# Dog to the ER



## Fosse (Jan 5, 2007)

Last weekend a few of us chased the elusive ring necked bird through SW Minnesota. We had a good weekend and enjoyed getting away from the grind a bit.

On Monday morning I receive a phone call from one of my hunting partners. He asked "is your dog ok"? Assuming he was asking if she was tired from all the work during the weekend I said "she is moving a wee bit slow, but all in all she is just fine". He woke up at 2:15am to black tar type bloody stool all over his living room. His 4 year old YLF was in the process of bleeding out. He quickly took her to the emergency dog ER. They had to give her a unit of blood. Her red cell count was 9-15(35 being normal). She began to stabilize as they ran tests. They did not find much. She still continued to bleed internally. 24 hours after arriving they gave her another unit and referred her to a specialist at the U of M. She currently is still there 4 days later. The vets at the U of M have given her 2 units of plasma, due to her platelet count was at 50,000(200,000 is normal). Many tests have been ran, still not a definitive answer as to what the cuprite is.

The vets have came up with a possible answer. Many different things that took place may have had a hand in the problem. She ate quite a bit of grass during the weekend. The grass has continued to expel it's self from both ends, even 72 hours later. He did give her an Aspirin on Saturday night with her food. Finally, the amount of activity and stress of being away from home and hunting all weekend.

Now for my question:

Has anyone on here dealt with this personally or from someone they have known?


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## tumblebuck (Feb 17, 2004)

Did she drink any slough water? Blue-green algae comes to mind.

From another site:



> If you ingest water, fish or blue-green algal products containing elevated levels of toxins, you may experience headaches, fever, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. I


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## Fosse (Jan 5, 2007)

Could be a possibility. I read about this algae a while ago and was looking for it. I did not see any. As a matter of fact the sloughs where pretty clean looking(does not mean much). I did not pay much attention to his dog as I was handling mine. Anything is possible at this point...


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

What was the result??


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## Fosse (Jan 5, 2007)

An extremely expensive lesson about dogs, grass and aspirin. She spent a week at the UofM. The end result was a combination of all the events on the weekend.

She was expelling grass out of both ends for over 72 hours. The vet said the aspirin mixed with the grass slicing small cuts in her stomach lining may have lead to the event. Over all she had 2 units of plasma and 3 units of blood given to her. A very scary situation for my buddy. She is on a special diet for a few more weeks. She seems to be climbing out of the woods, now...


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