I was up Island visiting friends in Port Alberni…left there to drive home around 2:15 – it was hawt – damn hawt….and by the time I get all the way around the peninsula it’s about a 3 hr trip
Pixie was in the passenger seat in a carry bag as opposed to her dog crate…said bag has mesh sides and I thought it would be cooler than the crate…about an hour down the road I realize she’s in full sun and cos I’ve not been paying attention – I don’t know for how long…so I pull off at a roadside rest area just past the Nanoose turn off to rearrange the car to get her outta the sun
I let her outta the carry bag and she couldn’t stand up…she kept falling over and was lethargic and her eyes were dull…at first I was afraid that she’d eaten something poisonous in the brush around my friend’s home in Port Alberni…and then I though “heat stroke”…but the air conditioner was on in the car? Still she only weights 3.5lbs so maybe heat stroke?
I tried but couldn’t get her to drink water and every time I set her down she’d fall forward like “falling in yer pudding” onto the tip of her nose as opposed to laying down…she couldn’t hold her own weight up standing or sitting
I did what most people do…I panicked and wept a bit and tried to find a veterinarian in Naniamo on Sunday….apparently I was nuts.
I went to PetSmart – a huge pet chain to ask them and they gave me lectures on where not to take her “cos they’ll kill yer doggie”…..but weren’t so much help in the where to take her dept and in the meantime I’m holding a rag doll that I can’t even feel breathing…
So I pulled into a mall parking lot and I started calling people I know that live in Naniamo – but it must have been the weather cos they where away er at the beach er sommat.
Once I had a bit of another bit of a boo hoo I ended up calling my friend Arlene who lives in the interior and works in Boston Terrier rescue and got her to look up symptoms of heat stroke in dogs on the WWW and read them to me – from 9 hours away in Lumby– and she looked up the numbers for vet’s in Nanaimo …none of whom returned my call when paged…
I gave up on Nanaimo and I called my vet in Victoria and they gave me yet another number of a vet in Naniamo…who also didn’t return my page…
I called Arlene back and she’d been reading more on the web and she suggested that I bathe Pixie in tepid water… (no small feat when yer in a parking lot in a town 2 hours away from home)…
So I put her inside my shirt and walked straight into a Tim Horton’s and into the ladies room. I filled the sink full of tepid water and put Pixie in it…she was so out of it she didn’t even realize she was wet at first…
It took about 20 minutes and she finally started to come around…so I wrapped her up in paper towel and carried her out to the car…I wet a bandana with drinking water and laid it on her belly and chest…with her laying on her back in my arm and drove from Nanaimo to Cassidy where I stopped at a rest area and put her in the sink again…this time she was awake and cranky…
I was never so happy to see a little dog cranky.
I drove the rest of the way home and got to my vet’s office at 7:10 where they examined her and said she was good to go now…at which point “the little darling” got up and wandered over to the treat bowl for a snack.
My vet rocks…they triaged her after 7pm and didn’t charge me a cent. And Pixie is good as new….so – my friend Arlene also rocks…not only for saving Pixie but for calming me down about it too…
And going forward…Pixie will be in the back seat in the middle where the sun can’t reach her – and I’ll buy a pair of those kiddie shades you see parents using on their windows to protect their babies from the sun…she’ll be in the hard crate and if I have to I’ll even buy a cooling pad for her crate…I am gonna do my best to never get a scare like that again.
Now Pixie’s asleep on the couch – and I’m going to go hide in my bedroom closet and suck my thumb.
