Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Deep freeze

VBB Central has seen its share of winter weather, but somehow this question was never asked by any of our clients until this very morning.

Squirts is a large-breed mutt whose owner is very fastidious in caring for her. Today, Squirts came in with a history of having vomited a lot over the weekend, and then improving and seeming completely normal on Monday, until around bedtime at which point Squirts developed raging explosive diarrhea.

Squirts' owner was up, outside in the freezing cold, with Squirts, much of the night. She brought Squirts in first thing this morning. Luckily, our exam and tests revealed no significant illness at this time, and we were able to send her home with just some supportive and dietary care.

As they were leaving, Squirts' owner said "Doctor, I just have one last question for you. There is a very very large area of my yard that is now just covered with dark brown frozen diarrhea. My street has a homeowner's association and there is a pooper-scooper bylaw. I called my snow-removal man but he won't touch it because it's diarrhea. It's not like I can pick it up and put it in a bag and I am having shoulder surgery and can't shovel. What should I do?"

They did not teach this in vet school!

7 comments:

  1. Yeah, we're supposed to have the answers for everything, aren't we? Rule #1: If you want to own an animal, never buy a place with an HOA.

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  2. My takeaway is that Squirts is an appropriate name!

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  3. Take a gamble that the HOA won't notice until its thawed enough to rinse it away

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  4. Get a big pot of boiling water (or two) and toss it over the gross spot. The snow will melt, the diarrhea will absorb into the ground below, and no one will be any the wiser! ;)

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  5. Like that guy in Fargo did recently - use a flamethrower.

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  6. Fudge!!! I was gonna say flame thrower. :(

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