I t seems that every month I start this little article talking about how much Nora has grown. This month however it has become really obvious as she is now the same size as Taz, Nicola's dog! If you compare the picture of her this month, with the one taken by the same wall in January you can see for yourselves the difference. The new picture was taken at the beginning of April and there has been another four week's of growing since then! As she is getting older Nora is getting more inquisitive and gets up to mischief often. This almost had fatal consequences last weekend when she stole and ate a packet of ibuprofen that I inadvertently left out on the table. I could hear her happily chewing on something in the garden and thankful for a moment's peace and quiet left her to it, thinking that it must be one of her toys. After about twenty minutes she came happily trotting in to see me with half the outer cardboard packet of the painkillers. Immediately realising what it was she must have been chewing on I rushed outside and found the foil insert covered in teeth marks and minus tablets. All human over the counter painkillers are dangerous to dogs as the toxic doses are much lower due to the different ways their bodies breakdown and metabolise the drugs. I knew straight away that the number of tablets she'd eaten were enough to make her very ill, so rushed her to the surgery! Once there I gave her something to make her sick and luckily managed to empty her tummy before much had been absorbed. I then gave her charcoal to absorb any remaining drug and she was given a short course of medicine to lessen the risk of her developing any further complications.
Thankfully, despite feeling very sorry for herself she has come through the incident unscathed. It is a good lessen that with puppies you must be aware of what they are doing all the time and you must be very careful as to what you leave around. Being aware of the dangers I should have known better, but it goes to show that even vets can have problems with their own dogs!

Let's hope next month is less eventful!

Justyn and Nora