It has taken me a while to update, but I just came back from vacations (actually I'm typing this in the airport waiting for my flight home). Before I left I have meant to post something on dogs being sick.
Half way through december Tjido became ill: quite a heavy diarreah, and it was so bad he couldn't even get off his coushion. I was worried about him but thought that he might just need some rest, until Joost went out the door for some groceries, and our normal barking/excited puppy just whimpered and tried to get up failing miserably.
That was too much for me, so I called the vet and there we went! Our vet initially blamed typical puppy habits of eating everything from the floor, but when he heard we gave him raw meat once a day his suspicion went more to his diet. In the end he gave him a shot and send him out with some easy-to-digest canned food and antibiotics. To make the story short, he was up and wagging his tail at the end of the day and we gave him plenty of water and his disgusting looking canned food.
But when we left the vet, his secretary asked if we had considered a health insurance for our dog... Since the whole "package" we got wasn't that cheap, to put it in soft words. We had originally looked at some, but thought it would cost us much more in the long run than an isolated accident. Some gave international insurance, other didn't. Some added the real expensive stuff (dental care). Some only covered 50% of costs and others you had to go premium for a full coverage. We haven't decided on anything yet.
So I guess my first question on this post is: Do you have a health insurance for your dog? And why did you (or not) decide to take it?
Tjido became a healthy dog again, but I don't know if I did the right thing by taking him to the vet, Later when taking to other dog owners they gave us more homey recipes to aid a sick dog (feeding him rice and boiled chicken for example). Joost also found out that after antibiotics, his stomach flora had been damaged so we had to give him a diet of 'less' clean meat so his bacteria can go to normal levels again.
Sigh..
There goes my second question of this post: What do you do when your dog is sick? How far do you let it go before calling a vet?
Tjido is again a happy healthy dog!
I hope you all had a great vacation season and enjoyed quality time with your family :)
Next posts will be on the following subjects: (yeah, 2013 resolutions: more posts!)
- Dog food: Raw food, dry food, costs and what to choose?
- New Puppy Classes: Teenager Dogs
- Home Alone: Continuation of our adventure, now day time alone.
