Emergency Hospital Visit for Pinky

I woke up this morning and fed the dogs as usual. They ate well and went outside to do their doggy business. When Pinky came in I saw she had pooped on the deck. This happens quite frequently with her because her sphincter muscle has lost a lot of elasticity and she often doesn't even know the poop is coming out of her butt until it is too late, or in this case, she just couldn't get down the stairs quickly enough to make it to the grass, so she just poops on the deck. Anyway, I went out to pick it up and it looked completely normal except that it was covered in mucus. I picked it up and flushed it away. I figured she must have something going on, but I didn't see anything else amiss.

I put the dogs in the bedroom and told my husband that maybe Pinky wasn't feeling well so he should keep her off of the bed and then I took a shower. When I came out of the shower I saw a pile of, for lack of a better word, stuff on the carpet. In fact all over the carpet there were piles of stuff that looked like raspberry jam & mucus. I picked it up with a paper towel and it was blood and mucus. I assumed this was a very bad sign for Pinky. I called out sick and then got dressed to take Pinky to the animal hospital.

First I made sure my dad didn't feed Pinky anything unusual yesterday because you never know with him. He denied giving the dogs anything unusual except a little bit of egg. I knew the egg would not cause blood to come out of her butt. I didn't know what it could be, except that I just knew this was the end for Pinky. I mean, I really thought I was taking Pinky on a one way trip to the vet. I made everyone say goodbye to her, "in case of anything." My husband refused to acknowledge that there was a real problem and that there was no possibility other than Pinky coming home from the vet with some meds.

I cried all the way to the Oradell Animal Hospital http://www.oradell.com/home.htm
Pinky was just laying on a blanket on the front seat. She wasn't even trying to sit in my lap or look out of the window. I couldn't imagine my life without this sweet chihuahua. I love Pinky with all of my heart and couldn't believe that she might not be coming home with me.

At 6 am you wouldn't think that there would be many people at an animal hospital, but there were. We were seen my a triage vet technician who would assign priority to the emergency cases. Pinky seemed pretty normal other than there was dried blood on her butt. They took her temperature and she had a slight fever of 102.7. When the doctor came in I pulled out a sample of the bloody mucus that I put into a zippy bag. I didn't have the poop because I had already flushed that before knowing there was a major problem.

The vet said that Pinky had colitis http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_colitis.html
He prescribed an antibiotic and told me to add some rice into her food for a while until she started having normal poops. Colitis can be bacterial or viral. Because she had a fever, he thought it was bacterial. I was so relieved that she would be cured with some pills and was coming home! See, I am such a worry wart. The vet said that Pinky can still have the bloody mucus poops over the next 12 hours, so I shouldn't be alarmed if it keeps happening, however it should not continue after that so if it does I will have to call the vet.