They really don't know about the ball or weather the anemia came first. The ball could have been in his stoumach for a very long time and only moved into the intestine after he stoped eating. It's the old chicken and the egg thing. He stoped eating last summer for week or so and I never gave it a second thought, so who knows. I have to have a CBC done this week to see where we need to go with meds but he seems to be doing ok. Lots of dogs die from this usually in the first few days.

He is one tough determined dog. The day after Christmas when he could barely walk my daughtor and I went outside the vet's office while we were waiting (I wanted to tell her alone that I thought we would probably have to put him down. She's only six and I wanted to prepare her as much as I could.)and he got up and tried to come with us to protect her. He knows it's his job and he was going to try to do it. That will always probably bring tears to my eyes.

What an excellent dog. It sounds like you've been lucky so far if you made it past those dangerous first few days. Keep us posted on your daughter's companion. Hope she doesn't have to say good bye just yet.

 Quote: Chris Carey

I believe that we have the problems identified and probably resolved. It turns out that he had half of a tennis ball in his intestine. That REALLY pisses me off since I don't use tennis balls with adult dogs at all, the ball must have been tossed over my fence by a neighbor's kid and I missed finding it in time. They usually come right over and ask for their ball, arrow or other toy back right away.

For the last 6 years I've had the same problem with neighbor's kids - balls of all sorts coming over the wall. It's constant. Needless to say, I'm really tired of it, however the straw on the camel's back was the marbles my pup found in our yard. It was dark outside and he found something, had it in his mouth but I couldn't see what it was. Opened his mouth to see a marble dropping out. Wonder if our neighbors would be willing to pay our dogs' vet bills....

I doubt thay would offer to pay, I have a couple thousand into this mess so far. I am going to adjust my security cammeras to see if I can get the next insident on tape. I'm not upset that they lost a ball over the fence, just that they didn't say anything. I have no problem getting their toy back to them right away, they just need to tell me it's there

Chris-
Maybe you can go to your neighbors house and let them know that the won't hear the dog for a while because he had surgery. Let them know without accusing that "somehow he got a hold of a tennis ball" and the results. Let them know that you appreciate when they come and let you know if a ball gets over into the yard - you won't get mad. If they are good neighbors maybe it will help in the future. Good luck with your dog and your neighbors.

The neighbors know what happened, their kids play with my daughtor and their kids are at my house quite a bit when she is here. The kids are ususally pretty good about coming over to get a toy back and I'm usually here since I work from home. The adults are knuckle heads they couldn't afford to pay even if I had tape and got a judgement. I'm going to have to get motion detectors for the two sides of my fence so I know if somthing comes over and walk the yard each morning before I put the dogs out. I already have motion detectors on the back side since it go's to an empty field.

I'm more worried about intruders in the back and the front yards than balls etc. I am concerned about poisen comming from the back field or an attempt to steal puppies from my puppy pen. I have trained my house dogs to watch the front doors barking agressively when there is one beep and go out the dog door in the back barking agressivively on two. I lock the doors to the kennels and have roofs on them so the kenneled dogs are pretty secure unless I have one in the exersize yard. I have had a generator stolen from my car port and somone try to walk into my house last year so I'm not totally paronoid. The cammeras are to document what happens on the outside of my house, for example if somone climbs a fence and is bitten it's on tape. This has served me well, my ex wife barged into my house without knocking last summer and started shouting at me pointing a finger in my face and was bitten. Offering to send a DVD to the animal control officer killed the problem before it became one. It's to bad we have to go to such extreams to protect our dogs and property. I live in a small village and never locked my doors ever before last year.

Glad to hear you dog is going to be OK. I wonder why the X-Rays didn't pick anything up.

I am truly sorry that you and your dog had to go through that. It is a sad commentary on our world today where even the sanctuary we think of as home where our children and our animals can relax and feel safe isn't. Good luck with things - I hope you don't have any more problems.