Sunday night, I got a call from the next-door neighbor. Their greyhound, Angel, had been bleeding from the mouth, and she didn't know what to do. It was pretty bad—there were times when the blood just seemed to be gushing. After talking on the phone with the regular vet, we decided to take Angel to the 24-hour clinic. Fortunately, the bleeding virtually stopped after we got her in the car, and eventually the vet knocked her out and pulled a couple of teeth.

But this story isn't really about Angel. It's about the other animals that were at the clinic. When we arrived, we had to wait because they were dealing with a dog that had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. We never heard the story about how it happened, so I'm thinking that a kid was spinning around and around with the bat, and the dog just happened to get in the way. 'Cause that's probably what happened, right? Right??? LA LA LA LA LA . . . .

We'd only been in the waiting room for a few minutes when three teenagers walked in carrying a cocker spaniel who was having a seizure. Now this tore at my heartstrings because the dog reminded me so much of our Chloe. It was all I could do to hold it together. We found out later that the dog had been seizing for about two hours, and the owner (the kids' mom) had just locked the dog in the laundry room so she didn't have to deal with it. This poor dog was suffering for TWO HOURS before anyone did anything about it!

Then we started talking with another teenager in the waiting room. Her family has three dogs, and a couple months ago someone left hot dogs and anti-freeze in their yard, and all three of them were poisoned. Fortunately they all survived, but one of them (Nigel—he was a real cutie) was having seizures on Sunday night, and they thought it might've been related.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??!?!? Forget about the pets. It's the PEOPLE who should be spayed and neutered.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 at 11:13 PM.