Last Thursday night, around midnight, our 17-week-old puppy, Moxie, was having some intestinal distress. We took her out and she had ballistic diarrhea and when she came inside, she vomited several times. Puppies do this so, while we planned not to get much sleep, we were not overly concerned.

Moxie had a relatively quiet night but at 5 a.m., she needed to go outside again and, again, it was ballistic diarrhea followed up with unrelenting vomiting. After about an hour of this, we decided to take her to our vet who is about an hour away. I took Moxie by myself and, with only one stop to clean up the van, we arrived about 9 a.m. Moxie had several more vomiting incidents but was behaving relatively well considering. After several fecal exams to test for giardia, parvo and anything else as well as some blood tests, we still had the symptoms but negative results on all tests. So our vet suggested we take some Xrays to see if Ms. Moxie had eaten anything she should not.

Once we saw the films, we could see that her intestines had a blockage. Leigh, our vet, looked at me and said "if it were my puppy, I'd want to go in there and see what that is." Since 48 hours earlier she had done just that with one of her Dobes, I agreed completely. The vet techs set up the operating room and I escorted Moxie over to it. She went along willingly until she actually saw the inside of the operating room at which point, she stopped and gave me a "you have got to be kidding" look. I scooped her up, placed her on the table and Ms. Moxie got herself prepped for surgery.

Forty five minutes later, we knew she had not swallowed anything but had a functional blockage of her spleen which was displaced and was causing problems with her stomach. Leigh fixed the problem, flushed out the system, stuffed her insides back into her little belly and Moxie was on her way to Recovery. She stayed at the vet's yesterday and we received 4 phone calls during the day updating her status. Today, Leigh called to tell us to pick the little girl up. She was eating and feeling very well.

Here's a shot of Moxie's nicely shaved belly . . .



And a close-up of Leigh's stapling skills.



And a last shot of Moxie playing with her new Ellie toy.



17 weeks is much too young for a puppy to have to go through this type of ordeal yet Moxie handled every phase of it without complaint or fear. The vet techs are in love with her and the vet says she's one of the nicest puppies she's ever met. This from a breeder of Rotties and Dobes. We are very sorry she had to go through this but it showed us just what this little girl is made of. Ms. Moxie has plenty of moxy.

Jim

Glad for the happy ending! Poor pup!

Good thing you did not wait! That would have been horrible.

Julie,
sometimes being overly protective is a good thing. We were very fortunate.

Jim

She is a cutie Jim! I am so glad that you are over protective. One of my eskies is a rock eater, so I have learned the symptoms of a blocked tummy pretty quickly.

Penny

Penny,
Sundance is likely to swallow stuff but he tends to pass it. Moxie doesn't go out without one of us to watch her at this point so I didn't really suspect a blockage from eating something but, with puppies, you never know. This morning she tried to sneak a rock from our mulch into the house in her cheek . We are now perfecting the "drop it" command.

Jim

Excellent story Jim, thanks for sharing with us

Just a short post-script to the events of last week: as of last night, Ms. Moxie had not yet pushed enough food through her system to poop. So, we were getting concerned but since she was still very hungry, we continued to feed her small amounts of ID ever two hours or so. Early this morning, she went out and finally pooped. At 4 a.m.! After she pooped, she went barfies twice but then settled down. When we came back in, I let her sleep next to me on the sofa.

At 7 a.m., she asked to go outside again and when we came in, I gave her a normal feeding. At 10, she went out and had a very solid BM and we thought everything was moving along -- literally and figuratively -- just fine. Then, at 11, she started vomiting again. We called the vet and she said, "bring her up" and off we went again for the hour drive to Wildwood. When we arrived, Moxie came with me to the front door and then hesitated. She clearly remembered this place and the last time she was here was not all that pleasant. Reluctantly, she followed me into the waiting room. Where she promptly sat and refused to move another step.

Two of the vet techs came out and saw her so they knelt on the floor at the other end of the waiting room and called Moxie with their arms wide open. Moxie sprinted across the room so fast I almost dropped the leash, collapsed into their arms and gave both girls tons of puppy kisses. They returned the kisses and told her they loved her. After that, Moxie was ready to go anywhere in the building.

After another Xray to confirm that her intestinal system was, indeed full and working well she got a shot to control vomiting, a suggestion to reduce the feedings even more to let her colon catch up with her stomach and a kiss from the vet with orders to get better fast. As the vet was walking out of the exam room, Moxie tried to follow her. I guess there are no hard feelings.

So, she's home and appears to be feeling fine. No more vomiting and so far no more poopers. Hopefully she'll decide to do them at a more civilized time tonight. Linda and I are so proud of how Moxie is handling all of this but especially the human contact. She can separate the fact that the people there hurt her from the fact that they also love her. That's a pretty sophisticated concept for a small puppy -- heck, it's pretty sophisticated for most people -- but she has learned to trust people which is without question the most valuable thing any dog can learn.

Jim

I love happy endings. Kudos for the vet techs for helping her over come her hesitation to be there again.

Give the little girl a hug and snoot kiss for me!

Penny

What a great story! Glad to know Moxie is doing well after all that she had to go through. Do keep us posted on her recovery