No this isn't a post on the dangers of beer drinking and buffalo wings with your friends, no I suspect that the chicken wing that Hank had for dinner Friday night turned into an $800 bloody ordeal.

Friday night I fed him his usual, split chicken breast (chopped into smaller chunks with my cleaver) some hearts/gizzards and a chicken wing left over from the whole chicken the night before, with a bit of flax seed on top for a little 'kick' plus a little green bean. Anyway usually try to cut the wing in half with my cleaver but I didn't do it Friday.

Well Saturday morning rolls around and I load up the kiddo's and Hank to head to their Great-Grandparents and camp house to go ride bikes and play, well about 10 min into the ride hank starts barfing in the back of the Yukon. After the second barf I knew something was up because it didn't look 'right' it was a lot 'redder' than I've ever seen.
So I turned us around and headed to our old clinic about 10 minutes away. The vet there Saturday morning was a green horn (graduated in 2010), I asked her to come out and look at the vomit, and she did and said you can come in for a exam or just watch him, she was not too worried... I chose to sit and wait for an exam. While we were waiting hank up-chucked about a cup of frothy blood. Wonderful.

So off to the exam room. Barf's again and I 'suggest' we get the exam moving.
They take him back for a blood sample and we wait some more.
The vet comes in and tells me it pancreatitis and he's dehydrated! This is after a snap blood test they did and of course the lecture I got about raw feeding from the vet! Great. So of course in the next room over an older couple comes in with an old dog who had died on the way over so there was all sorts of drama in the office and Hank and I were not getting the attention I thought we needed with him leaking the red stuff.

So I ask what are my options, (office closes in 5 minutes). Well I could leave him there over the weekend un-monitored with an IV, take him to the emergency clinic or take him home. So I asked do I have enough time to get him up to the Texas A&M small animal hospital (1.5hrs away). She said "sure" but suggested we give him something for the vomiting and pain and she would give him some fluids for the trip.

(Now during all this my 6&7 yr old girls are being troopers, they had planned on getting spoiled and riding their bikes and we are now burning through lunchtime).

So these 2 vet techs come in and the girl asks if she wants me to hold his head, I'm a bit flabbergasted, because 15 minutes before I told them they need to treat Hank more like a police dog than a lap dog.
So I hold Hank's head and they bolus in (sub dermal) a couple hundred cc's of saline. Now this tech does it right next to his ridge-line on his back all the while tapping on him with his other hand! I asked this fool what he was doing and he said he was 'distracting him'!!!! So no I'm holding the head of a 90lb in pain and now pissed lion hound with some fool poking his butt! (Thank the Lord I have a good relationship with Hank because I've NEVER seen him like this, looking back he could have bitten my face on the way to to having a tech for lunch!)
I ask the other tech to open the please open the door before the pain and nausea meds were administered and I hang onto hank reasuring him. Uggh. So even after all this foolishness, the vet sticks her head in and the techs say "he was growling at us!" And I'm thinking of course he was, you fools were hurting him and pissing him off.

Happily we got out of there and up to College Station we go. Hank did a lot better once he was 'gorked up' unsteady on his feet but I could tell he wasn't hurting so bad. Kids are now getting pretty hungry and I had a 1 1/2 hr drive with a drunk dog in the back.

We get to the clinic and they give him the once over and the resident was very cool about the whole thing, took our history again (we were up there this time last year with a sago palm poisoning!)and he understood about ridgebacks. They ruled out pancreatitis, HBE(sp?), and rat poison, and after a x-ray figured it was a foreign body. You could still see pieces of bone traveling out of the stomach. After a 10 minute lecture on the un-balanced and un-healthy raw diet I was feeding him (even though they thought he looked good) we were able to go home. They (at the A&M clinic) did a lot better handling him (plus it helped that he was a bit 'woosy'), then my old clinic and his mood was a lot better when we walked out of there. Amazing what happens when you treat these dogs with a little respect.

(I did wind up feeding the girls at 3 pm, and they were really good sports about the whole thing) - I did get them to their great-grandparents and bike riding on Sunday, Daddy made up for it.

I got Hank home Saturday night with a skin full of fluids, he got up a few times in the night and did finally have a BM on Saturday night and one Sunday morning, all the while drinking some water. He slept most of Sunday and he's been eating small doses of scrambled egg and cooked chicken breast, plus a little rice. Rice DOES NOT agree with him or my nose, makes him real gassy! I'm slowly increasing the amount of groceries per our current Vet's instructions.

He's doing better now, starting to look for trouble in the house and watching out for the evil cats&squirrels lurking in the backyard. If the weather holds (don't like to walk with lightning about) we'll do a short walk tonight.

All in all, what I learned from this, is:
1. When in doubt go see a vet.
2. If a diagnoses doesn't sound right get a second opinion.
3. Tough, high drive dogs demand respect, make sure the staff knows this.
4. STAY AWAY FROM $800 Chicken Wings!

Yikes. That's quite a story. (and you're a very good story-teller, I must say!)

I'm sorry Hank had to go through all that and hope he's on the mend.

Is Hank a food-inhaler, or does he chew his food at all? Some dogs chew pretty good, some inhale it. I've got some of both.

I ask because of the cleaver-chopping you're doing to things. There are a couple of ways to think about his meal prep--all based on his eating style, how much effort you want to put into it, and the kinds of foods you buy.

If you chop up his food into bite-size pieces for him, then he's probably "encouraged" to just wolf them down without any chewing/tearing/reducing the things to bite-size hunks. (Dogs don't really "chew" the way humans do--they don't have any molars. They just reduce a big hunk of food to a size that they can swallow. If the hunk is swallowable, most dogs just swallow.

So--many people feed larger pieces, rather than smaller for that reason. It forces the dog to tear it up.

The other option is to chop/grind the food into pieces that are so small they cannot be a choke or blockage hazzard.

Anyway--just something to think about.

Feel better, Hank.

Wow that sucks. I'm so grateful for my 24 hr vet office. I never have to make that stupid decision, "leave him there over the weekend un-monitored with an IV, take him to the emergency clinic or take him home". Sheesh with the cost of vet care you'd think they'd give you some better options. When I hear these stories from other people, I just can't believe a vet would think someone who brings their pet into an emergency (knowing it's going to cost double just to walk in the door) and then says, "you can leave him here unmonitored for the weekend!" Ridiculous.

As for raw and chicken wings, personally I hold the wing while I tell my guy to chew his food (all other parts he's on his own); it does several things - 1) he can't swallow whole, and 2) we practice "out". Another thing you might consider - not cleavering the bones - makes for sharp edges.

Glad the big guy is ok!

Oh he's the kind who chews EVERYTHING, including hot dogs for goodness sake. It's impossible to sneak any med into this dog. He chews cheese! I chop meat up to bites size hunks (3"x3") so he won't drag them all over kitchen. I'm a lazy meat chopper I do a big batch into 4-5 oz chunks and then feed him over the next couple of days.

I also think that the bird was 'old' the bones were kind of tough, if you know what I mean. I guess I'll stick with young fryers.

if you feed him Old Roy dog food U would not have that problem!!!!!!

God Bless Texas

I didn't quite understand. Did Hank have to have surgery? Or did the bone pass on its own? Or did they remove it some other way?

No surgery thank goodness! He passed it on his own Sunday. The pieces were small enough that the vet was worried about him passing it on his own.

My wife and I have been up with him off and on all night tonight. Poor guy has some serious gas, and I can tell he's hurting. I just gave him some gas-x (simethicone). He's sitting 2 ft away and I can hear his gut!