Keeping Cashew alive had been a full time job since day 1. As i have alluded to in the past, the dog had absolutely zero survival instinct. She had been very near death multiple times, to the point where the emergency vet in the nearest city to us said i had to stop calling because they’d given us enough free advice and from now on we had to come in and be paying customers or just call the poison hotline. I did. I owed them 75 dollars for each call and they would often leave me on hold for 15 to 30 minutes. I took a different tactic. I started getting my veterinary advice from nurses i worked with. They saved Cashew’s life a few times. So too did the use of peroxide to induce vomiting and the emergency vet in San Antonio who gave us advice on how to prevent bloat after she ate herself silly on dry food.
Below i have listed the things Cashew had ingested during her first year of life:
– extension cords
– insane amounts of dry food at once
– rubbing alcohol
– bees
– hornets
– a scorpion
– ants
– crickets (probably just extra protein)
– her poop
– her sister’s poop
– other animal poop
– toads
– acorns
– poisonous mushrooms
– rocks
– cactus
– broken glass
– aluminum cans
– bits of plastic
– a sequin covered female top with built in bra and adjustable straps
– algae
– a pee pad
Yes, i had stood there on hold to the animal poison control hotline googling whether pee pad ingredients for certain brands could be poisonous if ingested. The consensus was that while it would not kill her, i should really stop “allowing” my dog to eat pee pads. Sometimes i wished the people who judged me for my raising of Cashew could house sit for a week. I wished they could walk in my shoes and see that they might not do any better in my circumstances. Of course it would be wonderful if she could have round the clock 24/7 supervision. And how would we pay the bills? No, in this family someone had to work. God would just have to send this dog many guardian angels.