Did I tell you about the time I nearly offed the Beagle?

It happened more than a month ago and I am finally ready to write about it…

So one day, I packed the Beagle into the car for her quasi monthly trip to the vets for “nails and sacs’’ (trimming of the nails/expressing of the anal glands – yeech all the way around).

She is always so good in the car that she was sitting in the front seat and then we had gone a couple blocks and I realized she was chewing on something. Two more blocks of chewing and I pulled over. It was gum she was chewing on!

Dangerous snack for a dog

Arrgh. One of little sticks. Or maybe two had escaped from my purse and now, the dog had suspiciously minty fresh breath.

I knew this was bad. The gum could have xylitol, which can cause vomiting, loss of coordination, seizures and liver failure, in servere cases. The chemical is found in sugar-free gums, and baked goods, etc.

So, now, we were really going to go to the North Kenilworth Vet Care. Seriously.

To check out what she was eating, I had pulled over onto a side street. I then realized to get to the vets, I was going to have to go down a street that was blocked for traffic. No problem, I just got, put the barricades to the side and kept on trucking, Sorry, Encanto neighbors – I didn’t stop to put the signs back. That was me!

Hurray for the vets!

So, we made it to the vets. They scooped the Beagle up and gave her stuff to make her throw up as well as activated charcoal so that her stomach wouldn’t absorb the chemical. By that time, they also gave her something to relax her since she was a little crabby. They decided to do the nails and sacs, so she was basically probed at all ends.

It was a bad day to be a Beagle.

The Beagle’s revenge

It’s OK – later that day, she threw up the remanents of the charcoal in very prominent spot in the house. I still feel tremendously guilty but she really tried to even the score by creating that  unremovable inky black stain on the rug.

So…. the morale of the story: switching to full-sugar Altoids. Safely locked in the glovebox.