How Gus got on the Naughty List

It’s almost Christmas and the boys are pretty excited. Milo has done a good job leaving the Christmas tree alone. We had one ornament casualty, but we think that it fell off the tree during a wrestle session and then Milo chewed it up. It was a wooden ornament from Alaska, so it’s a good thing we are going back there next summer to replace it.

Gus, on the other hand, is worried about whether he will get more than a lump of coal in his stocking. I think he has legitimate cause for concern based on his antics the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I did some Christmas shopping earlier in November and hid the presents in my closet. There were toys for Milo, treats for Gus, and various stocking stuffers for David, including some plastic candy canes full of Kit Kats and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. On the day after Thanksgiving, I was in the Peloton room working out when David came in and said, “you won’t believe what your dog did.” I knew he was talking about Gus, so I figured it was looking cute and doing nothing wrong. This time though, I was incorrect. Gus had busted into my closet and went through the box and bags of Christmas presents. He ate at least three bags of treats, including parts of the bags, and both candy canes of Reese’s and Kit Kats, including all the candy wrappers, and a good part of the plastic tubes. While all this was going on, Milo was pacing back and forth between the door to my closet and the living room, trying to tell David that Gus was being bad. But when David went to check what was going on, nothing looked amiss because Gus had shut the closet door behind him so that he was disguised and had the whole closet to himself. If not for the fact that he was being bad, I’d recognize his brilliance.

We cleaned up the mess and just figured that he would have an upset stomach. But then, he didn’t want to eat his supper, which, if you know Gus, you know that’s a big red flag. The next morning, he threw up, had a seizure, and wouldn’t eat again. Gus has seizures sometimes, so that alone wasn’t concerning, but in combination with everything else, we decided something was up and took him to the emergency vet.

At the vet, they did an x-ray and didn’t see a blockage, but when they did bloodwork, his live values were very high. We couldn’t think of anything toxic he had eaten, but he ended up having to stay at the vet for two days while they treated his liver. They also did an ultrasound, looking for any tumors or other abnormalities on his liver. Luckily they didn’t find anything. Finally on Monday afternoon, he was able to come home. He’s since had a follow up blood test at our regular vet and his liver numbers have come down quite a bit, but are still not normal. HE has another follow up coming up and hopefully he will be in the normal range by then.

We still don’t know what caused the high liver numbers, but our vet suggested that maybe he ate mushrooms in our yard and David said he had seen a few recently. Gus and Milo were both on antibiotics for a cough and a liver reaction is a potential side effect of that medication, but both our regular vet and the emergency vet had never seen a case of that happening, so both were skeptical that was the cause

I have not replaced any of the treats Gus ate during his spree, so he will be getting fewer presents than Milo. And who knows what Santa is going to bring him! So this year, we were thankful for Nationwide Pet Insurance so Gus’s vet bill wasn’t quite as eye popping!

P.S. Milo did pretty well as an only dog for 48 hours. We took him to the park and he just generally got spoiled, but he was very happy to have Gus back.