Rowen Eats a Staple

<Warning: graphic content>
Well, what an exciting week we have had! Two weeks ago, Rowen began experiencing some GI symptoms, including vomiting. We kept a close eye on her and figured she may have eaten something. We continued to feed her small amounts of a bland diet-sometimes it stayed down, and other times it did not. However, when we returned home one evening to a bed full of vomit and bile (sorry...told you it would be graphic) we knew something was wrong. I also found a little plastic piece of something in the middle of all of it. I collected it and we made plans to go to the vet the next morning. 
She became significantly more lethargic and dehydrated during the night and I knew we had a sick pup on our hands. At the vet, everything checked out physically so Dr. Jan decided we needed to do an XRay to figure out why she was so sick.

 She called me back to look at it, and I fully expected to see this:

Not exactly what we found...but what we did see was a tiny staple-as in, to staple your papers with. Gah, I couldn't believe all of this could be caused by something as small as a staple. But, Dr. Jan said whatever is in there needs to come out. I decided against a scope to remove the objects because we didn't know how sharp the stuff was.

So, back to surgery she went (of course, after a panicked call to my mortgage lender...) and a few hours later, we got the call that Rowen was out of surgery.

When I went to pick her up, Dr. Jan wanted her to stay on some IV fluids. "Are you comfortable taking her home on an IV?" Well, how much different could it be than humans?

We had to bring her out via stretcher

At home, recovering

My house turned into a hospital



<Graphic Picture> This is what was embedded in her belly : (

Hair, yarn, grass, plastic pieces (?), rubber...and a staple

Trying to get her to eat..she loved the ground beef, but not the rice

Meds 3 times daily

So now..only about a week after major abdominal surgery-Rowen is back to her old self. We even arranged a supervised play date with brother Jack because she was so bored and had so much energy. Her incision is healing nicely and she is eating normally again. The one major thing that has changed is that Ben and I are now locking her in "her room" when we leave. She doesn't typically chew or eat random objects, but we can't take the chance again!

Thanks to everyone for checking in on her!