't get me wrong. I would pay whatever it took to make sure Whinnie was ok. She is my first baby. We treat her like a human. She eats whatever we're having for dinner (not much, but she always gets a taste in addition to her dog food). She sleeps in our bed, with her head on our pillows and her farts radiating from under the covers. We call her Nick's sister. We put her Michigan sweater on on game days, and her pumpkin costume on on Halloween. She sits in our laps on road trips, and she is given free reign of the house all day. We give her treats for everything, and sign her name on Christmas, Birthday, and Anniversary cards. She is an integral part of our family.

But an x-ray, several fluid shots, a prescription for diarrhea, a bottle of Pepcid for her acid reflux, a regular exam, plus a fecal exam and lab work, totaling nearly $400 later, we basically are told "put her on a chicken and rice diet for a couple weeks, and let us know if she gets worse." This is not sound advice in my humble opinion. Also, good thing we're not on a strict budget. OH WAIT.

Granted the cleared x-ray did give us a little piece of mind. So there's that. But this has me seriously considering pet insurance. I mean, after all, she's totally worth it. I'm just glad she's ok.