mmmmmmm....prednisone!

Joe and I think that having our beagle, Lucy, has slowly prepared us for having a child. For example, we have learned the importance of handling/touch, positive reinforcement, training, and patience (to name just a small few). And...we have learned the importance of keeping things up high so that they can't be swallowed/eaten.

The reason we have learned this is because Lucy decided, last Monday night, that instead of chewing on a chew toy it would MORE fun to chew on one of her daddy's bottles of medication. Prednisone, to be exact.

All of a sudden Joe looked over and saw a chewed up bottle in her mouth with pills spread around on the ground in front of her. We had literally JUST filled the prescription so we knew there should have been 30 pills in there. So we counted the pills on the floor.

There were 25.

Now, Joe is a tall adult man (for those who did not know) and he only takes 1 of prednisone a day. But Lucy...little 34 pound Lucy...had managed to swallow 5 pills somewhere during her chewfest.

Awesomeness!

Joe called the vet and they said that dogs of Lucy's size have actually been given large quantities of prednisone before (probably for things like Valley Fever), but to be safe they mentioned that we could induce vomiting by having Lucy ingest 8 mL of hydrogen peroxide. Nasty, huh? They said if it didn't work the first time, after 15 minutes or so we could try 8 mL more...but no more than those two doses.

So, Joe ran down to the store and got some hydrogen peroxide and we had her take 8 mL and kept her in the kitchen where the floor is easily cleanable. 20 minutes or so later she was just as hyper and normal as ever. So we grudgingly gave her a second dose. About 10 minutes or so after that second dose, she still hadn't vomited and we really began to think that our beagle had a stomach of freakin' titanium or something. But then she got a little queasy and the rest is history. Mission accomplished.

We hated having to do that to her, but we thought it was better than having a beagle so hyped up on steroids throughout the night and possibly getting ulcers because of the steroids. That would have sucked WORSE than a little vomit!!

MORAL OF THE STORY: Leave your prednisone where little dogs and little people cannot reach them. Actually...scratch that. Just leave EVERYTHING out of reach! :-)